Add a little nature to your walls. Create this entire set of beautiful leaf themed DIY wall art using air dry clay.
All those leaves, large and small, begin as easy-to-make shapes that you cut from clay using the free patterns in this post. When the clay dries, customize your leaf art with your favorite colors of metallic paint…
or for a little artistic flair– decoupage your leaves with marbled mulberry momi paper.
You can also get amazing swirling marble patterns, as shown on the leaves below, by using melted crayons to coat the leaves. Learn how to make melted crayon leaf art HERE.
Or you can create leaves with an authentic bronze patina (below) by using Oxidizing Bronze Paint.
Whether you choose a metallic finish, momi paper, or the fun of melted crayons, the results are beautiful.
Of course, beautiful art needs a beautiful frame to make it pop. So, at the end of the post, I’ll show you how to make these dimensional frames that look like custom shadow boxes. They’re so easy and you can make them in minutes!
Let your creativity run wild as you make these leaves.
supplies
- Creative Paperclay or other good quality brand of paper clay (to make 3 large leaves and 5-10 small ones, you’ll need two 16 ounce packages)
- free patterns–SMALL LEAVES and LARGE LEAVES
- rolling pin or thick wood dowel (to roll out the clay)
- cutting tool (plastic knife, old X-Acto knife or craft knife)
- non-stick surface (such as a silicone mat, wax paper or parchment paper)
- small dish of water
- cotton swabs
- Momi paper (if you want leaves with a marbled look)**
- Mod Podge (needed to apply Momi paper)
- scissors
- metallic paint (if you want leaves with a metallic finish)
**Momi paper is made by hand in Thailand from bamboo and kozo fiber. (Kozo fiber comes from the renewable branches of paper mulberry bushes.) That makes this paper sustainable, soft and supple. It is much more flexible than normal paper and has almost a fabric-like feel. It’s available in so many vivid colors and hand-marbled with ribbons of metallic paint. The pattern on each sheet is a work of art–uniquely different from any other sheet.
I found lots of different colors and patterns of momi paper at Plaza Art. You can find many sources and sellers of this paper online though if you’re not close to a Plaza store. The cost is very reasonable–usually less than $2 for a 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet. Larger sizes of 12 inches x 12 inches as well as 24 inches x 36 inches are available too.
first, download the patterns
Download the LARGE LEAF PATTERNS HERE.
Download the SMALL LEAF PATTERNS HERE.
to make the marbled clay leaves
step 1: prep
Print out the leaf shapes and use scissors to cut them out. Then arrange your work space.
STEP 2: cut leaves from clay
To make a large sized leaf, remove about half of the clay from one of the 16 ounce packages of Creative Paperclay. Shape the clay into a ball and place it on your work mat.
Keep the remainder of the clay inside the package, and either tape the package closed again or put it in a resealable bag or airtight container. This will keep your clay supply from drying out while you’re working on the first leaf.
Use a rolling pin or a thick wood dowel to roll the clay ball into a slab that is about 1/4 inch ( 5mm) thick. If you use a sheet of parchment paper as your work mat, the paper and leaf can be put into a low-temp oven later in Step 3 to dry the clay faster than just letting it air dry.
Place one of the leaf patterns on top of the slab of clay. Cut the leaf shape out of the clay using your cutting tool. I used an inexpensive craft knife. A clay “clean up” tool or an old X-Acto knife will also work, and even a plastic knife like the type used by fast food restaurants is fine as long as it has a pointed end. The point is great for getting into tight spots and cutting small curved sections.
When you’re done cutting, remove the pattern, pull away the excess clay, and check out your lovely leaf!
The edges may look a little rough after cutting, but they are easy to smooth. Use your fingertips dipped in water to gently rub over the rough parts. Cotton swabs dipped in water are great for reaching any areas that your fingers can’t easily fit into–like the narrow spaces toward the leaf center.
step 3: smooth the edges
Your first leaf is now ready to dry.
Move it aside, and follow the same process to make another leaf with a different pattern. Continue until you have made all the leaves that you want.
step 4: dry
Now for drying. Creative Paperclay will air dry on its own if left at room temperature over the course of a few days. But it can be hard to wait for days when you’re excited about a project and really want to finish it. So–to get it to dry faster, you can place the clay leaves in a low temperature oven (170 – 180 degrees). Just put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. If you used parchment paper as your work mat in Step 2, it’s easy to move the entire leaf right along with the paper straight onto a baking sheet.
If the weather is warm, you can also place the leaves outside to dry in the sun. In cold weather, placing the clay near a heater works well.
