without chemical – Decor Craft Design

How To Make Easy Skeleton Leaves – Without Chemical

I remember I made skeleton leaves when I was little, I can’t remember how old I was but as I recall, I read it on a kid’s magazine on how to make skeleton leaves. Since it was a kid’s crafting project, it does not use any chemical to do it. It’s so easy and natural. It’s just depending on natural decaying process of the leaves. Well, maybe you will struggle with the smell that coming from the decay process, but it’s surely safe as long as you wash your hands afterward.

So, let’s go through the Skeleton leaves making process without chemical, step by step :

Pick some fresh leaves, you can use leaves with tough skeleton but thin / soft skin, such maple leaf, oak leaf, soursop leaf, bodhi leaf etc. I found this soursop leaves on supermarket, so I used it for my skeleton-leaves project. Though I’m still aiming for bodhi leaf, I love the shape.
Soak the leaves entirely in a plain water on a bucket. Some suggests rain water for fast decay, but I just simply get the water from tap.
Leave it for couple of weeks.
The natural decay process would not have a same time for each leaf. So, check for leaves that already turned color into yellowish. Pick those yellowish decayed leaves and brush it gently to remove the leaf skin and leave the network of veins (skeleton) intact. Brush until no more skin left. By the way, it’s going to smell really bad, so you better cover your nose with face mask if you can not handle the decay smell.
After you finished with the brushing, rinse the skeleton gently until it’s clean. Some leaf may not be perfectly clean, do to some error or whatever during the soaking process, but I will keep it anyway because I still can use it and cover the defected area with something pretty.
After rinsing, I wash it one leaf by one leaf with foaming soap to get rid of bacteria if any. But do it gently.
Then lay the wet skeleton leaves on the paper towel and let dry for a while.
When it’s dry, not perfectly dry, just dry enough, you can put it one by one on the book’s pages and press it for couple of hours. This is to make sure the leaves to be completely dry and keep the leaves straight.
Check your skeleton leaves, if it’s dry and straight then it’s finished!

Easy and no chemical involved! I choose it that way, since I’m a little bit scare to play with chemical :), so I rather hold my breath brushing those stinky leaves.

Well, now I got my skeleton leaves that I can use for lots of crafting and decorating purposes! Fun, fun, fun! Wanna give it a try? Try it out yourself and then follow me for how to make use of those skeleton leaves for diys, crafts and decors! Especially for this coming fall season, it’s great to have ideas for cheap and easy diy fall decorations and crafts!