How to Create a Simple, Festive Fall Mantel

If there’s one upside to the cold, gray months of winter, it’s the whole family cuddled together around that warm fireplace or stove, right?

Rich’s is all about bringing the fun and homey to your cozy hearth scene. We want to make it easy for you to incorporate the seasons and holidays into your family time.

Our Thanksgiving mantel design has a couple of functional elements we made by hand to make your transition from Fall to Winter décor simple and easy.

Some people love the idea of crafting new décor items every year. Not us. We want some basics that we can not only use over and over, but that can also become part of our familes’ holiday tradition—a staple of our home for family and friends to remember year after year.

Here is our simple-but-festive Fall mantel:

The wonderful thing about Fall is that nature provides an easy foundation for any décor you’d like to achieve. An assortment of mini gourds, hollowed-out pumpkins, and some branches, leaves, or flowers are simple and beautiful building blocks for the rest of your design.

Of course, your fireplace itself can provide the perfect backdrop for any holiday decorating. This hand-hammered, wrought iron, bronze, classic arched, double-door elite fireplace face from Fireplace Xtrordinair displays true craftsmanship and is a beautiful choice for the heart of any home.

Supplies

For the details of our Thanksgiving mantel, you can find the following at any craft store:

A variety of mini gourds
2-3 large pumpkins, hollowed out
White, plastic pumpkins in a variety of sizes (or any color—they can be spray-painted)
Washi tape in any color or design you like
A burlap bunting banner
Wooden clothespins
Four mason jars
Color printer
Mod podge
Any picture frame

Burlap Bunting Banner

The burlap bunting banner may seem like a big undertaking, but we promise, it’s easy. Once we found the banner, we simply downloaded a font we liked online, and printed individual sheets of paper with each letter. This font is called “foglighten” and can be found as a free download here: http://www.fontspace.com/gluk/foglihtenno01

We created a template triangle by sizing a piece of card stock to the proportion we liked against the burlap triangles, traced that shape around each letter, cut it out, and hung it on with wooden clothespins. No hot gluing, taping, rubber cementing, decoupage, or any other messy tricks! Just a printer and a pair of scissors. Gotta love that.

And the best part is, on the other side of the burlap, we did the same thing with the word “joyful,” so that once the table is cleared and the dishes are clean after Thanksgiving dinner, we’ll turn the banner around and use it as the centerpiece of our Christmas mantel.

Mason Jars, Pumpkins, and More

Pictured below are the elements we’ll be covering in upcoming blog posts. Stay tuned for step-by-step tutorials on how to create the following items:

These cut-out shabby-chic mason jars are reversible with “fall” on one side and “noel” on the other.