Autumn garland with book leaves.

As I promised in my previous post, here is the how to for that gorgeous autumn leaves garland on my TV cabinet, using inexpensive Dollar Store garlands and leaves cut from book pages. This is just the latest and greatest of many book page projects I've blogged about. The Pottery Barn catalog shows leaves cut from book pages in some of their layouts and this is an adaptation of that clever idea.

ACTUALLY, my daughter, Christy, made this for me last week while visiting. She had some time on her hands and asked me if I had any neat ideas for her. I had already bought several 6 foot garlands at the Dollar Store and away she went with the whole process, LOL! She made some cardboard templates of oak and maple leaves and cut them out of an old paperback book. We found she could cut 8 leaves at a time with her little scissors, stacking up the pages before cutting. The scissors worked much better than an X acto knife.

She took 10" lengths of florist wire and made a loop at one end. She used a glue stick generously on one leaf cutout, laid the looped end of the wire in between then topped it with a matching leaf cutout. Smoothing the glued leaves with a blunt object seals the edges and gives you lots of sturdy leaves to add to your garland.


Here is the first garland, using TWO Dollar Store garlands wired together with the book page leaves between each set of silk leaves. The florist wire in the paper leaves lets you curl them a bit for a nice look and the stem wire is long enough to wrap several times. You can add more book page leaves or less based on your own style.

I've hung two sets of these over my dining room windows and one set on my TV cabinet. I'm loving the way this looks against the blue curtains, the colorful boxes and the autumn arrangement sitting on top. I was going to list these in my Etsy shop, but you know what? I love them too much to sell them! Perhaps if I get enough garlands to replace them I will change my mind but for now....


I love the way they look in my October house. They are perfect for the season and I will leave them until my Christmas decor goes up after Thanksgiving. The white and black book page paper is a wonderful contrast to the bright leaves of the very inexpensive garlands. So there you have it....simple, creative and CHEAP. Win, win and win! Thanks, Christy, what do you want to make next? I have a couple more book page ideas kicking around in my brain and I'm sure you do, too.

I'll be linking up to the parties in my sidebar. Come check them out, they are always alot of fun!