Mod Podge Fall Leaves in Frames

Ok, maybe I need a cooler name for this project, but oh well. Since Chris and I are hosting Thanksgiving in a couple weeks, I decided the place needed a little Thanksgiving sprucing up. I came up with a couple ideas, and this is the first one that has so far come to fruition. But believe me, it may be the first of many.

Since the leaves in fall are so pretty, Chris and I went around Lincoln Park a couple weeks ago and collected tons of leaves. I then dried them between some newspapers until now.

For this project, I used:

7 4x6 black frames (I had these lying around from an old golf thing I did for Chris' room in college)
1 sheet each bronze, burnt red, and light yellow paper
5 yds bronze ribbon
Fall leaves
Mod Podge
Paint brush
Hot glue gun

I cut out 4x6 pieces of each of the papers, using 3 bronze, 2 red, and 2 yellow. I then brushed Mod Podge on the back of the leaves, pressed them onto the paper, and simply turned the paper over so the leaf was visible in the frame and put the back on. I tested putting Mod Podge on the front of the leaf too to see what a glossy shine on the leaves would look like, but that actually made the leaves look fake so I just decided to go with using the Mod Podge only to adhere the leaves to the paper.

Then once all the frames were done, I turned them over and used the hot glue gun to glue the ribbon to the backs of the frames to hang them. I left a little ribbon hanging at the bottom and curled it a little.

Then I just hung them on some nails we already had up from the mirror that used to be hanging in that spot (had to add one nail for the middle one) and voila!





I think it looks pretty good. And it was cheap! I only had to buy the paper and the ribbon since the leaves were free, and I already had the frames. So all in all, this project cost about $5. Not bad!

I love doing projects like this on a Sunday afternoon while Chris is watching football. Simon likes being a part of them too...



Happy Sunday!