Fall Leaves - Tutorial

Hi there!

Happy hump day!  I have a pretty easy tutorial to share with you today.  And while the project itself is fairly simple, I have a couple of tips / tricks that I used to create it just the way I wanted and thought they may be helpful to you, too!

Here is a little peak at the finished product.

Well grab a coffee or a tea and get ready for the step by step!

 First, I die cut a bushel of leaves (heehee) using my Tim Holtz die and some text paper (because I have a passion for text paper), and because I wanted to play with my distress inks.   Of course, you can choose papers that suit you and you can decide to ink or not.

 Then I set to distressing each leaf.  Now here is TIP #1 - if you are like me and have yet to invest in one of those fancy wipe-able ink / paint mats , then grab your waxed paper.  The ink moves around really nicely on it, making it really easy to distress your leaves.  Bonus - clean up is as simple as tossing the waxed paper into the trash. 

 So here are all of my distressed leaves, I used green, orange, and 3 different browns.  Sort of like the different stages you would see in fall.

 Next step, give them all a little crumple.

 Now for the band, I have cut 3 strips of 2 inch brown cardstock.  Be sure to use a colour you like or that coordinates as you will be able to see it if you are using a glass vessel like I am.

 Now glue all 3 together length-wise.  I have added a couple of paperclips temporarily so that I could still play with this band while it was drying.

 This is my vessel of choice (before).

 Now wrap the cardstock band around your vessel and trim off excess, so that you have some overlap.

 TIP #2, I decided to make my band removable ( so I can clean my vessel and so that I can reuse the band again next year, should I choose to). I have these little velcro tabs in my stash (picked up from the dollar store)  I did add some extra liquid glue to them to make sure they really stick as I will want my band pretty tight.  Make sure you put one side of the velcro on the back of the band and the opposite part of the velcro on the front of the band.

 Now for the fun part - adding the leaves.  I used liquid glue, adding a few inches at a time.

 Start laying down your leaves in a 'planned random' fashion.  You know, so that you do not have all of one colour clumped together but also so that it doesn't look like you tried too hard.

 Continue on until your band is full.  you can see that I had a few little gaps hear and there and thankfully I had a few leaves left, so I was able to cover the gaps.

 Don't forget to leave your velcor uncovered.

 Some tiny gemstones for sparkle and fun.

 Now for the focal point, really anything goes.  I chose this large burlap flower that I had been hoarding for the perfect project and layered it up with this pretty yellow flower.  I also added some strands of twine.

 The finished product!

 And a little close up for you!

So what do you think, not too hard right?  I love mine and have it on display where I can see it often.  A simple nod to fall, which I still am not ready for, despite it being only a few days away.  From start to finish, including the planning, cutting, inking and drying - this little baby only took about an hour.  Totally worth it in my books!

Thanks for visiting!

Laura

xoxo