Freebie Friday-Fall Leaf Cutouts

First, a little reminder that today is the last day to enter my first ever giveaway. Tomorrow I will announce the winner!

Okay, so I needed some new bunting. This is what I settled on, I liked it enough I thought you might too. I will warn you it's a little bit of a DIY. It may take an hour or two to cut them out if you do a lot. It's worth it! oh, I've also seriously considered sewing a dark brown ribbon along the backs of all of them instead of using clothes pins to hang. Maybe I still will.

You could do lots of other things with these too: They could work as cards, artwork in a frame, or I suppose even for just coloring. I used plain colored card stock, but child's art work would be an awesome background! Or patterned paper. I would just recommend you use highly contrasting papers for the front and back.

okay a couple notes on the pdf (usually these things aren't issues-and I'm sure most of you don't need all the nitty gitty details of how to do it):

The out line- I don't like how a little bit of it may show up in your cut out if your not really careful. I solved that by laying a brown piece of paper (the one I planned to use) under my white "template." I still tried to cut on the outside of the line in case I end up using the template for something else. But, I realize that is more work. If you don't want to use a template, by all means, it's not necessary.

my printer, and most likely yours too will have a little margin around the edge it won't print on. Cut all the way to the edge anyway!

If you don't cut them in fourth first, DON'T connect the two open ends of the leaf. Just start where the line starts and follow it around. to the other end. When you cut them in fourths (with a ruler or paper cutter) It will automatically cut the rest of the leaf out.

Okay, this was my biggest problem: in illustrator (the program I designed them in) the are each 4.25 x 5.5 inches exactly. But for some reason when I print them out, they don't line up right. the maple leaf and two leaves don't go quite to the center, and the oak goes a little over. I haven't resolved it entirely. But I did fix the oak leaf so it doesn't go over. So don't follow the pattern here! Just cut the 11 inch side to 5.5 and the 8.5 inch side to 4.25. ignore the outlines on this one!

I cut a plain piece of white to go behind these. You could glue them, or not. I didn't. I liked the shadow it created. Using 3D squares between the 2 layers would do this nicely. If you're doing a card, you may want to cut them down a half inch on two of the sides to create a little border before gluing it to your card. . .

The one on the left is my template. The one on the right bottom is the only one I used. I will, of course keep the others for future uses though. . .  The actual leaves might be fun as place cards for Thanksgiving. We'll see.

Then I decided I kind of liked it in my living room . . . sorry about the terrible lighting. It doesn't ever get good lighting here. Alas.

And last but not least . . . the printable itself:

YellowMums_Fall Leaf Cut Outs