You wanna know what I love? I love it when I can take old and forgotten things I have on hand and make them something functional or cute for my home! And don’t we all? That’s what DIY is all about: redeeming what is ugly, plain or forgotten.

That’s where the “scrappy” comes in! I took a piece of wood from my scrap pile and some scraps of fabric and made this adorable little pumpkin to go with the rest of my fall decor. I only used things I already had on hand for this project. Nothing like free!

And making this little pumpkin got me into the fall decorating spirit. I finally put away most of my summer decor and started playing around with the mantel.

I posted this on Instagram yesterday after pulling some fall-ish things out of my decor closet. {Follow me on Instagram here.}

What you’ll need:

1. Wood scraps – oh, you don’t have a garage full of them? You should! They come in handy quite often.
2. Fall-ish fabric … or whatever fabric you want to use.
3. A cutout shape
4. Paint
5. Mod Podge

Here’s how I pulled this cute little project together … and in an hour, nonetheless! {Minus paint drying times.}

I found a pumpkin shape online that I thought would work for this project. You can get it HERE. Really, you could do any kind of shape you want to! The only limit is your own creativity.

I printed it out at 100% scale, and found a piece of wood that would fit my shape. I had to cut it down with my miter saw

Then, I sanded down the rough corners. I painted it with Sherwin Williams antique white, leftover from this project. I painted both the front and the back of the board since I knew this was going to stand up and might be seen from behind. If I were going to hang it on the wall, I wouldn’t have bothered with the back side.

Once the paint was dry, I sanded the corners a bit to give it a slightly rustic look. Sorry, I don’t have a picture of the sanding, but you know what that looks like. 🙂

While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I cut out my fabric using my printed shape. I decided to make the stem of the pumpkin a different fabric, so I cut it out separately.

I know the picture shows the shape on top of the fabric, but I turned both of them over and traced the shape on the back of the fabric with a pen. If I were high-tech and had a fabric blade, I would have used my Silhouette. So, if you have the Silhouette and a fabric blade, I’m sure you’d probably use that instead. {{Oh, and make sure you iron your fabric if it has wrinkles. You don’t want the fabric to not lay down when you try to adhere it.}}

Then I just “glued” down the pumpkin and stem to the board with Mod Podge. And then I “painted” Mod Podge all over the front and the fabric to help seal it on the block of wood. It’s not going anywhere!

And that’s how I made my free-to-me scrappy pumpkin fall decor.

I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what this should be called. I was like, is this a plaque? A wood and fabric craft board? What to call it? I asked a few friends last night and came up with the title. But what would you call this thing?

If you were around here a year ago, you may recognize this fabric. I used it to decorate my fall mantel last year. So, since I’m going to do something totally different this year, I was happy to find a way to use the fabric. I may even make some of these to sell at my upcoming yard sale. Might as well make some money on my old decor items, right?

I hope you have a wonderful day!!

Fall Mantel Reveal

Don’t miss out on the behind-the-scenes fun!

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

 

Click HERE to see where I party every week.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

Featured on: