I love autumn and everything involved in it: pumpkins, boots, pie, crisp air, scarves, corn mazes. But, the thing that draws me to autumn the most is the fall colors. Red, yellow, gold, orange; whatever the color, I’ll take it. Living in Florida, I get excited if I see even just one tree half-red, and I get fall-envy when I see photos of my friends and family who live up North with their seemingly endless amount of kaleidoscopic surroundings. So, in order to preserve the color of fall a little bit longer, I’ve taken to leaf bunting. More specifically, lazy wax paper bunting. Although it’s late in the season, I’m a firm believer that it is never too late to decorate. After I spent a couple of weeks roving the Florida landscape for pretty leaves, I began bunting.
Materials:
-Autumn leaves (dried and pressed is ideal). You can press them by placing them in a book, and leaving it for a day or two.
-Wax paper
-Scissors
-Iron
-Newspaper or other paper
-Ribbon or yarn
-Hot glue gun or a hole puncher
Steps:
- Put the autumn leaves on a sheet of wax paper. Set another sheet of wax paper over the leaves. (You can just use one, and then fold over, but this will increase the amount of creases in the paper)
- Put a piece of newspaper or other paper under and over the wax paper, and iron on high to melt the wax and fuse the wax paper and leaves together.
- Cut any shape (like triangles, or rectangles) out of the wax paper-leaf creation—don’t cut the leaves, but around them. You can freehand them, or create a template. I just cut around the leaf.
- Arrange your leaf wax shapes in the order you like, and cut a piece of ribbon or yarn a foot longer than all of the shapes next to each other.
- With the hot glue gun, apply some glue along the top of each wax shape then set the ribbon on top and press lightly. If you don’t want to use a hot glue gun (or couldn’t find yours, like I couldn’t), punch one hole in the wax of each leaf with your hole puncher, and string the yarn through the holes, tying them as you go.
- Now you have a streamer of waxed leaves, ready to be hung on the mantelpiece, along a wall, or in front of a window. Yay to more fall decor!
There are many ways to bunt leaves, and this one I affectionately refer to as the Lazy Wax Bunting. It’s lazy because you can be done in under an hour, and you don’t have to make your own wax. But being lazy can have its drawbacks: the wax paper will cloud the leaves, and therefore the color, as can be seen by my photos. But, it takes almost no time and allows you to revel in fall a little bit longer!
