Skeletons in my closet!

  Ok, so after weeks of gorgeous weather, the past few rainy days has just made me a tad crazy.  I slip outside in between the showers but, overall, I have to stay inside.  Blah!  Still, I should not complain since I see where some family members are still enduring winter.  My indoor time has been spent cleaning house or working on craft projects. Those crafty times far outweigh the housecleaning in my opinion!

  While out working in the yard the past few weeks, I noticed that a lot of the leaves from the citrus trees were becoming a tad "rotten".  It has been an extremely wet winter and pre-spring so the mounds of leaves stay wet even on the driest days.  These rotten leaves were showing signs of becoming leaf skeletons at a very rapid rate.  IDEA!  Oh, the crafty me needed leaf skeletons by the boatloads!  I have grand ideas of how to use the skeletons in projects!  I just needed to help the skeletonizing process along a bit!  Half of my time cleaning under the grapefruit trees was spent on my hands and knees collecting the perfect leaves for the "exfoliation" process.  Once I gathered enough to keep me busy, I looked for an easy way to make the skeletons.  Some of the instructions were ridiculously hard and time consuming.  I tried soaking the leaves in washing soda, bleach and hydrogen peroxide.  I tried beating the the leaves between two cloths.  Nothing seemed to work well enough to suit me.  The washing soda soaking method did remove a good bit of the pulpy mess but it also weakened the veins of the leaves.  I really did not want a weak skeleton.  I just wanted to remove the fleshy part!  So I experimented!

  Of all things, I went back to Mother Nature, herself!  My next bunch of soggy leaves were left just that..soggy.  The leaves were layered in a stainless steel bowl (so it would not rust!) and left on the porch.  After three days, I brought them inside and separated a few from the bowl.  In my kitchen sink, I proceeded to "exfoliate" them.  I used the spray nozzle to imitate rain!  As the water rained down on the leaf, the fleshy part started sloughing off and down the drain!  Within a span of thirty seconds, my leaf was almost a perfect skeleton.  The skeleton was placed on a paper towel to dry. This was far easier and quicker (not to mention cheaper) than any of the suggested methods.  Any of the leaves that were not fully cleaned within a minute were put back in the bowl for one more day.  The dried skeletons were put in envelopes for protection and stowed away in the craft closet!

  These leaf skeletons will now be put to good use in some future project.  Looking in some of the art shops, I found that painted and framed leaf skeletons sell for a good bit of money.  And then there are some that are coated in precious metals that have exorbitant price tags attached to them.  Who knew that something mussing up my yard could ever be worth a bunch of money?  My skeletons probably will never make me rich but that matters not to me.  I enjoy creating with things from nature and these leaf skeletons intrigue me.  Those skeletons in my closet will come tumbling out when the brain figures just how they will be used.