Turn Leaves From Your Yard Into A Cute Decor Embellishment That Adds Instant Whimsy

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Old, dried leaves make the perfect substitute for wasteful plastic confetti, as you can repurpose leafy fronds from your yard into this cute decor embellishment. It'll add charm to crafts, events, and table settings. Using hole punches, you'll turn entire leaves into tiny decor pieces. Whenever you need confetti, replace it with this sustainable option from your yard to add whimsy while also caring for the planet. You may gift the pieces to friends or throw them as a surprise at a New Year's celebration. Birthday parties, weddings, and graduation ceremonies are all ideal for bringing out this naturally-made party favor. This project is an excellent way to decorate with leaves all year round.

Not only is this confetti easy to make, but it's also easy to customize. You can use different hole punch designs to get the style you want. Hole punches are excellent to have on hand, as they're one of many office supplies you should be repurposing. Use hearts and bow-and-arrows for Valentine's Day, or Christmas trees and presents for the holidays. Try these handheld heart and star hole punches for simple yet whimsical confetti. At Halloween, get out your jack-o-lantern hole punches to make festive pumpkin shapes. If you don't have decorative hole punches, consider using an ordinary circle hole punch to make circles of the leaves.

When gathering the leaves, it's important to choose dry leaves that haven't begun decaying. Wet or hole-filled leafy pieces will be difficult to convert into confetti, and they'll make a mess of your hole punch! If all of them are wet, simply bring them somewhere under cover and let them dry.

Making natural confetti is easy but time-consuming. You'll want to dedicate an afternoon to the craft, especially if you're making a lot of it! If you have multiple hole punches, have your friends and family join you for a hole-punching party. Then, each guest gets to take home homemade decor at the end of the party. To make the confetti, set the leaves inside the hole punches and press down. Little leaf pieces will expel out of the punches, and you'll gather these into bags or containers for storage.

Do yours have boring colors? Try using different leaves from various plants, like these houseplants that bring the color of fall indoors, for a wide range of colors in your confetti. The best thing to do is to wait for the fall in regions with deciduous trees. When the trees begin losing their leaves, gather them and let them dry when they have good color. Or choose from variegated and odd-colored specimens, like red-leaved maple trees and spotted aucuba shrubs. The more colors you have, the more the decor will pop when you lay it out or throw it in the air.

Once you're done using the confetti, you won't have to throw it out like you would with plastic embellishments. Leaves decay naturally in the environment, and they're beneficial for the soil. Scatter the used stuff in your garden beds, add it to your compost, or top dress your containers with it.