Amazing insect with twisted Honey locust pods

Autumn is my third favorite season. Despite the cold is still some advantages. And these are the colors! The play of light and color on sunny days, yellows, oranges, reds and browns interspersed with deep green. Magic.

Coming back to earth, interesting fruits and seeds ripen in autumn. Many of them can be used for artistic activities for kids. Unusual (I think) example is the Honey locust pods (Gleditshia). Autumn sun gives them a beautiful brown color, and a twisted nature – a character.

Honey locust, Gleditshia, is a decorative tree, sometimes fried in parks or squares. In Wroclaw they can be found in many places, since for several years we use the pods in their natural color as Christmas decorations, even the wreaths. But this year we decided to use them as a rattle, spatial painting canvas. They give a lot of possibilities, since smaller specimens are about 25 cm in length, and greater reach up to 40 cm.

For a good start, we have already trained theme – bugs and insects.

Honey locust pods (Gleditshia) can be harvested from the end of September. They also gradually fall during the winter, but harder then collect good quality material to dry. Drying. This is an important issue. It is not about the difficulty of this process, but a scent. During drying the pods just stink. If there are several pods, is not a problem. But the bag may already be troublesome. After drying, no longer have this problem.

Painting on Honey locust pods (Gleditshia pods) requires an appropriate medium. Cann’t do without acrylic paint, at least in the form of a primer under poster paints or tempera. The pods are lovely and warm shades of brown, and very smooth and shiny surface. There can be painted conventional paints for kids.

Honey locust pods often have amazing forms, even serpentine. For painting, especially for children, it is worth to choose the most flat pods.

Already I think traditionally we use to paint the acrylic paints, not only for artists but also interior latex paints. Admittedly, the latter paints a much better come true in this game plastic. Nevertheless, to get uniform color were needed two layers of paint.

It happens that kids use acrylic paints to paint, as was the case with painted autumn leaves, but this time we chose a different solution. The layer of white acrylic paint allowed kids to paint with poster paints. But they were drying a little too long, so the kids painted their worms from only one side. Now they have colorful rattles 😉

What do you say to such art works for children? We are fascinated with the possibilities personally collected the pods.