Gold Painted Leaf Garland

Hello and Welcome

In my previous post, Nature Inspired Thanksgiving Place Settings  I used gold-painted leaves.
Today I will show you how I painted the leaves and how I used them to make a small leaf garland for my kitchen.   

I started with leaves collected from my yard.

BEFORE
Beautiful natural leaves!!

 HOW TO PAINT LEAVES

First I rinsed the leaves and laid them on a paper towel to dry.
   

 I painted each leaf with: 

TULIP Metallics Dimensional Fabric Paint (Gold Metallic)
 You can purchase the paint at Michaels craft store. 

The paint gives the leaves a golden sheen letting their natural color shine through.

AFTER

On one of the leaves, I used a metallic sharpie to write the word Thankful.

 HOW TO MAKE THE LEAF GARLAND
After the leaves were painted and dry,  I used a hot glue gun to adhere them to a string of twine.  

This part was a bit tedious because the leaves are delicate.  This is the method I came up with.  I placed a dab of glue on the twine, placed the leaf on top of the glue, and used a cork from a wine bottle to push down on each leaf to adhere them to the twine.  (No fingers burned!)

It was late at night by the time I finished and had no idea where I was going to hang my little garland... I just draped it over a mirror and called it a night.

In the morning I decided to hang the garland from the rustic chalkboard in our kitchen.
 We use it all the time to jot down things we need at the grocery store.

This little garland is a simple reminder of how thankful I am for every day!