Dapper DIY: Super Easy & Affordable Autumn Arrangement

With the arrival of cool temperatures and shorter days, I'm in full-on nesting mode. Over the warm months I gallivanted around and enjoyed being outside the apartment and now it's time to come back indoors. These days when I'm not roasting birds or making soup, I'm crafting. I had a little bundle of branches leftover from a larger fall arrangement and, in a little fit of nesting inspiration, used some things that I had lying around to create an additional arrangement.

First of all, I have to say that I'm happy I found a use for at least one empty bottle from my growing collection. I'm telling you, I'm on the verge of being one of those crazy old men who saves every bottle and jar he brings in the house. I can usually find a use for jars - they're great for leftovers or giving baked goods as gifts - but reusing bottles is a little more limited. This bottle, for instance has a tiny little opening at the top, so it's usually not ideal as a vase or for food. The little opening is just too small to reuse it for anything but liquid. Unless you only have six little branches! Then that tiny little opening is ideal!

I stuffed the branches in the jar and was about to go on the hunt for some ribbon to tie around the top of the bottle when I thought about wrapping the bottle. I originally thought to use rope that was leftover from a different project but it was too thick and bulky for this container. I turned to my big spool of baker's twine instead.

To wrap the bottle, I used a glob of hot glue to secure the start of the twine at the top of the bottle. I wrapped over the start of the string to hid the frayed edge. Then I wrapped the string down the bottle, using dobs of glue periodically to hold the string in place. Except for a couple of hot glue burns, the project was quick and painless. And basically free!

I decided to stop wrapping a little more than halfway down the bottle. I like the way the bottoms of the branches look through the exposed glass at the bottom. But of course you could wrap the entire bottle all the way down to the base.

Images: Jason Loper