Showing a friend these pics, he asked “What about the fall colors?” Grape leaves don’t follow fall colors (and if you see red grape leaves, the vines are sick). But I thought what would that look like? Here is the same print in 8 fall colors. I am impressed that anything showed up on the yellows.
BTW the second one down on the left is the one in my hand from earlier posts. Difference between sunlight and shop light.
I swear, if you would introduce a few imperfections into those things they would look just like the real thing…you couldn’t tell them from real leaves. 
plus they need to be curled. And they need to fly around and escape when you’re trying to corral them.
Those look great! I can hardly keep up with the cool projects on the forum, there are so many interesting experiments showing up every day.
This is so clever!!
Not to be “That Leaf Guy” but I had another idea.
I took the black and white leaf back into Photoshop. I ran it through 5 layers of different blurs to get this.
3D ENGRAVE!!!
I did a first 3D engrave on unmasked 1/4" extruded acrylic. It left a residue that I tried removing with alcohol and the part crazed and cracked like crazy. Plus the impression was pretty rough.
I read a post about a second de-focused pass to polish a 3D engrave
So I redid the job with a second pass de-focused to .01. Didn’t use alcohol on the residue but did a light sanding to make it pretty for all you fine people. I also sanded a Popsicle stick to a point.
Then I stuck the paper leaf into the 3D engraving and burnished it with the wood stick.
This is what I got.
I’m starting to actively dislike your posts, because I want to go make them immediately, and I’m trying to finish some write-ups first.
the combo of heat from laser engraving and solvents will cause that crazing and cracking in extruded acrylic; it’s just stress cracks.
Yup. And the second one is showing no signs of stress. You have to wonder if the second de-focused pass helps anneal it in any way.
Maybe, but you didn’t use a solvent on that one so I wouldnt think that it would crack.
I’d be curious, it is more spread out heat but it is still pretty localized overall. most people say to anneal the whole piece in an oven. And I have had it crack after flame polishing which is much less localized than even the defocused laser (how I found out about the whole thing)
Yeah, I think I am about to buying a new toaster oven for the kitchen so the old one can anneal plastics in the shop.
No, no, no! Your write ups are amazing! You can come back to squish paper leaves later.
Maybe, but you’re temptin’ me… 
BTW, your “if only there were more imperfections” is the whole reason I thought to do this next step. Thanks for even more inspiration.
Wow! You just keep kickin’ it up a couple notches! That leaf looks great–what a wonderful way to add texture.
That second acrylic leaf (the defocused one) would make a nice keychain. Or a chocolate mold (is lasered acrylic food safe?).
Better off using it to cast a positive and making a food safe silicone mold off that. Will be much easier to take the chocolate out of
My wife had similar thoughts. She liked the mold better than the leaf.
But the leaf is pretty awesome too.
You have opened a whole new world for my miniature work. Bless you.
