Long before the appetizer is served, your table will make a good first impression with these ideas for place cards, centerpieces, linens, and more.

Fabric glue, glitter, and masking tape are all you need to add understated glamour to your Thanksgiving table runner. Gold and copper glitter also add sparkle to the dried corn centerpiece.

Bring rustic elegance to the dining room with a combination of store-bought and hand-crafted decor. Find instructions for bedecking a willow branch wreath with pom-poms and covering trivets with lush velvet.

Dress up inexpensive glass candleholders with real fall leaves. Kids will have fun helping to gather leaves for this craft.

Use a nutcracker to open whole walnuts just enough to slip in paper flags bearing guests' names. Coordinate the colors of the paper and ink to match your tablecloth or centerpiece.

Staple birch bark to a pine box to create a rustic vessel for this arrangement. Use an assortment of flowers, foliage, and fruit to create a custom centerpiece in fall colors.

Create a Mayflower centerpiece for the kids’ table by lashing a watercolor paper sail to wooden dowels and anchoring it in a small, pebble-filled pail. Paper pilgrim hats and bonnets are easy to craft with the help of our printable templates.

Have fun at the crafts store choosing ribbon in beautiful fall colors to make these easy, budget-friendly napkin rings and centerpiece. Use matching ribbon for everything or pick a few contrasting colors.

Small pears hold paper name tags punched with holes and tied in place with ribbon or twine. Any small fruit or vegetable, such as crab apples or jack-be-little pumpkins, can be used.

Sweet-gum-tree spurs bring the outdoors to your table.

These handsome place-card gobblers add a burst of holiday cheer.

Guests will go nuts over these cute critters. Squirrels perched atop logs filled with foil-wrapped chocolate chestnuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts make sweet seasonal tokens. Put one at each setting at the Thanksgiving table. You can write guests' names on the logs before assembling them so the favors can double as place cards.

Let these little gobblers greet each guest as he arrives to the table.

The only turkey you won't want to gobble up this holiday? One of our comely yarn-and-felt creations. Perched on a mantel or arranged on a straw-covered tray on a sideboard, they are a fun, fanciful touch. You can also use them as place-card holders (glue name tags inside their beaks), and invite children to take their feathered friends home at the day's end.

Flecks of paint on paper foliage mimic the mottled appearance of real leaves

Stump guests with a little turkey trivia.

Large trivets in leafy shapes add seasonal style while protecting your dinner table from piping-hot plates.

Fallen leaves are abundant at this time of year, and their graceful silhouettes and tawny colors make them a natural theme for seasonal linens and decorations you craft yourself.

These three napkin folds are easy to create (but your guests will never know). For impressive results, start with clean, pressed linen or cotton napkins, and keep the iron hot.

Display autumn leaves beneath a sheer tablecloth, and the dining room will look as brilliant as the maple in the front yard. Place leaves between paper towels or waxed paper inside a phone book for a week to dry and smooth them. If needed, use double-sided tape to attach foliage -- in any grouping -- to a standard white tablecloth. Then place a sheer cloth, such as organza, on top.

This modern table setting picks up the palette with chartreuse place mats on a bleached-oak table, contrasted with matte white plates and Venetian glass tumblers.

Blue is not traditionally associated with the season, but highlight it with small touches of gold and the color can become a happy participant in holiday revels. These spray-painted miniature pumpkins and place cards written in gold ink do the trick nicely. A block-printed napkin and tablecloth and the marbleized plate add patterned richness, while a mix of mismatched contemporary glassware and classic flatware keep the feeling clean and modern.

To make "silver" napkin rings, save wishbones from roast chickens, wash and dry them thoroughly, and spray them with chrome paint. On each one, string silver cord from tip to tip; wrap it six times around the bone, and tie it off.

For a splash of style, adorn your table with autumn's brightest accessories: vivid fall leaves. Simply clip sprays of young leaves from a tree in your yard (ours are from a maple). Arrange the clippings at each place setting, and top with transparent glass plates. Come dinnertime, you'll be basking in the oohs and aahs of your guests.

A napkin and a handwoven sparkling favor echo the cornucopia's shape, while more gilded leaves and acorns festoon the napkin and the place card. Sugared almonds and pine nuts fill these favors.

Elegance can be found in familiar places. Here, formal china is set out with homemade hollowware. Hot-glue a large bowl to a smaller one (or a plate to a teacup) to create pedestals from inexpensive tableware; use one for bread and others for roses (cut the stems short and insert into wet floral foam cut to fit the bowls). Handsomely folded cloth napkins fit in with the table's traditional feel. To make photo place cards, copy childhood photographs of family members in black-and-white or sepia; then glue the images to card stock, and trim with deckle-edged scissors.

