You can use fabric if you use a product called Stiffy. It's very simple... you just saturate the fabric, shape it, and let it dry. If you can't find a fabric with leaves you like you can photocopy real leaves... enlarging or diminishing the size on the copy machine so that they're perfect for your project. Iron them onto fabric, cut them out, and use the Stiffy.

Good luck :)

Great suggestion Candy. I will give it a try. Bev.

Will stiffy hold up outdoors?

If you have a pasta machine, you can use that with transluscent Sculpey to impregnate the fabric with Sculpey. You roll thin sheets of Sculpey in the pasta machine, then sandwich the fabric between two sheets of Sculpey, and keep running it through the pasta machine until the fabric is totally "saturated" with the Sculpey. Then shape the fabric and bake it. Use an armature of foil, if necessary, to keep it from changing shape in the oven. You shouldn't need to bake it very long. This should be fairly waterproof, too.

Good question, Nona. I wonder if pretty much anything will hold up outdoors if you put several coats of an outdoor sealer on it.

I like Mollies Sculpey idea.

Spray sealant works pretty well instead of fabric stiffener if they're not going to get played with too much...

sculpy works well- you can even take a leaf, warm the sculpy up in your hands, roll it out thin, put the leaf vein side down on the sculpy, roll it into the clay, let set for an hour, pull off, trim, and bake...

or you can use rubber stamps on sculpy- or I had good luck using that craft foil with the rubber stamps, and then pressing the details (veins and such) in with an embossing stylus.

sculpey is wonderful. I just place a leaf on the sculpey, press it in, then pull the leaf off, then take an xacto knife, carve around and voila! Then bake it after shaping it, then I have used gold powder on top of green acrylic paint, looks wonderful.

Would anyone know where I can get a pattern to make a butterfly out of wood? It should be about 10 " wide, to put on cottage as decoration. I would paint it to look like a butterfly.
Thank you all
Claire

I made some beautiful leaves to use as decorations in our sukkah last year. My leaves range from 5 to 8 inches in length, but I also made smaller ones to add to artificial fruits that we also used as decorations. They are completely weather-resistent and store well too.

I bought a roll of window screen material at Home Depot - it was very inexpensive. I bought a set of leaf design cookie cutters, traced them onto paper with a magic marker, and then enlarged and reduced them on the copier to get a variety of sizes. I traced them onto the screening and cut them out with scissors. I bought a cheap pair of scissors to do this so I wouldn't ruin my good sewing scissors. I sparay painted them using Rustoleum paint in copper, gold, silver, and sage. I used enamel decorator paints to add embellishments. We suspended them with wires. They are gorgeous. The screening was stiff enough when they were painted that they could be molded a bit and held their shape. Hope this helps!

There is also a clay called Crayola Model Magic that could be used.It is easy to work with,air dries and is lightweight when dry.It can be painted and if used outdoors can be sealed.Can be found in craft stores or online.
You could also cut leaves out of scrap pieces of gourd.I have done that,using the thinner gourds that have broken,then paint them.
I have also made leaves out of soft drink cans.Cut out the tops and bottoms and use a steel wool to remove the writing on the can.Lay the cut can out flat on several layers of paper towel or a folded dish towel.With whatever pattern of leaves you want,trace the leaf and the veins in the leaf on the aluminum with a ball point pen or stylus, pressing pretty hard so the design of the leaf is indented into the aluminum.Cut out the leaf with scissors and shape however you desire.The aluminum can be painted with any kind of paint and sealed after priming with a primer recommended for metal..................Lillie

clairdo...

pattern? Ed Sibbett Jr's Stained Glass Butterflies is my single favorite source...

the Dover pattern book series is another winner.

however- you can also find a butterfly you like, and either enlarge it with a copy machine- or just use one of the little opaque projectors to blow it up to any size you want...

that darned thing is one of the best investments I've ever made- we use it at least once a week, and it paid for itself with one commission (a friend wanted snoopy asleep on his dog house in his daughter's room. took all of 15 minutes)