DIY: Easy, Effective Autumn Leaf Gift Cards

Last weekend was a special time for our family as youngest son and his fiancé were married in California. I had a good time wrapping up a present for them, and because both claim autumn as their favorite season I decided to make a leafy gift tag to go along with the package.  

 

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I'm sure you can buy something similar that is pre-made, but to my way of thinking a DIY is way more fun. I began by googling royalty-free leaf clip art and chose this leaf because its shape is distinctive, yet it would be an easy one to cut out. 

 

It was also a good fit for a translucent mini-envelope I had on hand, not to mention the leaf with a handwritten message of love and best wishes would look pretty showing through it. (glassine envelopes are really nice for this purpose too.)

My printer was on the fritz so rather than simply printing out the clip art to trace around as a template, I sketched it by hand on printer paper and cut it out. 

 

After tracing a few on sturdy ivory watercolor paper and also gold metallic paper (just to have extras), I cut them out with small scissors and brushed metallic gold paint around the edges for a bit of shine, leaving enough room to write a little something.

  

 

My favorite gold acrylic paint is Pure Gold by Plaid as it has nice coverage and a rich shine.

 

 

Paper Source, a chain of stationery supply stores, shows lots of nice ideas for decorating with paper leaves in this video with their pre-cut ones.

I just saw via the Ohoh Sunday newsletter that Ama has a tutorial on her OhohDeco blog for making an autumn leaf garland using crepe paper. She includes templates for three types of leaves. Nice! 

 

My new daughter-in-law had such a neat idea for the reception place cards. She purchased colorful note cards and hand lettered each guest's name with a chisel tip gold metallic marker. You could even take the DIY one step further and splatter paint plain cards to match your wedding's color palette.