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Crepe Paper Leaf Thankful Tree

Katie

Each year in November, I like to find a way for myself and my family to express our gratitude for the people and things we’re thankful for. This year has been a particularly challenging one for just about everyone, I think, but I believe there’s always something to be thankful for. I’ve certainly been counting my blessings.

This is a project that evolved over time. I knew I wanted to make a thankful tree centerpiece this year, and I originally envisioned using sticks from our backyard and lighting them up somehow… but beyond that I really didn’t have any ideas. Then I saw a segment on Home & Family where they made crepe paper leaves, and all of a sudden my plan came together. 

https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/home-and-family/how-to/diy-crepe-paper-leaf-branches

I will say up front that this project was challenging for me. Some parts were tricky at first, but they got easier with practice (as you can see I made a lot of leaves!), and I think the final result made it all completely worth it. So please don’t be afraid to try it out! I learned a lot along the way, so I can’t wait to share it all with you!

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Supplies:

Optional:

Crepe paper seems to be increasing in popularity as more and more people get into making gorgeous flowers out of it, so you can find rolls of it at different places online. I actually have quite an assortment. I did not, however, have the fall colors I was looking for. So I was very excited to find this multipack at Michaels. This is not like the crepe paper streamers you can buy at party stores; it’s thicker and more substantial than that. When you’re looking for it online, it comes in different weights, but this Michaels pack is perfect.

I bought the first floral wire stems I saw online, and they happen to be 16 gauge. I see now that Michaels has a lot of other options, however. 16 gauge is the thickest, an anything else Michaels sells is thinner and would be easier to bend. I didn’t care about that, so what I have is perfect. I used thinner wire for the smaller branches, and that is super easy to bend and move around. That’s good enough for me!

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Making the Leaves

Let’s jump right into making some leaves! First you’ll need to cut out your leaves. I made myself a template by free-handing some leaves on a scrap piece of cardboard, but there are plenty of leaf images online if you’d rather go that route. I decided I wanted red, orange, and yellow leaves, so I drew three kinds of leaves and cut each one out of a different color. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you probably know that I do not enjoy cutting things by hand. I use my Silhouette Cameo whenever I can. Unfortunately, that’s not an option with my Cameo 3. (I just read that the Cameo 4 can do it with its rotary blade, so I want one even more now.) I had to cut the leaves by hand. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. Do consider that when you’re deciding what your leaves should look like though. The more intricate the design, the harder it is to cut out. I did save myself some time by folding the paper before I cut. It took me a while to figure it out, but for all of the leaf styles I made, I could fold the paper at least twice along the grain to cut out three leaves at a time. Make sure that the paper is oriented so that the grain is vertical. I did not trace the leaves before I started cutting around my template, and it worked fine. I did cut a rectangle around the template that was closer to the leaf size to make it easier as I was cutting.

Now you have a pile of leaves!

Optional step: In the video above they used scrapbook ink and a special applicator to give the leaves a little extra color. I had some inexpensive inks and a foam brush, so I thought I’d give it a try to see what happened. It didn’t add much to my leaves, honestly. You can see a little color on the yellow leaves, but that’s about it. Looking at the project as a whole I’m not sure it’s necessary anyway–maybe because my “tree” is so full?– but it’s a nice touch. You might have more success with it than I did.

Moving on…

Once your leaves are cut out, you’re ready to attach them to the stems. I left the stems whole, and I cut some pieces of wire to attach to them. I didn’t measure the wire as I was cutting it, but the pieces were roughly 6-7” long. You can make yours longer or shorter depending on how you want the whole thing to look. To attach your leaves you’ll need to cut slits in the middle of them. The slits need to be at least halfway up—maybe even as far as 2/3 of the way. Starting with a stem, put a line of hot glue along one side of the cut you made. Working quickly, put the stem down on the glue. Cover the stem by pulling the other side of the cut paper over on top of it. You can manipulate the paper a little bit to make it look [almost] seamless when you do this. Do the same thing to attach leaves to the pieces of wire you cut. Once you have enough to make a full branch, you can attach those little branches to the stem.

