How to Make Fabulous 3D Nature Pictures

The kids are constantly picking up bits and pieces when we are out on our walks, so we generally have an abundance of twigs, seed-heads and pine-cones scattered around our kitchen – after all you never know when you might need an interesting twig!

When the lovely weather we have been having ended here last week, my daughter and I decided it was a good opportunity to have an after school crafting session, and give some of them a more permanent home. We decided to make some 3D nature pictures with our finds.

First my daughter worked out a rough idea for the 3D pictures. She wanted to make dragonflies for one, and owls for the other.

As you can see we had a couple of 3D picture frames that we decided to use, but there is no reason why you couldn’t do the same thing in the lid of a shoe box or similar.

We had the idea of using some marine gravel we had tucked away as a background for her dragonflies. She covered the board with a thick layer of PVA glue and scattered the gravel on top. Once it had dried she simply tipped the excess off. For the Owl picture she used charcoal to darken the background a little.

Once the backgrounds were ready she simply placed her objects and fixed them in place. We used a hot glue gun which  is probably the easiest way to do this.

And here are our completed 3D nature pictures. My daughter likes the dragonflies best, but I think the owls are cute too.

For more nature craft inspiration check out our Sticky Nature Cards and our sweet little Teasel Hedgehogs.