Talk about getting bang for your buck! In my opinion, the best autumn decorations are the ones that work well for both Halloween and Thanksgiving. So no bats or jack-o-lanterns or ghosties around here, but instead LOTS of acorns and pumpkins and brown and orange. If you’d like to try your hand at your own decorations that you can leave up for a good long time, check out these five tutorials for fall garlands and autumn buntings that make use of upcycled materials: Rough-looking fabrics like denim and burlap and sacking all look well in autumn buntings, but out of those, denim is probably the easiest fabric to upcycle from old blue jeans. You should stitch around the perimeter of each pennant, but you don’t need to hem, because everybody knows that frayed blue jeans look awesome. You can easily customize a bunting with applique–through a judicious use of blank and lettered flags, you could even have a double-sided bunting with HALLOWEEN on one side and THANKSGIVING on the other. Next » Of course, any simple reclaimed fabric, whether it’s from a muslin that you sewed as a test garment or a tote bag that your conference swag came in (I’ve used both!) can make a good holiday bunting with an appropriate seasonal motif. Jen of Paint Cut Paste (featured on Chalk in My Pocket) started with simple linen in this leaf print garden flags tutorial. To make it autumnal, print the leaves in browns, oranges, yellows, and reds. [Image by Paint Cut Paste on Chalk in My Pocket, used with attribution] Next » I like to upcycle pretty cardboard and cardstock into holiday garlands. Colorful crayon boxes and magazine covers are graphically quite interesting when cut into simple, seasonal shapes, and when the holiday is over, I take just as much satisfaction in tossing my garland back into the recycling as I did rescuing it from the recycling in the first place. Next » As an alternative to cutting a garland from a single piece of recycled paper, pieced paper garlands can make use of a wider variety of upcycled materials–and some of the paper can be ugly! This fall garland of pieced paper pumpkins from The Crinkled Home uses scrapbook paper, but it’s just as easy to substitute junk mail, hand-outs, magazine pages, and packaging as it is to head to the store for colorful paper. You can fussy cut your favorite parts for the pieces, or alternate boring paper with pretty paper. [Image by The Crinkled Home, used with attribution] Next » Talk about utilizing boring paper! Newspaper is the ultimate upcycled craft material, in my opinion, because it’s ubiquitous–not only do we get a big bunch of it on our porch every day, but so do our neighbors. If we need more, there’s always the Recycling Center! This newspaper leaf garland from Stitch/Craft is so simple–just leaves cut out of newspaper, watercolors, and string for hanging. The concept would work just as well for any shape that you’re contemplating, whether it’s Christmas trees or Valentine hearts. [Image by Stitch/Craft, used with attribution]