This distinctive contemporary table begins with an emphasis on light and form. A homemade Ultrasuede table mat adds color and interest; it's cut with a rotary cutter just smaller than the table to create the illusion of a border. Sleek hurricanes filled with fallen leaves show off colors that contrast with the otherwise monochromatic palette. The clear glass of the goblets and hurricanes keeps the look clean. A leaf in the folds of a napkin and a handwritten place card -- a strip of paper inscribed with a white-gel pen -- welcome each guest to dinner.

A miniature Mayflower sets sail on a map tablecloth, while paper-boat place cards guide young guests to their seats.

A feather dresses up a simple twill-tape napkin wrap, which doubles as a headdress for young diners during -- and after -- the feast.

This table, with its brilliant fall hues -- orange-fringed paper napkins, golden drinks, and Bakelite utensils -- will hold kids' interest with style (but even adults,might like a centerpiece of chocolate turkeys). Draw turkeys on a fringed paper tablecloth for coloring between courses; brown-paper goody bags tied with beaded-leather cord hold the crayons.

For pretty napkin ties that evoke the harvest season, attach store-bought acorns to satin ribbon.

Direct guests to their seats with name cards topped by leaves that look like they just blew in.

Bring a touch of yesteryear to the holiday spread with this stately gobbler.

Use swatches of caning to hand-print these custom place cards.

Inspired by the early American craft tradition of making dolls from cornhusks, our cornhusk flowers -- mimicking apple blossoms -- are both elegant and simple to create.

Making custom napkin rings for any table setting is a cinch with colorful ribbon and beads.

These braided ribbon napkin rings are a breeze to make.

You don't need to spend hours to re-create the designs of early American samplers. We used a paint pen to stitch designs onto glass, imprinting leafy motifs on large candleholders for a centerpiece and monograms on votive holders for favors.

Although they are traditional fall-decorating fodder, these gourds manage to look surprisingly fresh -- more evocative of modernist ceramics than of paper pilgrim-hat place cards (not that there's anything wrong with those). Mixing painted bowls made from dried gourds with a pair of whole crook necks gives the autumnal standbys a life beyond the Thanksgiving table. Once you've arranged the gourds themselves, fill the bowls with natural, textured accents -- like nuts and leaves -- as well as a few shiny trimmings (such as the gold seed-pods shown here, available prepainted at craft stores) for even more color and contrast.

A quick trip to the market yielded this fall centerpiece, an informal arrangement of kumquats, squashes, and a bell pepper in a ceramic compote. Use whatever orange fruits and vegetables you find, such as baby pumpkins, carrots, persimmons, and, of course, oranges.

Wrapped in dried cornhusks, votives cast a soft glow and serve as a reminder that corn was part of the first Thanksgiving feast.

These climbers include flowers made from Sabulosum cone scales, buds from the tamarack tree, and "leaves" that are actually single Norway spruce cone scales. The finished vine can be tightly coiled around a candlestick.

Step aside, pumpkins -- here's an unexpected and inviting accent for the dinner table. We used daikon radishes and turnips, but any root vegetable will work. Using a knife, slice off enough of the leafy top to create a flat base. Insert black-headed pushpins to form eyes; for the mouth, cut a half-moon into the vegetable with a paring knife, and fill it in with a black marker. Arrange several in a shallow bowl, varying the heights and the shapes.

Highlights of dark candles and orange-patterned accent plates add surprising contrast to a formally set dining table.

Give thanks with style. Here's a harvest of ideas for creating a festively dressed affair.

Set a celebratory table with bold splashes of color from the garden or farmers' market; gourds, fruit, and nuts come in golds, yellows, oranges, and a range of browns and greens.

The handwoven look of basket weave meets streamlined simplicity in a container made by wrapping a strip of caning around a glass cylinder.

The jewel tones and cascading abundance of these arrangements are an ode to autumn.

Wrap hurricane glasses in layers of colorful tissue paper to glowing effect.

These modest containers are at their prettiest when brimming with pleasing rustic treats.

A table arrangement of grains celebrates the bounty of fall.

A white-pumpkin shell becomes the vase for an arrangement of blooms in fall colors -- yellows, peaches, and shades of orange.

An extravaganza of autumn apples fills this double-handed basket.

Add a splash of fall color to your Thanksgiving table with an arrangement of cheerful mums.

Transform basic pillar candles with strips of beeswax and a simple under-and-over weave.