This is a cheap piece of art that your child will love hanging on their wall. Most of the items needed can be sourced in pound shops and parks.

You Will Need

30 cm Material Canvas (only £1 in Poundland)
20 Leaves
1 packets AcrylicPaint (only £1 in Poundland)
buttons
lollipop sticks

paper (Black and brown/painted brown)

For more fun tutorials, check out www.craftalavista.com

Nicole @ Crafta La Vista

Step 1: Collect Your Leaves

When out at and about collect a variety of leaves to use on your painting. You will need about 10 large and 5 small for an A3 canvas.

Leave them to dry out in an airing cupboard overnight. Tip: Get extra just in case because the leaves get crumbly when dry.

Step 2: Paint the Canvas Background

Start by painting the canvas with Blue for the sky and green for the grass.

Tip: For a more realistic sky, I use 3 shades of blue and swirl them all together, darkest at the top down to lightest. Kids love this part because they get to go mad with the paint brush. Leave the paint to dry

Step 3: Prepare Your Tree Bark

Take the brown paper or coloured sugar paper and paint it brown.

Again leave the paint to dry.

Step 4: Glue on the Tree Trunk

Once all the paint has dried. Take the sugar paper you painted brown and tear length ways into long strips.

Glue these onto the middle of the canvas to make the tree trunk. Layer to get a better bark effect. I also make a few smaller strips and glue them on as roots.

Step 5: Create Your Fence

Next we want to make the fence. Take the wooden lollipop sticks and glue them in a fence pattern as in the pictures above.

Step 6: Add Leaves to Your Tree

Now we can attach the leaves to the tree trunk.

Tip: PVA glue might not be strong enough to hold, for this you mightneed super glue (we used staples as no stronger glue in the house) Make a large circle at the top of the painting, using 5-6 or the biggest leaves. Then work inwards with the remaining 4-5. Keep the smallest leaves for later.

Step 7: Create Your Animals

For the animals, cut out silhouettes from a piece of black paper. Cats, dogs and squirrels all work well.

Tip: If you don't have anything lying around, pick up a scarf from a pound or second hand shop. Glue the animals onto the bottom of your canvas, adding buttons for eyes and the end of a wooden lollipop sticks for a nose.