This is definitely our most favorite nature craft we've done yet!  The clay nature prints turned out beautifully!  This project took us a couple of days to fully complete, but it was WELL worth it.  My original inspiration for this craft came from The Artful Parent.

We started by setting out on a nature hunt to collect items that we thought would make good prints.  The items we collected were:  piece of a wild fern, a few miscellaneous leaves we thought were pretty (such as a wild violet leaf and a couple dried leaves from the fall), a half a walnut shell, an acorn top, a dandelion, and wild garlic.  We also chose out a couple of pretty seashells from our family's shell collection.

Next, we took blocks of Sculpey Clay, and cut them in 1/2" pieces.

We rolled them into nice even and smooth balls.  We chose to start with our wild violet leaf and placed it flat on the table (it was very important to have it very smooth and flat).  We centered the clay ball on top.  Next, we pushed down very evenly on top of the ball using the palm of our hand, until we new that the leaf was covered sufficiently.

After turning the clay back over, we took tweezers and removed the leaf from the clay.  We were so thrilled with how beautiful these were!!

We continued one by one doing this same procedure to all of our nature collection items, placing them on a large cookie sheet as we completed them.  We used a straw to poke a hole in the tops of them because we had plans for hanging them.  This is optional depending upon what you would like to use them for.

Now it was time for baking.  We baked ours for approximately 45 minutes at 275 degrees.  You can read the Sculpey Clay packaging for directions.  They baked up nice and solid.

Now here's where you can make a decision of whether to proceed.  These are truly beautiful just as they are without the straw holes, OR you can be like us and decide to experiment a little!

We thought I wonder what these would look like to give them a light watercolor wash (mixture of tube watercolor paint and water).  So Hannah got out her paints and brushes and we gave it a go!  We choose the dandelion print and thought it would be neat to make it yellow of course!

From the first brushstroke, we knew they would be gorgeous!!

Absolutely stunning!  I loved the way the watercolor settled into the indentions and made the prints stand out.

So we went crazy mixing colors and watercolor washing all of our prints.

This was one of my favorites, the wild fern.  Isn't that beautiful?!

Now again, I think if the straw hole weren't in these you could leave them just like this and they would be so neat to just have them sitting about upon your nature table, on a  window sill, hmmm you could even attach a heavy duty magnet to the back and have a very pretty refrig. magnet!  That's what I liked best about this craft I think there's many different ideas that could be done with these.

But, here's what we decided to do...we took some twine (found in the Target dollar spot just this weekend), and tied long pieces (sorry I forgot to measure) to the prints.

We continued working on these until they were all tied to twine. They are NOT tied together at the top, that's just how we were holding them.

Next, we took a piece of branch, we had also found on our nature walk, and began to tie the prints to it.

I did NOT worry about them being even, that would have took forever.  Besides the variety made it look more organic.  Here is the final product:

I also attached a piece of twine to the top of the branch in case I want to hang it from something.  I haven't decided yet if I'd like to hang it from a plant hook from the ceiling in our schoolroom, OR just hang it like a picture on the wall.  What do you think?  Oh, also, we talked about eventually taking a very fine tip sharpie marker (probably brown) and printing on the backs of them what the prints are of.