This week, for the first time ever, I decorated a fall mantel. It was fun and easy, and I recommend giving it a try even if you’ve never done it before! Here’s my step-by-step guide on how to replicate this look, plus how to make cheap plastic fake pumpkins look a lot classier.

Get the tutorial for that hand lamp sconce here, and the half-and-half round zipper pillow here.

The reason this was my first time styling up a fall mantel is that we didn’t even have a mantel until I built this fake fireplace last year. A few weeks ago I was writing a piece for Curbly about fall decor, and my fall mantel research inspired me so much that I decided to give it a try. I wanted to go for a non-standard fall color palette, with sort of a Scandinavian look. 

So I bought two $3 bunches of eucalyptus the next time I was at Trader Joe’s, and  got to stylin’.

One bunch was seeded eucalyptus, and the other was non-seeded. I started with the seeded kind as a base.

Next I added some white fake pumpkins, and some antlers and feathers. If you need vintage antlers, my friend Eve gave me some of these, and sells them in her Etsy shop.

I could have called it done after I added the candelabra and geometric himmeli pyramid, but I wasn’t quite satisfied. 

I needed more pumpkins, though, and I didn’t have enough white ones. But I did have lots of orange fake pumpkins (these) and mini gourds that I had bought for a freelance project last April.

So I yanked out the stems, and stuck them on skewers to give me a way to hold them.

And then I gave them a coat of primer, followed by a coat or two of paint. I used a mix of acrylic paint and wall paint samples I had sitting around, and mixed colors until I got ones I was happy with.

There were some gourds that didn’t have removable stems, so I balanced those on some painter’s pyramids. The skewered ones were much easier to deal with, though.

Once the paint had all dried, I piled ’em up on the mantel. 

I tucked the non-seeded eucalyptus around the other elements, and switched out the himmeli pyramid for a vase with more eucalyptus and some dried money plant stalks from my yard. There are a few lamb’s ear leaves, too, also foraged from my yard. Not sure how those will dry, though.

And that’s how I decorated my mantel for fall! Have you decorated yours yet? Will you give it a go?