Brown Paper Bag Leaves

Right inside my entryway, I have a vintage vanity dresser. It makes a great place to decorate for the different seasons. This fall, I decided I wanted a garland draped across the top of the mirror. I started with a few corn cobs. These are strawberry popcorn cobs and later I will probably eat them. Yum! I love popcorn! Then I wanted to fill in with something leafy. I could see in my mind, a garland of beautiful fall leaves and I loved what I saw! There was however, a slight problem: I'm an impatient person. I like to gather a lot of my own fall decorations from nature, but nature wasn't working fast enough for me. Although the leaves are beginning to turn colors in the nearby mountains, I've been so busy at home that I haven't found time to go on a leaf gathering trek. And then there was the issue of how to keep the natural leaves looking the way I wanted. Leaves dry out and curl up pretty quickly and that wasn't quite the look I had envisioned. There are a few methods of preserving falls leaves, but nothing really grabbed my attention... One morning, I decided I needed to just make my own leaves. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out! The best part: they were easy to make and cost me nothing because I had everything I needed already.

Before I settled on this leaf making method, I tried a few other things that didn't turn out the way I wanted. My sweet husband is such a supporter of my creativity. He came home from work that evening to find the house had exploded with art supplies. Rubber stamps, scissors, paints, tissue paper, glue, random bits of paper... *sigh* I really enjoy an organized house, but sometimes when I get really excited about creating, things get out of hand. Luckily instead of reacting to any of the mess, he just raved about my paper leaves. What a great guy! I had to spend a good amount of time putting things back in their proper places, but I think the finished project was worth the art-supply tornado aftermath. Here's the method I came up with so you can make your own brown paper bag leaves.

Supplies you'll need:
A brown paper bag or two (large heavy-duty grocery store type) or thick brown craft paper
Scissors
Acrylic paints in your desired color scheme.

1. Cut out your leaves. I folded a section of paper in half and then just free-hand cut into an oak leaf shape, but you could choose any type of leaf shape you wanted. I cut out a variety of sizes and since I was free handing it, each leaf was a little different. I think it turned out really nice that way.

2. Paint your leaves. I used yellow red, brown, and black acrylics paint to mix up a variety of fall leaf colors. Some leaves I did a wash style painting using lots of water and a just a little paint. Other leaves I painted more thickly, but even then I diluted it some so it wasn't too thick. I wanted the colors to look rather muted. Some of them, I just painted evenly one color, others I did with more detail, others still I was more random with the coloring. Try a few things out to see what you like best. It's fun! Turn on some music or put on your favorite movie and paint away! Set them to the side to dry.

3. Shape your leaves. This really is the finishing touch. Once the leaves are basically dry and starting to curl up, gently crease down the center of the leaf and then down the sides to mimic the veins of a leaf. You don't want hard creases, and they also don't need to be perfectly in line. you just want to add some subtly shape to your leaves.

4. Decorate with your leaves. This is the best part! I used my leaves to fill in my fall garland. I started with some natural colored yarn, tied the corn cobs on, and then used a hot glue gun to attach my paper leaves to the yarn in between the corn cobs. As a finishing touch, I used some extra acorns from my twig and acorn wreath project and glued a few of them on with the leaves. These look beautiful as a garland! I also glued some to mono filament and hung them in my front window. I'm not done decorating in my window. It needs something else, but so far, I'm loving the falling leaf look! I have a few other ideas of how I'm using my paper leaves as well, so you might see more of these in the future. I'm thinking I might decorate some of my grapevine wreaths with these. What do you think?

If you make some paper leaves, I'd love to hear how you decorated with them. There are so many possibilities! Have fun!

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