How to Make Natural Looking Paper Oak Leaves
Yesterday over on Instagram Stories, I asked if you all were ready for fall crafts. The answer was an emphatic and resounding “NO”. Despite the fact that I am so over the humidity levels that could drown you and the heat that makes it feel like you are being boiled alive, I’m not quite ready for fall projects to begin. On the other hand, I like to start getting seasonal craft projects tutorials out there early, so you can plan and save up to get the materials that you need.
Last year, I started an advent calendar at the end of November, immediately after having turbinate surgery. For whatever reason, I insisted that hubby take me to the dollar store to pick up supplies for this calendar. I couldn’t understand why people were staring at me while I haphazardly grabbed crafting supplies. It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized I had been totally out of it and I had a bandage wrapped around my face. I also bid on some auctions that same day and won them (I did pay for them), yet I don’t remember doing it…though I do remember very clearly, my surgeon (who looked and sounded JUST like Doyle on Gilmore Girls) and his nurse dancing to Phantogram to get themselves pumped for surgery.
Needless to say, the advent calendar still needs to be finished because I started too late, with too many things on my plate. My advice? Even though it’s early, start your seasonal projects early and NEVER do things after surgery…go to bed after surgery. Seriously, don’t buy stuff and definitely don’t bid on things when you’re half out of it, even though I’m proud of my antique pew and my little blue cabinet, I would not repeat that again. So, after that really long explanation of why I start seasonal projects early, let’s jump into a pile of leaves! Shall we?
I wanted to do oak leaves, but I also wanted them to be fairly easy to cut out, so I went with a bur oak leaf shape. These leaves are great as a bowl filler, but you could get really adventurous and make a garland with them. I made about 100 leaves and I filled a vintage silver plated bowl that I picked up at an estate sale recently. If you need your leaves to be poofier for filling a bowl, you can crumple them a bit after they dry. This project is great because you get that leafy look, without the bugs! This craft project is very easy, it’s forgiving and the leaves are ready to use immediately after they dry. For more a video on how to make these leaves, head over to Instagram!
How to Make Natural Looking Paper Oak Leaves
Equipment
- Scissors
- Container for coffee & water
- Old Towel
Materials
- Printed Leaves
- Instant Coffee
- Water
Instructions
- Right click on the leaf image, click "save" and head over to the folder you saved it in, scale to 56% and print on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of regular copy paper. The leaves will print out similar in size of their real life counterpart.
- If you plan to make a lot of leaves, most scissors can handle a stack of four pieces of paper. Keep the paper generally lined up, separate the leaves (you can see better what I mean in the video I made on Instagram) and then cut along or cut slightly inside the lines of the leaf. If you don't cut these out perfectly, that's OK, this is not a fussy project, it's meant to be easy and it allows for mistakes.
- Mix up instant coffee and warm water. Dip a cut out leaf flat (do this one at a time) into the coffee, remove, cumple the leaf and dip it back into the coffee. Very carefully uncrumple the leaf and lay it on an old towel. Sprinkle some dry instant coffee onto the wet leaf.
- Allow leaves to air dry on a towel or you can use a heat gun to carefully dry the leaf. I arranged my leaves so that they would dry with peaks and valleys.
- Now your leaves are ready for use as a bowl filler or whatever your imagination can think of!
