Are you ready to have some fun craft time with your children or if you are a teacher, with your class? This easy and fun autumn craft project makes beautiful Autumn “leaves” that can be used to decorate the Thanksgiving dinner table or even framed and hung on the wall.

You will need:

• Black construction paper
• Brown paper grocery bag
• Black paper for leaves (If you outline the leaves on the pattern with green Sharpie, you can copy on black paper)
• Leaves  (Download leaf pattern here.)
• Water
• Iron
• Glue stick
• White glue
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Cut down the seam of the brown paper bag, and cut the bottom off of the bag.
2. Scrunch the paper into a ball and unfold it again. Then dip the paper into the water, take it out, ball it up again and then squeeze as much of the water out as you can, being careful to not tear the paper.
3. Smooth the paper out flat, and keep in mind that it will look pretty wrinkled.
4. Iron the paper to dry it. When dry, cut half of the former paper bag to fit the copy machine to print leaves on. The rest of the bag will be used to tear squares or rectangles for the project.
5. Choose the leaves from the pattern that you want to use and then cut them out.
6. Tear two or three squares or rectangles to back the black leaves. The brown leaves will be glued on the background sheet.
7. Glue the leaves to the black background. Hold the leaves down for a little while so they adhere.
8. Using the gold glitter glue, glue over the edges of all the leaves. Also draw veins, inside the leaves, with the glitter glue. Add a few curved lines that show the leaves fluttering down.

This craft project courtesy of Kids and Glitter.

This very cute and very easy pumpkin candle centerpiece uses just three items and is very inexpensive to create. You can make these for Halloween and Thanksgiving.

All that is needed is a small to medium sized pumpkin, a 6 inch pillar candle and some faux autumn foliage. You will also need a sharp knife and a marker.

Instructions

1. Snap or cut the stem off the top of the pumpkin.
2. Place the bottom of the pillar candle on the top of the pumpkin and trace it with the marker.
3. With the knife, cut vertically just inside the traced outline. Discard the cut pieces.
4. Wash the ink off of the pumpkin after the candle is properly fitted.
5. Wedge the candle securely in the top of the pumpkin.
6. Add some fall leaves and autumn foliage as decoration. Or if you are making these for Halloween decorations, use black candles and a few plastic spiders. Very fun!

Using mini-pumpkins with autumn spice votive candles makes for some very nice individual placeholders on the dining room table. Let your imagination go and have a lot of fun with this lovely autumn craft.