DIY Fall Leaf Garlands and Wreath for Fall and Thanksgiving

Would you believe me if I told you these colorful leaves were made out of coffee filters? Yup - that's the simple secret to their crinkly texture and brown undertones! I ran about 50 natural brown coffee filters under the tap and then spread them out flat to dry in single layers (if possible, if not, stack them in piles of two or three and rotate which ones are on top every half-hour or so) on cookie sheets around the kitchen. If you have a gas stove with pilots, putting the sheets over the burners helps speed up the process - just keep a careful eye on them! (Or maybe I'm just still wary of open flames - I grew up with electric ovens.)

Next, I made leaf stencils out of paper and used them to cut out leaves from the dried filters. This is the part that, to be honest, is kind of a pain in the butt. It's time-consuming and it can be difficult to get all the curves and corners, but it's worth it in the end! If you have a Cricut (sp?) or another die-cutter, you could give it a whirl instead of cutting each one out by hand. I made four stencils: two types of oak leaves, a maple leaf, and a fruit tree leaf. Cut as many as you think you will need - I think I got two or three big leaves out of each filter, and ended up with about 25 of the oaks and maple and 50 of the fruit tree (since they were smaller).

Then came the fun part: painting them! I used watercolors in shades of brown, red, orange, and gold. I tried to make some areas lighter and some darker, to imitate real leaves. I initially painted them after gluing them into garlands, but then I realized doing it the other way (paint each one first, then glue together) was probably much easier. If you do it the first way, you have to make sure you get under each leaf and sometimes the wet paint made them stick together in other places.

I glued the maple and oak leaves into garlands. You could mix them if you like, I just chose to use a single type for each. I used a glue stick and rotated the first one 45 degrees left from center, the second below it 45 degrees right from center (so 90 degrees from the first after), the third below it 45 degrees left from center (90 degrees from the second leaf), etc. You could use the same angle, or do them in a straight line. You could rotate them even more, too - just play around with them until you get something you like!

Close-up of the maple leaves that I painted bright red.

Close-up of the gold oak leaves - you can see where I missed a spot as I painted them post-gluing. Oops!

Once your garlands have dried, use them around the house for decorations! Here, I overlaid them on a table and then added a pumpkin and silver candles (DIY coming later in November) for a festive display.

You could also put the garlands up on the wall, hang them down a door or doorway, or string them along a mantle. Since they're not Halloween-ish at all, you can use them from the beginning of fall through Thanksgiving - they're very versatile!

To make your Thanksgiving table even more festive, you could run the garlands down the length of the table, add a silver vase of brown and white feathers (or mallard green ones) in the middle, and then add in small gourds, pumpkins, dark purple artichokes, pomegranates, bright red apples, or small silver dishes of nuts for extra pops of color.

Here's a close-up of the garlands overlapping.

Instead of candles, you could add fall lanterns as well. I made these out of mason jars, contact paper stencils, and etching cream. Then I placed an LED light inside. These lanterns will be in the next DIY post!...

I turned the fruit tree leaves into a wreath. Storage space is at a premium in our city apartment, so I wanted fall decor that would store flat to maximize space. This is bright and perfect for the season but will take up barely any space in the closet come Christmas - perfect! I painted the leaves just like the other ones, then arranged them in layers of three around a wreath form. I made my own out of cardboard using a big plate for the outer edge and smaller one for the cut-out part in the middle, but you could use one from a craft store. I just didn't have one handy (and again, I wanted something more 2D). I curled some of the leaves up using a pencil to give the wreath a little more dimension, and then added a bow of gold ribbon.

Close-up of the wreath.

Here are three of the stencils I used (the fruit tree one seems to have gone missing, but it's easy to recreate). You may use these for your own projects (resize them when you print them to suit your project) but please don't resell them or use them for commercial projects without written permission from me. Thanks!

DIY Painted Patterned Stenciled Feathers

In this DIY tutorial, I'll show you how to easily and quickly stencil feathers in a variety of patterns using just a few materials that you can easily obtain!

You'll need feathers, Rub N Buff gold paint (or another paint in whatever color you like), a stiff brush for stenciling, and paper for making stencils.

I decided to repurpose some ho-hum feathers from a pair of earrings I bought for next to nothing, but you could also use regular feathers from a craft store. I liked these because they already have caps on the end, which makes it easier to turn them into jewelry again. You could also buy crimp caps and add the end yourself after they're painted.

Take your piece of paper, fold it in half if you're making a symmetrical pattern, and cut out a shape. Here, I cut out a line at a slant to make a chevron stripe.

Place your stencil over your feather.

I lined up the point in the middle of the stencil with the line going down the feather to make sure that it was centered.

Now it's time to paint! I put a piece of paper under the feather to keep the paint that might go through the individual plumes from staining my work surface. Wax paper works great for this as well. Then I squeezed out a little paint onto the paper, dipped the brush into it, and then stippled it (a hard up and down motion, like you're hitting the brush against the paint) on a different area to get off the excess paint. You don't want too much paint on the brush or it will seep under your stencil.

Then I stippled over my stencil with the brush, making sure I got nice even coverage of the uncovered area. If you need more paint, just reload your brush like you did initially. Make sure you hold your stencil down nice and flat and taut over the feather. This keeps the paint from going under the edges of the stencil.

Carefully remove your stencil and you should have a stripe that looks like this!

You can cut lots of different stencils to get different results. Here are a few that I did.

You can see the accompanying stencils I made for each feather here. From top to bottom: the chevron one already shown, a nice thick line (I painted this three times: two times to form an "x", and a final time down at the bottom with the stencil spilling over the edge), polka dots, and an argyle stripe.

For the polka dots, I used a hole punch to cut out circles in a random pattern. Then I just stenciled over each hole.

Here I reused the chevron stripe to make it a double.

A triple stripe looks nice as well!

I think this stencil was my favorite. First, I cut out a diamond shape, and stenciled this in the middle. Then, I cut out an "X", centered the stencil over the diamond (let it dry first), and carefully stippled it. The "X" had a lot of edges to hold down, so I went slowly and carefully to make sure it didn't bleed under the edges at all.

I think next I might try thin stripes stenciled into a gingham or plaid pattern, stars, triangles, or a combination of polka dots and stripes.

Let the feathers dry thoroughly, and then turn them into whatever kind of jewelry you like! Make matching (or even non-matching) ones for a pair of earrings, turn one into a pendant, or use different sizes for a string of feathers along a length of chain. You could put the biggest as the center pendant, with gradually-smaller ones on each side going back towards the clasp. You could also attach them to string or leather and then braid them into your hair for a Bohemian look! These would be great for making DIY Christmas presents as well.