Painted Paper Leaf Embellishments on a DIY Twig Wreath

If you saw the twig wreath I made in the last post, this next project is a fun way to embellish it! It’s easy and inexpensive to take some scrap packing paper, and paint, and make faux Painted Paper Leaf Embellishments. We had a beautiful weather day here, and it was a great day to get outside and make some creative projects including painting paper for faux leaves! I I used these to embellish the wood twig wreath I made, but they would also be fun for lots of other decor projects!

To make these, you just need a few simple supplies:

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Brown craft or packing paper, acrylic paints or craft paints in warm fall-ish leaf tones, paint brush, leaves from around the yard ( or you can use the leaf template provided), scissors, and hot glue.

Start by painting the paper with one color. I just dribbled the paint on straight out of the tube. I used my Decoart Traditions Artist Acrylic paint because it was what I had on hand (I used Perinone Orange as my first color.I also used Yellow Oxide,Napthol Red, and Burnt Sienna), but you could use any craft paints that are close.

Adding different warm tones, painting while the paint is still wet is a great way to blend edges right on the paper. Occasionally adding drops of other colors here and there gives some subtle color variations in the paper leaves.

As well as brushing, using a paper towel to blend colors also gave the paper a nice mottled color, like fall leaves when they slowly turn in autumn.

I wanted to paint a huge piece to use for other projects as well… you don’t have to paint a paper section quite as big as I did. I might have gone a little overboard.

Once the paper was dry, I used real leaves as a template to trace around an cut out (or you can use the printable leaf template page provided at the end of the post.).

Cut out your leaves, trimming to the inside of the traced lines.

When the leaves are cut out, fold them down the center to make a crease, and any other place where there might be a vein. This helps to give it a more realistic leaf-like look.

DIY Paper Leaves are an easy,creative and inexpensive way to bring in fall.

Make sure before you glue them on, they are placed where you want them to go. Once they are down, they are down. If you don’t want to make your own wood wreath as a base, you can find one here on Amazon.

Layer the paper leaves,using hot glue to attach the leaves to the wood twig wreath.

After the leaves are glued down, loop some knotted twine to hang, and the project is ready for display!

What I love most about this project is that it was mostly free, but it doesn’t look cheap. It was easy and fun to make too. Here is the printable template for your leaf shapes.