Fall Leaf Garland

While scrolling through fun fall art projects recently, I came across this idea for a fall leaf garland craft. It was easy, cheap, and required supplies that I would bet a lot of you already have on hand - definitely a must for family crafting in my book! I knew I wanted to share it with you. But to make it a little more fun, I thought I would try this one myself first and show you the process!

I started by drawing leaves onto coffee filters. Mine were the brown, unbleached kind. They worked just fine, but white filters probably would have produced brighter leaves in the end. 

And just to show you that yes, you can craft with little bitties, here's Gavrel with his watercolors - he's 18 months old.

In all fairness, he was far more interested in dipping the paintbrush in the water cup than actually painting the leaves. He did manage to make it through all 12 leaves - 6 coffee filters - before signing "all done."

This step wasn't in the original directions, but I thought it would be fun to add the letters for "happy fall" to our garland. 

I just free-handed our letters, but it would be just as east to type them up, print them off onto card stock, and cut them out from there. I cut all these out while Gav was painting our leaves.

Once the leaves were dried, I cut them out and punched holes through them and each of my letters. Then I strung them all on a piece of yarn. The original directions say to knot off each leaf, but I just double-threaded each piece and it worked out fine.

Since it's so light-weight, I just used Scotch tape to hang it from our mantle. Isn't that fun?

With older kids, you could let them do the stringing. It's great for hand-eye coordination, my little-bit just isn't quite there yet!

My favorite part is that I can tell guests that Gavrel made it himself! :-) Happy Fall everyone!