Leaf it To Me!

This Summer has been one of the hottest and driest that I can remember. Evah! It's soooo hot...well, believe me it's just hot. And dry. And because of those two things and the fact that our tress are already so stressed, there most likely will NOT be any Fall color here. Not that there is much anyway...but for a few short weeks, we sometimes do get some pretty color.

That's the facts, jack. So what is a Fall loving gal to do. Make my own. So...I did. , Even if you do have pretty Fall colors in your neck of the woods, this is still a fun project to do.

Start with a leaf, a real leaf. Trace it onto light card stock like above. Sometimes I use an empty cereal box. Being green and all. Carefully cut it out, now you have a "master" leaf.

See? Just like above. Now pull several pages out of say, an old condensed Reader's Digest. You can generally pick them up at garage sales for under a buck. I also used an old encyclopedia too, but the thinner pages were more brittle, really easy to tear. So I think the Reader works better. Lay your master on top of 5 book pages. Trace around them. Carefully cut out all five pages at once. This is great to do in front of the TV.

Now, lay out your newly cut "leafs" and carefully dry brush them with Gesso. Let em dry. While they dry, I thought about roasting hot dogs and sitting around a campfire making smores...which I won't be able to do this year because of the drought. boo.

Once my Gesso'd leafs were dry, I piled em all in a big pile and jumped in...no. I piled em up and sprayed em with Maya Roads spray. I also sprayed them with some of my cousin Tim's (that's a joke!) alcohol ink mixed with some of his pearl dust, mixed in a Ranger mister.

Looks kinda like above. Now pull out one leaf and work quickly, dry brushing some Golden Fluid Acrylic paint here and there.

I love this paint. I would marry this paint, if only it would ask me. That's just how fab it is. You are laying down the paint, but also picking up the wet sprays, it makes a nice combo.

Your leaves are now beginning to look like this. Let's do em all!

I used green, red, and gold fluid acrylics. Seemed kinda fall to me and I thought those colors would mix in well with my little velvet pumpkins. I'm so happy Shells turned me onto these! I LOVE THESE SHELLY!

OK, now that we've gotten that out of our system, and all of our leaves painted, your leaf pile should begin to look like above.

Since I wanted mine a little more "grotty", my last step is to spray em lightly and randomly with a little Walnut Ink Stain. And stain it will, so be VERY careful where you spray. Most times I keep a spray bottle full of coffee, but the last batch got pretty moldy and I've not made any since, but that works well too!

There ya go! Now, let those pretty Fall leaves dry really really good and then you are ready to play. To make em look even more realistic, gently fold them in half. Then fold some of the leaf parts, corner to corner. Or roll an edge around a pencil. This just gives em a little more dimension.

Pile em up with pumpkins or just scatter em around. Make a pretty garland. Or write a name on one and use it as a place setting place card. Decorate a package with em.  Just go crazy. And have fun!  Thanks for peeping at my little project.