Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials.

Art from Nature

It’s a slow moving rainy Saturday at the schoolhouse.  Last night we filled a bag with freshly fallen maple leaves, and picked up a large brown cotton wood leaf for today’s Jack-o-lantern Mosaic project. It was the perfect night for a walk. The air was crisp and the leaves were dry.  Kicking our feet through the fallen leaves is a game that never gets old.

Early this morning, before the boys awoke, we made our cups of tea and coffee and got to work.  We cut the colorful maple leaves into small square pieces. Then, we created two pumpkin shaped forms from last night’s pizza box. Our final piece of prep work was cutting some jack-o-lantern face pieces from the cottonwood leaf.

Jack-o-lantern Mosaic Materials:

• Colorful Autumn leaves
• Cardboard
• White glue
• Scissors

Making the Jack-o-lantern Mosaic

To make the mosaic pumpkins, we glued the leaf cuttings to the cardboard pumpkin forms. The pieces were placed close together, but we tried not to overlap too much.  With the pumpkins complete, it was time to use our cotton wood parts to transform the pumpkins into Jack-o-lantern Mosaics.

This was our first try at a project like this. The finished results look great, and are perfect for halloween decorating.  There is no doubt that we’ll be completing additional leaf mosaic projects in the very near future.