Thursday Project: It's still Summer Here

Even with the start of school, we're still feeling the summer heat in my neck of the woods. These Branch Suns from Tonya of Plain and Joyful Living perfectly capture the nostalgia of the last days of summer as they wind their way into fall.

We embarked on our own creative process. I encouraged the children to paint their own circles. We used birch slices.



As they painted their branches, my brain was swirling with the possibilities. The very tips of birch branches are these lovely multi-branch pieces. With holes drilled closely together around the slice, maybe a fuller branch wreath might take shape.

Here are the children's finished painted pieces. Today they are going to finish them up and we will screw them on the top of our rustic branch fence that borders a small portion of the pond.



Here is my piece that I left unpainted and applied our homemade beeswax oil finish to the faces. I applied a bit of wood glue to the ends of the each branch before putting in the drilled hole.



Here it is finished and hung on the side of our home (the side you see as you drive up our driveway.



As KnittingMomma on Etsy, Tonya uses natural materials that can be returned to the earth without harm to create gnomes, cars, play silks, matching games and blocks - to name just a few of the products in the Natural Earth Farm and Fiber Studio.