Musical Leaves Tutorial

When we were in one of our favorite shops in Snohomish a couple of weeks ago, Joyworks, I spotted some leaves they had hanging above their check-out area. They had been cut from music sheets from a song book. For some reason they struck me as a fun project to do, so here we go:

On a trip to town a few days ago, I cruised some streets, looking for trees with pretty leaves. I was in a residential area and felt a LITTLE conspicuous parking in the street, jumping out and ripping leaves off of trees, but sometimes one has to sacrifice dignity in the name of "art"! LOL!

Now, FYI, It would have been easier to use these leaves if I'd come right home and jumped on this project! But no---I waited a couple of days before I got to it, and the leaves were curling and getting kind of crispy! So, I smoothed them out the best I could and used a fine point marker to draw an outline around them. If you're really creative you could just draw your own leaves and leave out the hunt, but I enjoy looking at fall leaves, so it was kind of enjoyable cruising around checking them out.

This one was especially challenging!

This huge one is a Sycamore leaf. That's the kind of tree that has the big green prickly looking balls on it that fall all over the yard in the fall, along with the leaves!

So, I've now got a tracing of all the leaves I collected. I'm not much of a leaf expert, but I do know that I have a Sycamore and an Oak---not that it matters! Now the fun begins---I cut around each of the tracings so I would have a nice flat pattern for tracing onto the music sheets. Then I did just that--traced around the leaves onto the music.

I used my flash in this picture because for some reason, even tho I have every light in the kitchen on, including the under counter lights, the pictures seemed a little dark.

I like the darker pictures better!

Next I got busy with my scissors and did some more paper cutting. Kind of takes you back to grade school, huh? Aren't they pretty?

But now what?! The ones we saw at the shop were attached to a gnarly tree branch, but, having just moved to a new house with absolutely no landscaping and nothing remotely resembling a tree, I have to come up with some other plan. I'll go on another scavenging trip soon and find a tree branch, but in the meantime--------

I decided they'd look pretty on my kitchen cabinets! Now I just need to do several dozen more!