DIY Palm Leaf Shadow Box (Inspired by Pottery Barn)

Have you seen Pottery Barn’s Palm Leaf Shadow Box shared recently by home bloggers? I just love the light style and how it offers a pop of the outdoor/indoor vibe that I love. I was bummed to learn that it was over $300 and wasn’t in our budget for home decor and let’s face it, probably won’t be in budget for a long time. That’s when I decided I’d try to recreate it on my own.

My first thought was to get a palm leaf trimming, dry it out, and then spray it with Kilz and a coat of white spray paint. But the more I thought about it, I began to worry about moisture and if it would end up molding overtime. Another concern is if it would be able to keep it’s shape once it had been dried out or if it would end up flopping over. So my second thought was to purchase dried palm leaves from a florist. I found a few by Afloral but none were quite the shape I wanted. So my third plan, which is what I ended up doing, was to fold it out of paper.

Here are the supplies I bought:

• 1 white poster board ($0.29)
• 18 x 20 shadow box ($14.49- It was originally $28 but all frames were 50% off in our store)
• 1/2 yard of unbleached muslin ($1.49)

I found a few tutorials for folding palm leaves and ended up watching this one. In the tutorial, she makes one the size of her hand but I used a full size poster board to get the biggest possible palm leaf. But I also learned that folding poster board isn’t the easiest thing and I could have probably completed it in less than half the time if I had used thinner paper.

After I was done following the tutorial (if you watched my Instagram stories) I realized that the palm leaf I had created was too large for the 18 x 20 shadow box I had purchased. I looked online to try to purchase a larger shadow box and omg those things are expensive! So I ended up cutting each leaf about 2.5 inches so that it would fit into the current shadowbox I had bought that morning at Hobby Lobby.

I set the paper palm leaf to the side and pulled out the backing from the shadow box. I wrapped the piece of fabric around the face of it and hot glued it to the back. I only used 1/4 yard of the fabric. I then positioned the palm leaf where I would like it on the backing and tacked the “stem” down with hot glue. I also tacked the two edge “leaves” and the top “leaf” with a tiny dot of glue so it would stay in place. I added it back into the shadowbox and wahlahhh almost pottery barn! Haha

I know this isn’t an exact replica or anything but I love the way it turned out and for under $18, I’d call it a win!