DIY Paper Autumn Crafts

Earlier this month I showed you my super easy and simple autumn mantel for the coming fall season. Hopefully it gave you a little bit of fall crafting inspiration that you can do yourself on the cheap. In fact, it was so cheap it was FREE!! I love when that happens.

Now I'm going to share the whole process for the crafts I made for the mantel. If you saw my DIY paper Christmas trees from last year's Christmas (super great quality pictures, you're welcome) then you'll see the process for the pumpkins is very similar exactly the same. That's why I didn't include any progress pictures for them. Just kidding. It's because I forgot to take any pictures. You're welcome, again.

In a nutshell, I picked out autumn-y paper from my scrap stash. Then I made a stencil out of one of the cardstock papers of a pumpkin shape. I would imagine just using a circle could work as well. I just thought the butterfly-type shape would sit more straight.

After cutting a million pieces of paper, I folded them in half, used some tape and taped the pieces together. I tried to line up the sides as much as I could, but I just had to trim some of the edges to make them look even.

Then I remembered that pumpkins have stems. I grabbed my twine, opened up one of the sides of each pumpkin, and made loops with the twine. Glue those in, hold them together for a bit. Then you're good to go. I think it would have been cute to add some vines or something with ribbons, but I wasn't that ambitious in the moment. Maybe I'll add them later on a day when I'm feeling particularly crafty again.

Now, on to the little leaf art thingy I made. I'm really not sure what this is called. Again, cut out strips of my autumn-y paper. Sketched and cut out the shape of a leaf. I wanted to do a maple leaf, but I knew my drawing skills weren't that advanced. I figured I'd stick with the tear drop shape.

Then I put that cut-out on top of the glued-down strips, and glued that down. I trimmed the whole thing a little bit because it was originally 12 by 12 paper. But I thought there was too much white space on the sides.

After trimming, I remembered I had some fun fall stickers and embellishments. I added those and here we are!

I love my pumpkins. They gave my living room just the right amount of autumn coziness. Even though it's been in the 80s and 90s this week. Boo. I hear this weekend is supposed to have more of a fall feeling weather-wise. Hooray!

What cool crafts have you been making? Or have you been decorating for fall? It's all so exciting and I can't wait to do some more in the coming weeks!