Leaf canes

The checkerboard to leaf process is more easily see here using greens. 
The checkerboard is compressed to the desired size (I cut some off at various sizes to retain some larger ones).  Then, the cane is compressed on the diagonal and cut into sixths crosswise.
Place the 6 pieces on top of one another to form one "petal" (third picture).
On the far right, you can see the leaf in the making. You may (or may not) notice that I made it asymmetrical.  I just thought it was more realistic that way. 

Here is the leaf in three sizes of compression.  The largest is just over 1" long. 
I also compressed this to a smaller size for teeny, tiny detail.