Fall Leaves and Banners

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law mentioned a method she used to preserve fall leaves for decorating around the house: she dipped them in melted canning wax.  It seemed like a pretty awesome idea, so the first time I had an opportunity I decided to try it out.  There was only one problem - I didn't have any canning wax AND the one store I checked didn't have it either.  Since I rather despise the notion of running to 10 different stores trying to find "THE PERFECT SOLUTION", I thought about what I had at home and decided that maybe I could melt down some unused votive candles and use those instead.

 I put them into a disposable baking pan and set that on a low stove burner.  When the candles were all melted, I dipped in the leaves.  It worked!

 The leaves crackled and popped a bit as I dipped them in, and the colors did change a wee bit, but overall they came out looking really pretty!

 Now that I had all these leaves, I needed to find things to do with them!  Some were scattered about the house and the rest got turned into a Fall Banner.  I used 4x6" pieces of left-over brown cardstock for the words, which I hand lettered in chalk.  I used mini-clothespins to attach the letters to twine and then added bunches of leaves at the beginning, middle, and end.

I'm thinking of painting the clothespins a pumpkin color to give a boost to the fall color scheme, but for a quick evening project I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

 Thanks for the inspiration, Jamie.  Happy fall colors everyone!