Pressed Fall Leaf Bookmarks

We’ve had fun collecting fall leaves this year.  It’s been a good excuse to get outside, slow down, and enjoy all the beautiful color.  We decided to make pressed fall leaf bookmarks so that we can enjoy the color all year long.

First, we collected the leaves. It’s a good idea to collect as many different sizes as possible. We placed them between sheets of newspaper and pressed them under heavy books for a few days.

After they had dried, we laid out our leaves on laminating sheets.  We made different kinds- some with white backgrounds and some with clear backgrounds.  On some we carefully arranged the leaves, and on some we filled a sheet with leaves, and then cut the bookmarks, not caring if we cut through leaves.  We hadn’t collected very many small ones, but the barberry bushes by the porch came to the rescue. My daughter made the white one with the tiny barberry leaves. I love how it turned out.

Then we ran them through the laminating machine. (We have an inexpensive Scotch one that we picked up at BJ’s years ago. It’s similar to this one.) It’s good to have an extra set of hands for this part to keep the leaves from shifting. You can also use a dab of glue on the back of the leaves to keep them in place. We didn’t mind a little bit of shifting, though.

For the ones with the embroidery floss around the outside, I used a light coating of spray adhesive, but it prevented the sheets from fusing properly.  Next time I think I’ll try pulling them along the top of a glue stick before placing them. If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.

I had wanted to use some of the templates I had made, but after I had printed them out, I remembered that our printer was streaking.  I decided to trace over the words with transfer paper since lettering is not one of my strong points.

That’s it.  I hope you’re inspired to put the beautiful leaves to good use by making some fall leaf bookmarks.  What else do you use fall leaves for?

If you don’t have any fall leaves, you could try making these dried flower bookmarks instead.