Autumn Leaves Garland

I recently received in the mail a beta box of amazing craft goodies from For the Makers (more on this later). In the box was this beautiful gold metallic thread that I just knew I had to use for this project.

You probably already have the materials for it right in your backyard. If you are like me, you want to bring in the colors and textures of fall into your home, so I created these garlands with colorful dried fall leaves. The beauty of this idea is that you can use all the assorted shapes and colors that nature provides and combine them to create the look you want. The photo above gives you an idea of just some of the looks that you can achieve.

All you need is:
thread (I used metallic gold, which I would highly recommend)
dried leaves (you can dry and press leaves in between the pages of a heavy book – just make sure you leave them in there for at least a week)
needle
circle punch (optional for the circle garland)

The how-to is simple: just gather and arrange your dried leaves and begin “sewing” them onto your thread, leaving a long tail on both ends for hanging. After you thread each leaf, make a knot so it will stay put and not slide along the thread.

For the circle garland, just use a circle punch to punch the shapes out of the leaf. Then thread like above.

As for the fragility of the leaves, they held up very well with all my handling, windy photo conditions, and dropping them multiple times. You will want to handle them with care though if you want them to last longer than just one season.

Note: Our trees are just now beginning to turn, so I wasn’t able to find a whole lot of vivid colors – so I did some Photoshopping to make the colors more lively. 🙂