A month had passed since Autumn started and I still haven’t decorated my house with some bits and pieces to celebrate it. Also, I needed to come up with a DIY since that was one of the themes for this blog. With all the Uni stuff it has been a challenge to gather up an idea and work on it as soon as possible. Enough with the complains time to let the craft talk!

I saw many DIYs – mostly on Pinterest – with garlands for autumn with so many shapes, from leaves to pumpkins, and I couldn’t stop noticing some of them were done with artificial leaves. I rarely shop online, and it’s very hard to find fake autumnal leaves in stores – at least in my town – so I usually end up making everything myself from scratch with simple and accessible materials. If you also have the same problem has me or just want to make the craft more personal this DIY is for you.

Note: I am not going to say this throughout every step of the DIY so I am going to leave it here. You have plenty of ways to do this and you are free to do it the way you like the most. I don’t want you to feel obligated to follow this “rules” precisely, this is my way of doing it. Most of all, I want this DIY to be seen as an inspiration for you to create your own version, but if you also want to create the same that I did, you also have the guidelines to make it.

Supplies:

Metallic paper in two different colours (ivory and gold)
Scissors
Glue
String (Perle cotton size 8)
Pencil (Staedtler Lumocolor Waterproof in white)
Leaf template (around 7cm per 8cm)

First, you need to get a template. I printed out mine from the internet, but you can draw your own or use a real dried leaf as a base shape.

Note: You can use a string of your preference, just make sure you are using a string proportional to the leaf. If your leaves are small, don’t use a chunky string, that way you are giving more importance to the string instead of the leaf.

Note 2: Also, I recommend using a white pencil to avoid having to erase the marks after cutting them out. Even if you can see bits of white, it won’t look bad, and it will help giving brightness and texture to it.

Grab your template and contour the shape on one side of the sheet. Draw the rest of them as close together as possible to save space – metallic paper isn’t cheap, better make the most of it.

Do as many as you want until you have enough leaves for the garland – I did two sheets of each colour, which made around 10 to 11 per sheet. Another way of doing it is to print out a page all set up with the leaves. With this method, you’ll end with a bunch of precisely equal leaves and save time from drawing each one.

This is the part that takes the most time: cutting off all the shapes. Is for moments like this I wish to have a cutting machine, they are so handy. Although, I also enjoy using these moments to clear my head of all the problems, listening to some music, or watch TV while my hands are busy with something mechanical.

WARNING: Don’t underestimate the sharp edges just because you are working with paper – those little bastards can hurt. The template I chose is very pointy so I had to be very careful when moving it around. You can easily avoid this problem by using a shape with smooth edges.

The next step is the most painful one. You need to crumple all the leaves in little balls. You read it well, CRUMPLE! I know after all this work I should be crazy to tell you the next step is to “destroy” what took you at least a couple of hours to do. I know it’s painful mental and physically – again those sharp edges are going to kill your hand, it is better to use a glove.

The point is to give more texture to the simple and flat piece of paper. As you know, real leaves have veins of different sizes giving them shape and volume, and by just doing simple straight marks, it makes them unnatural. Plus, this way each one of them is completely unique and different from the rest even though they are all the same shape.

With all your leaves ready, it is time to glue them to the string. Unroll a good amount and start laying the leaves on top to get an overview. Just arrange them wherever you want, alternating the colours, and once you find a layout you like, use a marker to trace where they will be glued – I set mine 12 cm apart from the centre of each leaf.

Also, make sure you live a margin from the first and the last leaf. You are going to need it for fixing or attaching the garland somewhere – I left 30 cm and it wasn’t that much, I could have left more.

After all the leaves glued are ready to decorate anything you want! For more inspiration, you can search on Pinterest where you will find thousands of ways to do it from the quickest and easy to the most nerve-racking way. And with glitter, without, with dried leaves, felt, tissue paper, fabric… it goes on and on. So I want to show how I imagine my version and hope to inspire you and even teach you something new.

You also can use other colour combinations as you please. You can create a garland with only grey leaves, or blue, or pink – who says it has to be brown or green?! It’s your project you decide! – You can even do a rainbow garland to cheer up the rainy days! Creativity has no limits only you can make up barriers.

If you do this DIY please share with me the results, I would love to see it. Or if you got inspired and made some changes on it share it as well over my social media – Twitter, Instagram – or email me. I would love so much to see someone grab my idea and making it their own.