easy fall decorations

These are easy and very cheap fall decorations.  Hanging Leaves!  I just finished my first batch, and once I'm finished, I'll post photos of my hanging leaves and other fall decorations I've completed this week.

The first step: Exercise a little!  Go on a walk and collect some great condition, and colorful, fall leaves. Make sure you have most of the stem connected to the leaf.

The second step:  Buy yourself some wax.  I went to Michael's and bought microwaveable soy wax.  It was pretty cheap out of the bunch. $9.00 for a pretty large container.

The third step:  Melt a small amount of wax, depending on how many leaves you collected.  I melted way less than 1/4 cup and collected about 8 leaves and had much left over.  So, melt smaller than you expect.  Follow directions on wax to get the right temperature, although I don't really think it matters.  I melted the wax for about 1 minute 30 seconds.

The fourth step:  Dip and drench leaves in wax, shake off extra wax.

The fifth step:  Hang leaves from clothespins.  (Side note: make sure you have newspaper or magazines, something you don't care about,  underneath the hanging clothespins because the leaves do drip a little).

Final step:  Once the leaves are dry, hang anywhere you want from monofilament or, other hanging materials.

{Source & Photos: Martha Stewart}