Fall Decorations - Scavenged Branches

Scavenged Branches = Fun Fall Door Decor

On our many walks, I started looking at all the fallen branches from the weather and decided to bring some closer to home. As in - in my home.

I gathered many shapes and sizes of branches, this is my stack after I had edited through the pile.

Supplies needed:

Branches

Cutters for trimming branches

Glue Gun 

Scissors

Paper Trimmer 

Scrapbook paper (thicker is better)

Paint/Paint Brush

Cardboard (for letters)

Ribbon (for hanging and trimming)

Wood Screw (optional)

Wreath Hanger

An hour or two depending on how often you are interrupted

I picked out some of my favorite Fall looking scrapbook papers for some "pumpkins" to hang on my tree. 

Prep work to do first

Because the paper I happened to have on hand was not double sided, I quickly mixed 

some bronze (for a little shine) and orange paint to paint the back of the paper for my pumpkins

As I was laying out my "tree" I needed extra angles that I wasn't getting, so I literally hot glued a couple branches on for the desired effect - set aside and prop up to set while you make the pumpkins.

I rubber-banded my tree while I was perfecting it. 

Definitely leave the rubber band on, it will be covered by a ribbon later.

Pumpkins

These pumpkins were inspired by HERE. Mine are made a little differently however.

Because I wanted different sized pumpkins, I didn't measure out the length specifically of each paper I would need, but I used 4 strips per pumpkin. I curled the ends of the paper strips a little to help me when it came to gluing the paper together.

I folded the papers so I would see what size the pumpkin would be ahead of time and

 to find the center to know where to glue.

I glued the centers together

In my excitement I forgot to take pictures of gluing the top, but basically I folded everything up and glued the strips right on top of each other. It wasn't too hard, I didn't need anything extra to hold it in place

I knew I wanted a tight curl for the pumpkin spiral, and this random screw proved quite useful.

 I crinkled about half the pumpkin stems and left half straight. 

Completed pile o' pumpkins.

I used some thick cardboard from around the house and just cute these letters out using scissors. It was actually the hardest part of the whole project because the cardboard was thick. I painted both sides with orange paint (before realizing you really only need to paint the back, because we will be covering the front)

I quickly cut out and hot glued the paper onto the cardboard.

The other hard part of the project was getting the branch tree to lay nicely against the wall - if you're doing this to go into a can, you won't have that problem. I just used a long orange ribbon and adjusted it until it laid how I liked it.

Arrange the pumpkins and letters how you like! I hung them on the little branches until I was ready to hot glue. I used a cuter ribbon to tie at the base. To make the ribbon curl, I wrapped it around a pen and hair sprayed it - it seemed to hold up nicely even outside.

Finished and on my door! 

I glued some double sticky tape onto the trunk of the tree and put the sticky side on the door so the tree wouldn't move around with the opening and closing of the door.