Fall Decorating on the Cheap: Fall Button Arttv show lewis

Fall Decorating on the Cheap: Fall Button Art

Welcome to my last installment of fall decorating on the cheap. You can find my previous posts here:

The goal of this exercise has been to use only the materials I have and not spend any money. I feel like I’m on Craft Wars and have to make fall decor using only certain materials. Of course, I don’t have the Michael’s craft closet at my disposal, so it really is nothing like Craft Wars.

I recently discovered a gallon sized Ziploc bag full of buttons while cleaning out my garage. I didn’t know I even had them. I must have bought them a few years ago, and they got buried under the hoards of clutter in my garage. So, I thought it would be a good idea to use them for a fall project.

I wanted to make pictures of fall items like pumpkins or candy corn with the buttons. However, as I started to go rummage through them, I realized that I had ten tons of pink and purple buttons but very few orange. It was obvious I wouldn’t have enough of the right colors to accomplish what I wanted.

You can’t really tell in the pictures, but I actually used acrylic paint to color a few of the buttons the way I wanted. Hooray for getting things done!

I painted another ugly frame that I had bought this summer at a yard sale. My plan was to use the off white burlap fabric as a background in the frame, but that was a disaster. I opted for using scrapbook paper instead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any. So, I used this great website and printed my own. I created the matte with cardboard paper and covered it with the orange quatrefoil paper using mod podge. I put the green chevron paper behind that.

I glued the buttons to the paper in a pumpkin shape and used a cute bead as the stem.

While I think it’s cute, the matte is not quite cut straight and the patterns are a little crooked. But, you won’t be able to tell too much from my mantle. Also, while I have a ton of buttons in my craft stash, many people don’t. While this was cheap for me, it may not be for others. However, you could use your imagination and replace the buttons with spray painted washers or some other building material everyone has lying around.

I hope you have enjoyed my fall decorating on the cheap! Let me know what you think.

Next up will be my little munchkin’s Halloween costume!