After our awesome magic milk paint experiment today, Gracen and I took advantage of the overwhelming amount of apple pears our tree has this year and did something that reminds me of making homemade gift wrap as a child… Apple stamping.

Needing to dedicate a day (or an afternoon at the very least) to picking the ridiculous amount fruit our tree is currently carrying, much of our backyard currently looks like this.  Sadly, once they’ve fallen to the cement pad, most of the apples are left badly bruised, a little mushy, and not all that great for eating purposes.

So today, while we were picking them up and putting them in the compost, we saved a few of the better ones to use for stamping purposes.  Grae picked two “baby” apples and one “biiiiiiig” apple for the project, and then we collected a roll of art paper, some paint, and a knife (for Mama’s use only of course).

I chopped the apples both vertically and horizontally, trying to get rid of the really yucky parts and keep the more decent parts all at once.  As you can see, some of these are still pretty yucky, but that doesn’t really matter when you’re just using them for stamping.

Grae got started right away – dunking and stamping, dunking and stamping, again and again.

Stamping of this sort often has better results when the paint it brushed onto the object, but since dunking the apples into the paint is much easier, and let’s face it – more fun, we just went with that technique. Grae didn’t seem to mind one bit.

The end result {besides a toddler with multicoloured hands}? A beautiful masterpiece that could be hung and displayed or used to wrap a fall gift.

♥