3. Slowly lift and reveal your lovely leaf print!
Painted Leaf Art – How to Paint Leaves
This rainbow painted leaf art is a beautiful nature craft you can make with the kids with simple materials and vibrant results!
Creating simple nature art prints is one of our favorite easy art activities to make with kids! Leaf art has so many different possibilities from making leaf animals to creating beautiful leaf mobiles. We decided to keep it simple this time with this rainbow leaf art! All you need are leaves and paint but we used a special kind that’s even easier for kids with more precision! Check out our full list of materials and instructions below to start creating beautiful nature and leaf prints.
What kind of paint do you need for this leaf print?
To create leaf painting you’ll need paint of course but it doesn’t have to be the traditional acrylic or tempera type of paint you can brush on. On this leaf butterfly we used acrylic paint that’s painted on.
To create this particular rainbow leaf art we used paint markers! We love using paint markers for art projects like painting rocks and wanted to test if they would work well on leaves. The answer is yes!
Paint markers are great for kids if you want to the mess down and have them be a little bit more precise in coloring in the exact lines within a leaf.
We also find the clean up to be much easier, no need to wash paint brushes!
Plus paint markers come in all colors of the rainbow and more these days and anywhere from fine to medium and larger tips depending on your needs and application.
Of course you can also use a paintbrush and paints like acrylic paints if you already have those on hand! Those will work just fine too!
Spray Painted Leaves
This super simple painting technique is a great way for kids to make amazing, autumnal artworks to hang in their homes.
What you’ll need
Items you’ll also need
- Water
- Sticky Tape
- Sticky Tac
- Scissors
Skill Level
Easy. Adult supervision needed
Time to Make
20 Minutes (plus drying time)
Adult Supervision Needed
How to Make
- Firstly, cover the front and back of the leaf templates with sticky tape to make the templates water resistant.
- Cut around the templates.
- Temporarily stick your templates to the canvas board with sticky tac.
- Fill a fine mist bottle with a few squirts of red paint and water. The more paint you add to the bottle the bolder and brighter the colour.
- Shake the fine mist bottle until the paint and water mixture is combined with no lumps. Repeat for all 4 colours.
- Spray the paint and water mixture onto the canvas, the canvas underneath the leaf templates will be protected.
- When the paint is dry peel off the leaf templates to reveal the leaf shapes underneath.
- Hang your beautiful, autumnal painting in your home.
Top Tip
You can use real leaves instead of the template if you would rather.
Template
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