Frugal Autumn Themed Crafts

Each of these beautiful autumn themed crafts requires minimal skills and can be done by anybody, even a child. Best of all, none of the ideas presented will cost more than a few cents each to create.

Potpourri Jars

Materials Needed

Clean baby food jars with labels and lids removed
5" lace or tulle circles
Rubber bands
Red, orange, and/or yellow ribbon
Potpourri (a nice spicy one for autumn!)

Fill the jars with potpourri, then place the lace or tulle over the top of the jar and secure into place with a rubber band. Tie a piece of ribbon over the band.

If you feel really creative, you can use acrylic craft paints to paint or stencil autumn leaves on the jar.

The following two ideas work well as napkin ring decorations also, just cut rings from paper towel tubes and glue a strip of felt around the rings, then glue the rings where you would have glued the pin backs. Another idea is to cut 1.5 inch by 5 inch strips from heavy card stock paper and glue the brooches to one end, making a bookmark. Make sure you use autumn colors for the card stock! They will also look nice with a piece of ribbon stitched through the stem ends, and then tied to a metal key ring

Bug on a Leaf Brooch

Materials Needed

Red Pistachio Shells
Orange, and/or yellow felt
Indelible black marker
1 inch pin backs
Glue gun

Cut the felt into small leaf shapes, no larger than about two inches by two inches. Glue one pistachio shell onto each leaf. With marker, decorate shell to look like a lady bug (a line down the center to show the wings, a few dots on either side), turn over and attach pinback with glue gun.

Pumpkin Brooch

Materials Needed

Orange, red, yellow and green felt
Green chenille stems
One inch pinbacks
Glue gun

Cut the orange felt into two inch wide pumpkin shapes, and from the green felt cut one stem and two very small autumn leaves (one red, one yellow) for each pumpkin. Hot glue the stems to the pumpkins, then glue the leaves to the base of the pumpkin. Cut a chenille stem in half and wrap it around a pencil, then slide it off. Hot glue one end of the coil close to the base of the pumpkin's stem, then twist and bend it a bit so that it looks like a pumpkin vine. Glue the pinback to the reverse side of the pumpkin.

Miniature Nut Wreath

Materials Needed

Small (four inch) vine wreaths from craft store (alternatively you can cut four inch circles from corrugated cardboard, and cut out the centers of the circle with a craft knife)
Nuts in shells (walnuts, hazelnuts, acorns, sunflower seeds and almonds look nicest)
Autumn color silk leaves from the craft store, or felt leaves you cut yourself.
Autumn color ribbons, one inch wide
Autumn color ribbon, 1/4 inch wide
Glue gun

Glue a few leaves onto your wreath at varying points. The leaves should hang past the outer edge of the wreath. Cover the remainder of the wreath with glued on nuts and seeds. Tie a bow with the one inch ribbon and glue it at the bottom of the wreath. Tie a loop of the 1/4 inch ribbon and glue it at the top of the wreath so that it can be hung from a tack or hook.