Greetings! This is Katelyn, Daniel’s wife. For several years now I’ve enjoyed making what I call ‘leaf-art’. However, they have been in such high demand as gifts that precious few have ever made it onto our walls! So, not only has this contest helped us get Scripture stenciled on our walls, but it’s given me the excuse to take the time and make some frameable verses.
With all the beautiful leaves around, this is a great time of year to do this project. If your children are old enough, they may enjoy making their own leaf art too.
Like all art projects, this one takes some prep work. First you must collect and press some flower petals and leaves. It takes about three weeks, and you need no more than an old phone book. Get lots of small leaves, and remove the petals from flowers. My projects usually use 70% flower petals. Any flower! Carnations, mums, baby’s breath… you name it. I used to just store the leaves in the books, but after wasting a lot of time and effort trying to find all the different colors and sizes, I found something better:
Tada! I am not sure what those pages are called, but it is wonderful. I have them sorted by color, and can see both sides of the leaves!
I first chose a verse and printed it on parchment paper, leaving plenty of room to one side for my leaf art.
I find birds are really easy to make with leaves, so this time I chose a hummingbird. On scratch paper I sketched the outline about where I thought it should be. I couldn’t decide whether to have the wings down or up… I like down the best, but artistically it looks better to have them up.
Then came the hardest part: finding the right leaves. Now, I keep saying leaves, but in case you haven’t noticed, most of those are petals. Small petals. And if you look close enough you’ll see that some were dried bent in odd ways. That’s fine!
The magic glue: rubber cement! It’s better because it does not wrinkle the page as it dries. It works best when you forget it open beside you so that your 2-yr-old can dump it all over the floor and herself.
Here it is partly glued. I couldn’t find the right petal for the head, so I took three carnation petals and put them together!
Tada! Final product. After gluing it all, I put a scrap paper and a book on top of it for a while to help it dry flat.
Sometimes I have written out the verse by hand, but I didn’t have two toddlers then, either. This time I was satisfied to pick a pretty font in WORD.
Have you tried this? How did it turn out? I hope you’re inspired to find more ways to put up Scripture in your home. If you do it soon, send us a picture for our contest!
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