Colored Rice Leaves, Take Two

Do you remember the Colored Rice Leaves craft I made a few weeks ago? I loved how they looked, but they were too fragile to use as I'd intended. An anonymous commenter made a great suggestion: Try setting the wire and rice on parchment paper, pour white glue over the rice, let it dry, then peel it off. So that's (almost) exactly what I did!

Materials: colored rice, Twisteezwire, white glue and parchment paper

Step 1: Form a leaf from the wire and glue it to a piece of parchment paper. Spread a thin coat of glue in the leaf and then pour colored rice over that. Let it dry completely.

 

Step 2: Brush off any excess rice. Then flood the top of the rice with glue, taking care to stay inside the wire.

 

Uh oh. It turns out that colored rice both swells and bleeds when it is flooded with glue. 

Not a problem. Just wipe up the excess. Or avoid the problem in the first place by adding layers of glue slowly over time.

 

Step 3: When the glue is completely dry, gently peel the leaf off the parchment.

 

Step 4: Use microtip scissors to trim the excess glue from the edges. This might not be an issue if you add the glue in layers rather than flooding it.

Now you have a durable, shiny, colorful leaf! So pretty!