how to paint fake fall leaves

Gold fall leaf stems are so popular right now, and I am here for it! Want to know what I’m not here for? The price tags! Yikes! Have you seen the prices on some of the higher quality fall leaf bouquets? I about fell over at some of the prices, so I decided to recreate the magazine worthy styles I was seeing with PAINT! That’s right…I painted faux fall leaves GOLD! I think you’re going to love the end result!

I used the following supplies for this project:

• Fall leaf stem
• White Waverly chalk paint 
• FolkArt Metallic paint in Sahara Gold
• Foam paintbrush
• 3/4″ paintbrush

The first thing I did was pull off some of the leaves from the stems. The leaves can easily slide on and off. Removing some of them just makes the painting process a bit easier.

Next, using my foam paintbrush, I painted the front and back of each leaf with the white chalk paint. Chalk paint is thick and provides really good coverage, so it’s perfect to use when painting over fabric. The white left the leaves with a perfect blank canvas! 

Another benefit of using chalk paint as the base layer is the structure it provided. The leaves were thicker and stiffer.

After I painted all of the leaves, I laid them out for about an hour until they were completely dry.

Then, I took my paintbrush and painted each leaf with the gold paint. Again, I painted both front and back.

As you can see in the photo below, some white paint remained on the plastic stems. This paint can easily be scraped off with your finger nail!

Finally, I reassembled the branch by adding the leaves back onto the stems.

I think they turned out beautiful!!! The gold coloring was perfect! Sometimes gold can appear cheap if it’s too shiny, but this gold paired with the chalk paint really took it up a notch and elevated the overall look!

Have you ever painted leaves or flowers? I would love to know what you think! 

Be sure to PIN this fun idea for later!

Last Updated on August 24, 2023