Chalkboard Leafed Thankful Tree

Hi everyone!  I'm still in full-blown Thanksgiving/Autumn decorating and crafting mode around here and I wanted to share with you all my latest project!

I decided to make a Thankful Tree for our living room using a couple of great oak branches I found (one with a bunch of leaves still attached--bonus!).

I've done a similar project in the past, with my boys, by cutting out leaf shapes from Autumn inspired scrapbook paper, but this year I decided to go a bit nontraditional and make chalkboard leaves. 

My oldest and I are thankful for Legos and coffee, respectively.

And my youngest? He's thankful for the Berenstain Bears. Love it!

 

This is, of course, a super simple project to make. First, I started out by finding a pattern I liked. I found my leaf template here.

I saved the picture in Microsoft Word and printed it on card stock so that it would be a bit sturdier when traced. 

I cut out my card stock leaf and traced it onto scrap chipboard that I had leftover from previous projects. I like using chipboard because it takes paint very well (without curling up) and is fairly easy to cut.

You can see in the first picture, below, the cut out chipboard leaves before I painted them (front and back) with two coats of chalkboard paint.

Next, I used my hole punch to make a tiny hole near the stem so that I could thread jute twine through when I was ready to hang the leaves up.

The third picture shows my little tip for keeping branches straight in a large bucket. Usually I will find another smaller container to fit inside my bucket to hold the sticks more securely.

Then, it's just a matter of hanging the chalkboard leaves on the branches and displaying it in a common area of your home.

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