Dancing with leaves

 Remember how I posted about Mira and I collecting spring leaves (and the odd petal) to press between the leaves of a heavy book? The post was called 'Taking a leaf out of Nature's book' and if you missed it, click here to take a look: http://www.seasonalinspiration.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/taking-leaf-out-of-natures-book.html
I said I would let you know what we did with our colourful collection. So here it is, above. We made magic!

And this is how: first we uncovered our leaves from the leaves of the heavy book (I love the way English has the same word for both). Then we chose our very favourites, and arranged them on a small pane of glass, which I had found.

The next step was to place an identical sized pane of glass on top of our arrangement. The leaves slipped and danced around a little, until I squeezed both panes into a frame. I had bought masking tape, all ready to bind the edges to hold the two panes together, but was delighted when they fitted into the ready-made frame.

And so we had our picture, which we propped up against the ranch sliders so that the light could shine through.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to make chocolate paper pictures. She first drew - usually a beautiful seated woman or girl - on the glass, then filled in most of the background with black paint. By placing shiny chocolate papers behind the black paint, she made a gorgeous dress for the seated figure. A gold paper would make her hair, and another colour her shoes. 

Eventually I was able to make my own, after saving lots of papers. (My mother loved chocolates, which was quite handy).

And now, making this glass leaf picture with Mira, I am reminded of those happy times with my mother. When we make something beautiful with someone we love, the memory lasts forever.