Autumn trinket dishes

Simon and I went for a walk through the grounds Mount Stewart last weekend; doesn’t autumn look so splendid?

I couldn’t resist gathering a few leaves as we walked around the lake; I had seen a gorgeous little golden leaf trinket dish on Cox and Cox that inspired this make at a smidge of the £40 price tag.

This is a simple craft DIY – all you need are a few of your favourite autumn leaves, some air-drying clay (I love DAS modelling clay and picked some up in Hobbycraft when I was last in store), a sharp blade and some paint.

Just roll out the clay to your desired thickness – the thinner it is, the faster is will harden – and then roll the leaf on to the clay to imprint all those beautiful veins and cut around the leaf.

Line a bowl (or bowls if you’re making a few) with cling film and shape the leaves in them – I allowed mine to sit for 24 hours and they had dried out and hardened.

I took them outside and gave them a good coat of spray primer and metallic paint that I had left from another project. I was originally going to paint them in the colours of the leaves I had gathered but I took the easy route and used up this spray paint. Next time I will make bright autumn colours. Each of layers dry to the touch within 20 mins so it didn’t take long at all.

I love the shine you get with these Rust-oleum metallic paints.

I’ve not only used these as trinket dishes for jewellery at the end of the day: as a sewist, I couldn’t resist one of these as a pin holder – just glue a magnet to the bottom.

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