** I’m going to show how I attached everything—complete with a time-lapse video, but you could also wrap everything in floral tape first and then use more floral tape to attach them all together.

Take your floral tape and start just under the leaf on the floral stem. Let’s take a minute here to talk about floral tape. I got pretty frustrated with this stuff at first. I just don’t have any experience at all using it, and it wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. Here’s what I’ve since learned about floral tape. It’s not exactly sticky—it only sticks to itself—and it doesn’t even do that unless you stretch it to activate the stickiness. I still had trouble getting started with it, so I used a little bit of tacky glue on the very end of the tape before I started wrapping it, and that seemed to work well enough. So either use a little bit of glue or just start wrapping, but wrap a few inches down from the top of the stem until you reach the point where you want to attach your next leaf. Cut off the tape and secure it to the stem. Then grab one of your other leaves and start wrapping the wire the same way you wrapped the stem. Once you have about 1.5” of wire left, put it against the stem and start wrapping them together, making sure to overlap just a little bit so there aren’t any bare spots. Repeat that process until you have all the leaves you want on that one stem. Then continue wrapping to the bottom of the stem and make sure the tape is secure. I stretched out the last little bit of tape before I wrapped it, and then rolled it around a little bit between my fingers until it stuck. If it absolutely won’t stick for you, you can use a little bit of glue to secure it.

Once you have all of the branches you want, you can arrange them in your display container. If you want to decorate a jar like I did, read on to find out how I did it.

Making a Display Container

First I had to find a jar that I liked. I felt like Goldilocks trying to find the perfect jar. I ended up putting the finished branches in a jar I found just to hold them while I worked on the rest, and I decided that jar was just about perfect. The height, the size of the opening—I loved it. It had writing on it, though, and that didn’t work with my vision. So I went through every jar I could find in the house until I found one that was completely plain and perfect.

Next I taped off the area I wanted to paint. I had some pretty metallic copper paint that I wanted to use, so I used that to paint a stripe around the middle of my jar. I brushed it on with a foam brush. The paint I used is meant for more fine art use than crafting, but it worked okay. It took a lot of coats to get it truly opaque though. Something like this would probably be a better choice. I think it would end up looking smoother.

Then I used my Silhouette software to cut out the word “thankful.” It took me a couple of tries to get the size right, but I love how it turned out. (I was going put the word “grateful” on the other side of the jar, but after several tries and it not turning out, I decided it wasn’t meant to be.) If you don’t have a machine, you could cut out some letters by hand, use stickers, or even write by hand using a paint pen.

Once the paint was fully dry, I attached the words to the jar using tacky glue. I held onto it for a couple of minutes and then pressed down any edges that popped up until it was good and stuck on there. 

Turning It Into a Thankful Tree

Once the container was done and the branches were arranged in it, the final touch to making it a thankful tree was to make something to write on. I used my Silhouette to cut out some circles out of the same copper cardstock that has made an appearance in almost all of my fall crafts this year. This would be a great use of a circle-shaped paper punch if you have one though. Or you could trace a bottle cap or something like that and cut out some circles by hand.

Then you just need something to attach the circles to the tree after they’ve been written on! The only thing that really works on my cardstock is permanent marker, so we’re just using a Sharpie. I accidentally ended up with some tiny clothespins a while back, and they are perfect for this.

The one last finishing touch I haven’t tried yet is lighting up the tree. I was thinking about tucking a little strand of fairy lights down inside the jar. I bought a really long strand when I was thinking about wrapping some sticks to form my tree, but that would be overkill for this tree. So I need to dig out the little tiny strands I have like this, which I think will be a better fit.

Right now I just have my circles, clothespins, and a Sharpie laying near the jar, but I’ll probably end up tucking them inside one of the candleholders you can see in the pictures where they’ll be out of the way but still easily accessible. Already my kids are excited to add to our “tree.”

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