DIYenny | Fall Leafy Garland
Since moving into our new space, Joe and I have had a dilemma with our front door. We have a small window on one side and we have been unable to find something to cover it so we can have a little privacy. We know we can create a custom curtain for that space but in the mean time, I've decided to get a little crafty.
I perused Pinterest for some inspiration in the form of fall window displays and many fell flat because the window is just that -- flat. Anything that needed depth just wasn't going to work out for this one, so I had to stick to flat pieces only. With that I found a colorful leafy garland made from twine woven through a variety of cardstock leaf cutouts.
As the proud owner of a Cricut, I knew that I could either find or create a couple of leaf designs of my own so I got to work designing in the Cricut Design Space online. I purchased a package of Michaels Recollections® Spice Market Cardstock Paper, 8.5" X 11" because it had the most fall theme going on. (Don't forget that 40% off coupon!)
I created a couple of different sized leaves in the Cricut Design software and began cutting.
If you don't have a Cricut, your best bet would be to find a leaf template like this one and then trace them onto your craft paper. It will be a little more time consuming to cut each leaf out by hand but the result will be much the same and you can get a little crafty changing up the colors and sizes and shapes!
Once I cut a variety of leaf colors and sizes, I took my mini double hole paper punch (see left) and punched holes in each of the leaves (right) so they would be ready to weave along my strands of twine. It was important for me to use the double hole paper punch (instead of a regular hole punch) for two reasons. One - Had I used the single hole punch, the leaves would just slide down and gather at the bottom of the string unless the string was thick enough or knotted (which it was not and I did not want to have to do). Two - the double hole punch made it a lot easier for the leaves to stay put on the strand (especially because I knew I was going to hang the garland vertically instead of horizontally -- gravity would be pulling the leaves down anyway).
When I was punching the leaves, I had to be careful not to punch too close to the edge. I wanted them to all be pretty uniform when they were placed on the strand but in hindsight, they would have still looked pretty good if I placed the punch more in the center of the leaf.
From there I carefully began "sewing" the leaves on the strand of twine, threading the twine between each of the holes on the leaves. I alternated between color and sizes trying my best not get into one pattern. I knew I wanted to hang a couple strands from the top of the window down so I didn't want them to be identical and I tried to flip the colors and the direction of the leaves as I created the garland (see below).
Once I had three good looking strands, I lined them up along the frame of the window and used Scotch Gold Washi tape that I purchased from Target to stick the strands up on to the window. I made sure to apply tape at the top, in two of the frames in the middle and at the bottom. We almost exclusively use the front door to come and go so I wanted to make sure that the leaves wouldn't literally go flying every time we opened the door. Once secure, my little craft gave us a little bit of privacy and a lot of Fall cheer!
Take a look at the results below and how I chose to celebrate :)
What are you doing to get into the Fall spirit? What functional crafts have you done to spruce up your home?