Leaves & Leaves

     Lately I have really been "into" leaves.  Not raking leaves or reading books  but restructuring book leaves. Now, I imagine that would make some of you cringe. Some people have trouble tearing pages out of books but not me. Not paperbacks that are not valuable. Books are not sacred, after all. You might remember seeing a paperback pumpkin I made on an earlier post. That is what got me started!  And, I ran across a website called, Nesting Place, where the owner had decorated for a party she was giving for her sister who had published a book. She made lots and lots of tree leaves out of book leaves for the book themed party. She shared how she did it and how she decorated with them.  I decided to make some leaves of my own!

I drew rough patterns of three kinds of leaves and cut and cut and cut some more!  I used a very wet tea bag to saturate them making them a better color for my purpose. I spread them out on wax paper to let them dry.

They all look too flat so I curled some of the edges around a pencil to make them look more natural.  I also got out these crepe paper leaves I had found at Dollar Tree.  Does anyone remember when we could get crepe paper in packages like tissue paper?  Have you seen any of that lately?  It has been years since I have seen any. 

I decided to make branches with my leaves so I cut long strips of kraft paper about 3" wide - rolled it up as tight as I could and also started twisting as I rolled.  It made good twigs for my branches.

I layed them all out like I thought they looked good and started using a dab of tacky glue to attach to the twigs.  You could use hot glue.  I haven't had my hot glue gun heated up in years!

The thick tacky glue worked good except for a place or two where I got them secured to my tablecloth!!  So don't do this over a good cloth.

I already had the little confetti balls and they added to the overall look.  They sparkle and are much prettier in person.

Oh yes, do you see the little curly cues?  Those were the stems of the crepe paper leaves which weren't needed for this project and looked better after I wrapped them around a pencil and made the curly cues.

It was hard to get a good picture of the whole thing.  I know I keep saying this but it really does look better than the picture shows.

When I got tired of cutting leaves I started rolling leaves!  I like them this way too.

Today I made this pillow from a pillow sham I picked up the last time I was in Goodwill for $1.99.  I just made it shorter and folded it to this size, sewed  the back and stuffed it with fiber fil.  I like it here on the porch bench.  Every place needs a little softness.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you are having nice autumn days.