We like to decorate for Halloween SUPER early! One reason is because we love it so much, we just want to be immersed in it as much as we can be. Another reason is so we make sure we have craft ideas out early enough for people to make before Halloween!
This usually means we skip decorating for fall. Which is a total bummer because we absolutely love fall decor! Who doesn’t?!? This year we are taking a little pause before we go full out spooky and crafting up a little fall.

This project came out of playing with the materials. We have so much cardboard we knew we wanted to create something out of it. If we were to remake them again, we might do them differently, but there’s something charming about the imperfections. When you’re working with a material like cardboard verses wood, it’s harder to get a polished perfect look, so we wanted to go with something a little more organic looking. So if you make this project, don’t fuss over being perfect, get messy and enjoy the ride!

In this post we are going to go over the steps on making these fall inspired row houses. Perfect for a mantle, sideboard or tablescape…incredibly we don’t have any of those surfaces in our one bedroom apartment!
Materials
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Cardboard
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Spackle
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Pencil
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Ruler
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Craft Knife
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Acrylic Paint
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Paint Brush

How To:
Draw – Draw a handful of houses next to each other. Keep the shapes simple so they’re easy to cut.
Cut – Place the ZipSnip on the marked line and cut in a slow and steady movement.

Score – Lightly score the drawn edge of the first house then flip over the cardboard and score the next edge. Continue flipping and scoring with a craft knife and a ruler to create an accordion fold.
Add Windows & Doors – Cut out different size rectangles using the ZipSnip. Hot Glue them on. Tip: ZipSnip also allows you to cut rounded edges!
Spackle – Add a light coat of spackle with your finger on front of the houses and around the edge of the windows and doors. Tip: If using this on a tablescape- don’t forget the back!
Paint – Add a coat of acrylic paint. Don’t worry about coating every inch. Keeping it a bit “messy” helps with the organic look. We ended up adding a very light coat of white paint on top to give it a bit of dimension. (Also the yellow was just feeling a bit too…yellow.)
Stage – We’re still playing around with the staging, but think it add a nice pop of autumn color to room.

We might not be decorating much for autumn this year, but we’re glad we added just a little hint of it. Happy fall y’all!