Festive Foliage Fun: turning dried leaves into Christmas trees, craft for youngsters

Looking for natural Christmas decoration ideas?  Have you tried making dried leaf Christmas Trees?  You can make them into Holiday ornaments, festive mobiles or garlands.  They can even be attached to cardstock for natural Christmas Cards too!

Natural Christmas ornaments made from dried leaves decorated with sequins

How to make leaf Christmas Trees

These are very simple crafts to make.  You can make them as fancy or simple as you like. 

Here’s the basic process:

  1. Find, clean, and dry your leaves
  2. Take dry pressed leaves and cut into Christmas tree shapes (optional)
  3. Decorate your leaves to look like festive holiday trees

See, that’s so simple it almost didn’t even need to be said;)

Various dried leaves decorated with sequins and ric rack to look like miniature Christmas Trees
Our finished leaf Christmas Trees

How we turned dried leaves into Christmas Trees

The supplies we used:

  • Craft glue
  • Sequins, beads, or confetti
  • Ric Rac trim, ribbon, or yarn

We found some fat and pointed leaves that already had a natural tree shape to them.  My daughter preferred we not cut these leaves and leave them in their natural shape.  We kept the leaf stem attached to act as the Christmas Tree trunk.

My other daughter preferred to cut hers into the typical Christmas tree shape.  We left the stem intact again to serve as the tree trunk.

Using tacky glue, we attached sequins and ric rac (that zig zag sewing stuff Grandma used to sew onto your clothes) for ornaments and garland.

Alternative ways to decorate your leaf trees:

  • You could cut the trees into tree shapes, discard the leaf stem, and glue on a small twig.
  • You could paint the leaves a solid colour and decorate onto that.
  • Using white paint pens or metallic markers, you could draw decorations like lights, garland, and ornaments onto the dried leaves.  Or use the pens / markers to write festive words and greetings onto the leaf.

Other ideas for decorating your dried leaf Christmas Trees

  • pompoms, buttons, beads
  • feathers, stickers, yarn
  • pine cone pieces, dried flower petals, smaller leaves
A kid's leaf art project. It's an owl sitting on a tree with the moon overhead
My daughter turned her leaf Christmas Craft into a night time scene with a moon and owl!

What to do with your leaf Christmas Trees?

Now that you’ve made your leaf trees, how will you display them?

  1. Punch a hole into the leaf and string on a ribbon.  Use this as an ornament on your own Holiday tree.
  2. Glue the decorated leaf onto a blank folded piece of card stock to make homemade Christmas cards.
  3. String a bunch of these leaves together for a natural, but festive rustic garland.
  4. Hand them down from a gnarly branch or piece of driftwood for a rustic and festive mobile.  You might also hang them from the light fixture over your dining room table.
  5. Let your littles turn them into a piece of artwork (like my daughter’s above)
  6. Use them to decorate the Christmas dinner table, on guest’s plates, or on display in the center of the table among ice lanterns, and other natural Christmas decorations.

Hopefully you get an opportunity to do some leaf crafting this holiday season and making some natural christmas decorations like these leaf Christmas Trees is great motivation to pull out those dried leaved and craft tub.

Two leaf Christmas Trees
<

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *