Framing Leaves

I tried to think of something new for birthdays. I like gifts from the heart. While playing in the park with Ethan, we picked some leaves off of bushes to play with and I got inspired. I decided to try framing some leaves from trees in the back yard and use them as interior decoration.

I decided to frame some leaves from the back yard and see how it turned out. I looked up several methods on blogs and went for it.

This is where I got the leaves from: my neighbor's mango tree. Well several branches cross over to my property so legally, they are mine. :)

Another tree in my backyard. This one is on park property but much of this tree comes into my yard. I tried these leaves too. 

I picked two bunches of leaves so I could find the best ones and have different sizes. Like the blogs recommended, I picked them early in the morning so they were fresher than getting picked in the evening after being hit by the sun all day. 

I washed each leaf. 

I mixed the gelatin and water solution to soak the leaves in. 

I soaked the leaves in the gelatin and water solution for 4-5 days. The water was turning green. I wouldn't leave them in too long or they will rot. 

The leaves came out nice and shiny from the coat of gelatin. 

Next I pressed them in phone books between pieces of parchment paper. This took the longest time. I think I left them there for a week but was probably only necessary for five days. 

So here you see that different types of leaves come out differently. The mango leaves stayed greener even though the exact same process was applied for each leaf. 

This is why I picked several bunches of leaves. Some just don't turn out well. 

I bought frames from Target which had the best frames and cheapest prices. Hobby Lobby really didn't have small frames like these. I visually lined up the leaves and used double sided tape on the back to stick the leaves to the glass.

Here is what I did with leaves of different sizes. 

Another angle. 

Getting ready to ship.

Well the package made it safely to my mother. I sent it a little after her birthday since she was out of town and I didn't want it to sit on her doorstep for a few days. Thanks to my experience with eBay, I packed up the glass extra secure and shipped it off without needing to pay $$ for "safe handling". 

I'll hold on to the other frame for now until it finds a good home. I have it in my office for the mean time as a reminder of nature and summertime birthdays. 

August audiobook: What if this is Heaven?

This month's book I listened to was What if this is Heaven? How Our Cultural Myths Prevent Us from Experiencing Heaven on Earth by Anita Moorjani.

I've been following Anita Moorjani's YouTube channel for a little while now and listening to the half hour topics of discussion. I've found it really helpful and understand spirituality better from listening to her over many other authors/speakers. Many of the inspirational videos that I have found center around practical Western philosophy and she speaks to a more spiritual Eastern philosophy. I suppose that is how I would label for someone who has not heard themselves. In the end, most of the philosophies on self-betterment are similar with the same goals and very similar methods, its just how we focus on achieving our goals. I've found that I prefer to seek betterment through emotion rather than through procedure.

Unlike the past several books, I've listened to, this was an easy and more fun book. I really concentrated on listening to the last books and the philosophies or the practices. In this book the philosophies and methods of practice are described through real-life scenarios of storytelling in the words and voice of the actual author. This made for an easy listen and I completed the book at a faster pace than usual. I'm reading her books out of order and I will be getting to her first book next. I was interested in hearing her message first and I'll get further into her life story next.

I normally will not get deep into writing about the books but there were several mass shootings around the time I was listening to this book. Just before that happened, I heard a passage that stood out. She was discussing her move from Hong Kong to California and how much different the news was in the U.S. Specifically how negatively all of the violence in the news affected her. To get over this she turned off the news but knew violence was still happening everyday. She takes comfort knowing that even though there are daily reports of violence in the news, there are untold amounts of kindness and good news unreported everyday.