NAUVOO LEAVES

I saw this idea on Pinterest recently and couldn't wait to try it out.  We traveled to Nauvoo in late September and I collected some leaves from the trees in old Nauvoo.  We were staying in the Willard Richards guest house and the landlord gave me a thick magazine to stick them in.  The process is fairly simple but the designing takes a lot of adjusting.  Basically you watercolor a base of just colors on the paper and then you paint the leaves with gesso and print them one by one according to your design.  When dry you paint them with watercolors and then I sprayed them with touch up varnish to keep the colors from running when you put on the gloss gel paint at the end (not in the instructions).  If you don't like what you did or want to change colors you can repaint your leaves with gesso and try again.  And you need to do some repainting around the leaves to get the look you want.  I had a mat that was in a frame I bought that was damaged so I used it letting the leaves spill out onto it after I painted it with acrylic paint.  The finished size is 24X32 inches.  I have never done anything in watercolor before and it was a fun project with sentiment in that the leaves were taken from a special place.  I will definitely do it again sometime