Shiny gilded leaves – an inexpensive, quick and easy craft project for autumn or Christmas!

After making gilded walnuts and gilded acorns – I love how they turned out! – I now made gilded leaves. To paint leaves with gold paint is just as easy as painting nuts. Gilded leaves are an inexpensive, easy craft project for autumn or winter.

Related: How To Make Victorian Gilded Walnuts

By the way, you don’t real gold leaf to gild nuts and leaves, just a bottle of inexpensive gold acrylic paint. You can use DIY golden leaves as natural fall decorations or natural Christmas ornaments.

What Leaves Can I Use To Make Gilded Leaves?

Collect decorative, sturdy leaves for these natural leaf ornaments. In autumn, you can choose between many different leaves such as oak, birch, beech or maple leaves. While for Christmas, you can make gilded holly leaves, gilded Oregon grape leaves or golden laurel leaves. Here I painted Oregon grape leaves with gold paint.

How To Prepare Leaves For Gilded Leaves?

I used fresh leaves for these gilded leaf ornaments. If you only collect clean leaves, you can use them as they are: There’s no need to wash and dry the leaves.

Just collect leaves, paint them with gold paint and let them dry – that’s all! It can’t get any easier than this!

Related: How To Make Gilded Acorns

How To Make Gilded Leaves

You’ll Need:

• leaves
• gold acrylic paint
• paint brush
• optional: ribbon or string

Paint Leaves With Gold Paint

Paint the leaves on both sides with gold paint. Let them dry at least overnight. If necessary, you can now touch up with gold paint.

Add Ribbon

Add a ribbon or string if you want to hang the natural leaf ornaments on your Christmas tree.