Gratitude Garland

I love November. The practice of gratitude is always so uplifting and helps me prepare for the Christmas season of giving. This year I decided to make a craft project that will provide a way for me to record what I’m grateful for. I decided to make some salt dough leaf ornaments because of how well they stay preserved and how easy and fun they are to make.

Supplies Needed:

- Salt

- Flour

- Water

- Leaf cookie cutters. (I got these ones off of Amazon and I love them! Then imprint the leaf veins into the dough perfectly. I’m looking forward to using them for fancy pie crust topping. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017Z802RK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

- Acrylic paint: golden yellow, chestnut brown, orange, red (you can buy acrylic paint for 50 cents a bottle at Walmart! It’s a great deal)

- Jute chord

- Scissors

- Hot glue gun

- Black Sharpie

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Part one: Salt Dough

I decided to just use an easy salt dough recipe off of Pinterest instead of coming up with my own. Because of copyright, I have decided not to share which recipe I used, but if you head to my Pinterest account you can find the recipe I used. It’s on my seasons and holidays board under the Christmas section. Here’s the link to the section: https://www.pinterest.com/emmagblogmyjourney/seasons-holidays/christmas/

After making the dough, I rolled it out on the counter to ¼” thick using this awesome rolling pin. I love this rolling pin because it has adjustable guide disks on the sides to help you roll your dough to a uniform thickness.

I then cut out the salt dough leaves and put them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The cookie cutters made it easy to pick up the leaves and move them. I’ve found the best way to cut the leaves out is to push the cookie cutter down around the cutter’s edge.

Then push the button on top to stamp the pattern. If you pick up the leaf using the button the dough will stay in the cutter. Then simply push the button to drop the leaf onto the cookie sheet.

I continued rerolling the dough and cutting out leaves until I couldn’t fit the cutter on the dough anymore. With the last blob of dough, I pushed it into the cookie cutter and found that it was a perfect fit to use up all the dough!

Lastly, we baked the leaves for 2 hours and let them cool overnight

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Part two: Painting

Sort the leaves into four groups. I tried to split the groups so there was an even amount of each type of leaf in every group. It may also be fun to split them into types of leaves and paint each type a different color. Fortunately, you have the freedom to decide how you want to divide them.

Next, paint each group of leaves, One group red, another orange, etc. I found that my red and orange paints were very bright, so I ended up mixing a bit of brown paint into each color to dull them down.

After painting each group, I found that the first group I painted was dry, so I painted the veins with a small paintbrush. I painted them the following colors:

• Yellow leaves/ orange veins

• Orange leaves/ red veins

• Red leaves/ brown veins

• Brown leaves/ yellow veins

Painting the veins is optional, but the pop of color made a huge difference!

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Part three: Assembly

After letting the paint dry, I cut a piece of jute cord to the length I wanted. You can choose any length you want. I found that we ended up with about 65 leaves, so plan accordingly.

I then cut 65 pieces of jute cord in three different lengths to provide variance in the size of jute.

I heated up my glue gun and turned all the leaves over so the backside was up. I then glued one end of the jute to the back of the leaf. Be generous with the amount of glue you use. We want these leaves to stay put over the years, so the more the better.

After the glue dried, we wrote what we were thankful for on the backside of each leaf. You can do this before you glue, but it may make it hard to know where to glue the string without covering the writing.

Finally, I piled them together by color groups again and tied each leaf onto the long jute cord. I tried to vary the colors and shapes of each leaf as I tied them on. Because of how simple the knots are, it makes it easy to slide the leaves around on the jute so that you can rearrange them as you tie.

We then put three nails in the walls and hung up our leaf garland. I think it turned out super cute! I’m thinking about adding more gratitude leaves next year.

Please post pictures of your garland on Facebook or Instagram and tag me in it! @emmagblog.myjourney I’m excited to see how you get creative with your gratitude garland :)