Hey friends!
Earlier this year we wrote a post on plants in the student apartment, which is a really easy way to give life and color to a home. Leafy green plants like ficus, palms and such have been hugely popular during the last few years. Are you not a take-care-of-plants kind of person? OK, well great, we’ve got a DIY just for you – fabric plants.
To make three leaves of something which could be a banana leaf or something like it, you’ll need:
- 2 meters of thick wire (+ a little of a thinner wire, if you want to make veins on your leaves)
- Green garden tape
- 1 meter green fabric, something like thin cotton fabric
- Glue gun
- Mod podge or other glue for decoupage
- Flat paint brush
- Scissors
- Needles/pins
- Pen
- Big piece of cardboard or something else you can make a mess on
You’ll also need oasis/some kind of floral foam or sand to get your leaves to stand up straight.
This is how you do it:
- Cut your fabric into two equally large pieces. Pin them together.
- Draw shapes of three big leaves. You’ll have 6 = 3 double. Cut.
- Cut your thick wire into three pieces.
- Put the wire pieces on top of your leaves. See if you want some thinner pieces of wire to stabilize the leaf, in that case – cut your thin wire into pieces like you want them.
- Wrap green tape around all your wire pieces.
- Fold out your cardboard.
- Use your glue gun to fasten the short pieces of wire onto the long ones.
- Take the fabric pieces for your first leaf and fasten one of them onto the wire or leaf skeleton, again with the glue gun 🙂 glue the other piece on top of the first.
- Blush your floppy double leaf with mod podge. Try imitating a leaf’s natural fibers. Be generous so the glue saturates the fabric.
- Once dry, give the leaf a few cuts along the sides. Then, give it a little bend to make it look more natural, put it in a vase and you’re ready to make the next one!
We’d like to give a little shout out to The Sorry Girls for the tip.
Happy crafting!