As the clay dries, some parts will naturally begin to curve and curl. This is to be desired because it will give your leaf a more natural and organic look. If you’d like your leaves to have even more of a curved look, you can place small objects under particular sections to elevate them. I used rounded wood clothespins, placed under the parchment paper & clay, near the middle of my leaf sections. When my leaf dried, it retained the curved shape created by the clothespins.
step 5: sand
Once dry, if there are any areas that need a little more refining, you can use sandpaper to shape and smooth edges. A 220 or 320 grit sandpaper works well.
step 6: cover with marbled momi paper
Because momi paper is hand-marbled, the pattern on each sheet varies. Take a look at your sheet and determine where the most interesting designs and patterns are. Place dried clay leaves on top of those areas to determine how much paper you’ll need to cut to cover each leaf.
For each clay leaf, cut out a section from the momi paper that is large enough to cover the front of the leaf, plus have extra margin to wrap around the sides to the back.
Use Mod Podge to glue the momi paper to the front of the clay leaf, and then wrap the extra paper around to the back (see photo below). Momi paper is easy to work with and pretty flexible–not stiff like normal paper. It will wrap and bend very easily, especially when coated with the Mod Podge. For curved areas and pointed tips on the leaf, it helps to cut notches or fringe in the paper edge to get the paper to mold around the curves.
When finished, the leaf will look like this–
Make the fern leaf and monstera leaf using the same process–
Since momi paper has a beautiful random marble design, each leaf will look completely unique and different.
another method for marbling
As an alternative to using momi paper to give your leaves a marbled look, you can create colorful swirling patterns by using melted crayons! The designs on the leaves below were all created with colored melted wax. Find the full instructions for the process HERE.
to make the small metallic leaves
For the small leaves with a metallic finish, begin with a handful of paper clay and shape it into a ball. Then use a rolling pin or thick wood dowel to roll it out into a slab between 1/4 and 1/8 inch thick, depending upon how thick you want your leaves to be. Place the patterns on the clay and cut out the leaf shapes.
Use water and your finger tips to smooth the edges of the leaves after cutting. For hard to reach spots use cotton swabs to shape and smooth.
You can keep the leaves as simple shapes, or you can add little veins and stems.
You can also create a “hammered” finish, by using the eraser end of a pencil to press indentations in the clay while it is damp. After the clay is painted, those little dents will look like hammered metal.
To give the leaf art the look of metal, there are tons of great metallic paints that you can try. Here are a few options shown in the graphic above:
A: DecoArt – Splendid Gold
B: DecoArt – Rose Gold
C: DecoArt – Venetian Gold
D: Modern Masters- Pharoah’s Gold
E: Modern Masters – Warm Silver
Each of these brands dries quickly, so it won’t take long before you can showcase your leaf art with a frame.
Some brands of metallic paint can have a “nap” when applied, just like corduroy or velvet fabric–if you use back & forth strokes, you may end up with a streaky look. Either use circular motions or apply with the brush moving only in one direction. Soft bristle brushes work well for applying.
You can also give your leaves an authentic copper or bronze patina by using Oxidizing Metallic Paint. The leaf below was coated with 2 coats of Modern Masters Metal Effects Oxidizing Bronze Paint, and then a blue patina aging solution was applied while the bronze paint was still wet–
to make the frames
You can get a custom shadow box look for your DIY leaf wall art by combining different sizes of wood panels to make dimensional frames.
For frames for the small leaves (above), I used these 12 inch x 12 inch wood panels, flipped over to the back side so that they look like a shadowbox. I painted them white. Then I attached inexpensive 5 inch x 5 inch gesso boards to the center to create a raised platform for displaying a leaf. (You can substitute 5 inch x 5 inch birch wood panels for gesso boards.) Either J B Weld clear epoxy or Gorilla clear epoxy will work for attaching the leaves to the center. Both of these adhesives are strong and will dry in about 6 minutes.
For frames for the large size leaves (below), I used 12 x 16 wood panels, flipped them over so that they look like trays, and painted them white.
For the center section, I used a piece of 1/4 inch thick birch plywood, cut to a size of 8.5 inches x 12.5 inches (MDF will also work for this and will result in smoother edges). Paint this section white and then use a strong glue to attach to the center of the panel.
Then attach the large leaves to the center . Just like the small leaves, Gorilla clear epoxy works really well for gluing the large ones to the frames. If you want the leaves to stand off a bit, you can even place a bottle cap, button or wood circle between the leaf and the frame back to create the feeling that the leaf is floating.
To hang, simply attach a saw tooth hanger to the back of the frame, near the top, and you’re good to go! Your DIY leaf wall art is ready to become the focal point of a room or give as a gift to a nature-lover friend.
If you enjoyed using Creative Paperclay for this project, you might also like this clay seahorse wall art project or this DIY paper clay sea turtle project.
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