Prepare the Paper for Miniature Rose Leaves Using a flat water color brush paint one side of your paper with a dense coat of dark green watercolor paint. Rose leaves are usually a dark rather than a light green. Set aside to dry. When the first side is dry, paint the second side of your paper the same dark green. Don't worry if the color is not completely even, rose leaves have some variation in their color.
Punch Out the Leaves When the paper is completely dry, use your paper punch to punch out rose leaves. The punch I used cut out groups of three leaves. The top leaf on this punch was a bit out of scale, so I trimmed it down to size. To make some larger rose leaves for the bottoms of the rose stems, I cut the top leaf off a section of three, and glued these two leaf sections onto the bottom of a regular section to create 5 leaflet leaves.
Shape the Leaves When the leaves are glued together and the glue is dry, use the embossing tool to draw leaf veins down the center of each leaf with a few to each side. This will help curl the leaf into a more natural shape.
Paint the Leaf Edges To finish the leaves, run a brush with a bit of green watercolor paint along the edge of the leaves to hide the white cut edge left when the leaf was punched.
Attach the Leaves to the Stems Dab a small amount of glue on the stem at the point you want to attach the leaf, and hold the base of the leaf against the glue and the stem to secure it in the glue. Use the tweezers to curl the base of the leaf around the wire stem. For arrangements the roses should only have two leaves per stem, the first one set down the stem so that the leaf just touches the rose.
