Bunting is an easy and fun way to add colour and festivity to your day-to-day scenery, inside oroutside your home.

Supplies Needed: Thrifted paper, wallpaper or fabric; Mod Podge and a brush or a glue gun and glue sticks; dried or plastic leaves or flowers; ribbon, cord or rope; scissors; chalk; ruler; paper for pattern.

Step 1 Visit your local Salvation Army thrift store to source your materials. I found a lovely textured wallpaper that I thought would hang well since it’s heavier than regular paper. For the items you want to feature on your base, you can either use dried leaves, or thrift some reusable leaves or flowers. 

Step 2 First, I created a pattern for my base. I thought I would cut one piece of wallpaper that I could fold over the cord I chose for hanging my autumn garland. The pattern I made was 15 centimetres (six inches) in width, 20 centimetres (eight inches) in height. Then I cut out the base of my pieces to create a flag shape. This was five centimetres (two inches) in depth from the bottom. I drew out the pattern on the back of my wallpaper, then cut out four shapes. You can use more or less, depending on how long you want your bunting.

Step 3 Once my bases were cut, I folded them in half and placed my feature pieces on top. I measured where to place them so all my flags were the same size. I found lovely, gold-accented paper flowers with wire stems that matched perfectly with the wallpaper. All I needed to do was cut a very tiny hole and slide the wire stems through, then use duct tape over the wire to hold the flowers in place. 

Step 4 To hang my flags, I measured 75 centimetres (30 inches) from the end of the rope and then brushed Mod Podge on the inside of each flag where I had folded the paper. I placed the rope on top of the glue, folded the wallpaper over the Mod Podge and rope, then used clips to hold the wallpaper together while the glue dried.Optional: I added more pizzazz to the flags and used some scrap lavender/gold rickrack trim above the flowers. 

Step 5 Next I added my other flags. I measured 15 centimetres (six inches) between each flag and followed Step 4 for each flag. After my last flag was glued to the rope, I measured another 75 centimetres (30 inches) of rope, then cut the rope. Allow to dry. Once dry you can now hang up your autumn bunting.

Denise Corcoran (aka Thrifty By Design) is an author, upcycler, community builder and workshop facilitator based in North Vancouver. She shares her enthusiasm for crafting and upcycling by facilitating “Crafternoons” throughout Vancouver. She is also a creative expert for The Salvation Army’s thrift stores. Find a thrift store near you at thriftstore.ca.

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