Fall is one of my favorite crafting seasons! For this project, I decided to add some pretty paper leaves to a painted wooden bird house. Do you want to make one for yourself? Follow along with the tutorial below.

Supply List:

Step One: Paint Wooden House

Purchase a pre-made wooden house from a craft store. Mine is about 8 in. tall and about 5 in. wide.

Prep it for painting (sand with 140-220 grit sandpaper, seal, and prime). This is optional, but it helps the paint sit better on the surface.

Paint the house with acrylic craft paint and let it dry. You may need more than one coat.

Step Two: Cut Paper Leaves

Open some leaf designs in Silhouette Studio®, and resize each leaf to approximately 1 in.

Tips:

  • Use a 1-in. drawn square as a guide for resizing the leaves
  • At this size, simple leaves are better than those with lots of tiny corners or stems
  • I used leaves from Design IDs #334154 and #13514, but you may already have leaves in your library that may work. Both of these have overlay outlines, but I just used the basic inner pieces and deleted the overlays.

Arrange the leaves on your design page and cut many leaves from shimmer gold and brown cardstock, or any color of your choice. I used about 70 leaves, but your own project could use more or less.

Step Three: Shape and Attach Leaves

Use a Silhouette spatula tool to shape the leaves.

Tips:

  • Use the metal spatula end to add curl to the leaves as you run the paper between your thumb and the flat edge
  • Use the pointed end of the tool to add simple vein lines to the leaves

Trim the bind wire into several 5-in. segments. I used 11 pieces of bind wire in my project, but you may want more or less.

Hot glue about 5 leaves to each 5-in. length of bind wire to create branches. Try to alternate colors somewhat, and keep it visually balanced. You can always add more leaves if needed.

Make multiple branches.

Arrange the branches with the wooden house and trim the excess bind wire as needed to make varying lengths.

Hot glue the branches in place, clustering some and varying the height.

Use extra leaves to cover the visible areas of glue where the branches have been attached.

You could add mini leaves to all kinds of décor pieces in your home. Have fun!