Recycled Fall Decorations: Paper Leaves, Tube Pumpkins and Jar Displays

Recycled fall decorations do not need much: a few brown paper bags, some magazine pages, a clean jar and a ball of twine will dress a table or a mantel for the whole season. The three projects here are small enough to finish in one afternoon and flat or light enough to pack away afterward.

Each one stands alone, so you can make just the leaves, just the pumpkins or just the jar.

What you need

• 2 or 3 brown paper bags and a few magazine pages in warm colors
• Thin cardboard, such as cereal box card, for the pumpkin strips
• 1 clean glass food jar, label removed
• Twine, about 4 yd (3.7 m) in total
• A few real leaves to use as templates
• Short twigs or corks for stems
• Pinecones or dried seed heads
• Scissors, pencil, ruler, hole punch, white glue, acrylic craft paint and a brush

Prepare the materials

Cut the paper bags open along one seam, remove the base and handles, and flatten the sheets under a stack of books for an hour or so. Creases soften but will not vanish, and on a leaf they read as veins.

Wash the jar in warm soapy water, rinse it and let it dry completely. Check the rim for chips and cracks, and set aside any jar that is damaged. Use only a jar that held food.

Gather pinecones and seed heads on a dry day. Shake them out over a trash can, brush off loose dirt and leave them on newspaper indoors for several days so they dry and any small insects move on.

Choose a warm palette

Three or four colors are enough: the natural brown of the bags, an orange, a mustard yellow and one deep red or dark green. Look for these in magazine pages first; full-page images of food, wood or brick give large areas of color with no type on them. Failing that, paint a sheet of bag paper with thinned acrylic paint and let it dry flat before cutting.

Project 1: paper leaves for a garland or table scatter

Real leaves make better templates than freehand drawing because their outlines are slightly uneven. Pick two or three shapes of different sizes, such as a maple, an oak and a simple oval leaf.

1. Lay a leaf flat on the paper and hold it down with two fingers. Trace around it with a pencil, simplifying very fine points so they are easy to cut.
2. Cut out the shape. For speed, stack two or three sheets and cut them together.
3. Fold each leaf lightly along its center line and open it again. The crease gives a flat cutout some lift.
4. Repeat until you have 20 to 30 leaves in mixed papers.

For a table scatter, the leaves are finished. For a garland, punch one hole near the stem end of each leaf and thread them onto about 2 yd (1.8 m) of twine, knotting the twine around each hole so the leaves stay spaced roughly 3 in (7.5 cm) apart. If you would like a softer banner to hang with it, a no-sew fabric scrap garland in the same colors layers well behind the paper one.

Project 2: paper strip pumpkins

Each pumpkin is a cage of paper strips gathered on a length of twine. Paint one side of the cereal box card orange and let it dry, or glue orange magazine paper over the printed side.

1. Cut 6 strips, each 8 in long and 3/4 in wide (20 x 2 cm). Punch a hole in the center of each strip and one hole near each end.
2. Cut 16 in (40 cm) of twine and tie a large double knot near one end. Thread the other end up through the center hole of every strip, then fan the strips out into an even star with the knot underneath.
3. Bend the ends of the strips upward one at a time and thread each end hole onto the twine, working around the star in order. The strips will curve into a round cage.
4. Push the gathered ends down the twine until the pumpkin is as squat or as tall as you like, then knot the twine tightly against the top.
5. Glue a short twig or a cork over the knot as a stem and tie the leftover twine in a bow around it.

A 1 in (2.5 cm) slice of paper tube, painted brown, also works as a stem. The same tubes have plenty of other uses, and these easy paper tube crafts cover six of them.

Project 3: a jar display with a twine collar

1. Run a thin line of white glue around the neck of the jar, just below the threads.
2. Wrap twine around the neck 8 to 10 times, keeping each turn snug against the last, and tie the ends in a knot or bow.
3. Let the glue dry for about an hour.
4. Fill the jar with pinecones, placing the largest at the bottom, or stand a few dried seed heads upright in it.

The jar is for dry display only, so leave out water and anything edible.

Arrange the three together

Hang the garland first, at or above eye level, so it frames the space. Set the jar off to one side and group the pumpkins in an odd number beside it, with the largest at the back. Scatter a handful of loose leaves around the base to tie the group together.

Store them for next year

Paper decorations keep well if they stay flat and dry. Slide the loose leaves into a large envelope. Fold the garland back and forth, leaf over leaf, and lay it in a shallow box.

Pumpkins can be flattened: untie the top knot, slide the strip ends off the twine and stack the strips with the twine still through the centers. Retie them next fall. Pinecones store in a paper bag; discard seed heads that have started to crumble.

When the season turns, the same paper and cardboard techniques carry over to recycled Christmas ornaments.