[Sexy] Fall Decor

Tweet this!

Half of you will hate me for this: I can't stomach most fall decor.  It's just not very 'cute' to me! It makes me feel old... and feeling old will just not do (this is particularly true when one of your life 'mottos' is You're as old as you feel).

But I do like leaves. The concept of them, at least. And I do like making things. Tracing and cutting and pinning. There's something therapeutic about those actions. 

I think creating things should be sexy. Not in an inappropriate-why-did-you-post-that-on-your-family-friendly-blog sort of way (5 points if you're laughing at my use of "family-friendly")... but in a clean, cool, creative sort of way. Instead of making you feel old, it should feel exciting. Glamorous. It should feel creatively new, yet also evoke, in some way, your memory of something old, something you've seen before.

So here we are. 

Fall has... fallen. 

Leaves have, too. 

I've got my leaves... 

how 'bout you?

Thanks to my sister for never throwing out a huge stack of old "W" magazines. They're coming in mighty handy. Using a leaf brought in from a run last week (and pressed for easy tracing), I stenciled the shape of a leaf onto various magazine pages.

Not wanting them to all be exactly alike, I actually chose to layer a few sheets at a time while cutting. I know, it seems like this would make them exactly alike... but in reality, when you layer multiple sheets of magazine paper, they end up slipping and sliding and moving in very subtle ways so that you end up with leaves that are similar enough to emulate the "real" shape of leaves but different enough to value those subtle differences nature gives us.

I found some twine left over from a graduation party this summer that had miniature clothes pins still attached to it. Score. A few pieces of tape and some quarter weights later (I taped the ripe to quarters, which I taped to the top of the furniture. This may have been entirely unnecessary... but it happened), we had this:

And with a few miniature clothes pins and my freshly-cut leaves, we had this:

A totally random piece of scrap paper looked freakishly like a butterfly to me. Yes, I know butterflies aren't particularly prevalent this time of year. But the bent wings worked so perfectly with the clothes pin that it felt like a welcome, if not necessary, addition. So it stays.

Anybody else have some out-of-the-box fall beauty brewing?