Makeover | Painting and decoupaging pumpkins

Over the years I have collected a hodgepodge of fake pumpkins and gourds from thrift stores and garage sales.

Some are Styrofoam. Some are plastic. One is really heavy (and I have no idea what it’s made of).

This year, I decided to give them a makeover.

pumpkin craft project

I started by basecoating them all in white. (I used gesso, just because I had a bottle of it stored in my basement that I bought for a project a couple years ago. I’m sure white craft paint or primer would have worked just as well.)

newspaper pumpkins

I liked the white, but I wanted some variation amongst the pieces, so I decoupaged newspaper strips on a few.

decoupaged pumpkin

The newspaper was a little heavy and hard to work with, especially around all the curves of the pumpkins, so I scanned part of a newspaper page into my computer and printed it out onto a piece of tissue paper — which is harder than it sounds. I had to tape the tissue paper to a piece of regular 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper to get it to feed through my printer, and it took more than a few tries before I managed to get a piece to emerge from the printer un-torn.

pumpkin craft

Decoupaging on the tissue paper was easier than working with real newspaper.

decoupaged pumpkin

After I ran out of the newspaper-printed tissue paper, I remembered I had some tissue paper with faux handwriting on it, so I dug that out of my stash.

decoupaged pumpkin

I decoupaged the faux handwritten tissue paper onto a few of the pumpkins and gourds.

white pumpkins

On the remaining plain white pumpkins, I dripped and splattered some paint on, using browns and blacks and beiges.

decoupaged and painted pumpkins

I wound jute twine around the tops of the pumpkins. To make the twine spiral, I dipped it in watered down Mod Podge, then wound it around a pencil until it dried.

decoupaged and painted pumpkins

I had pictures of that process, but they were taken on an old point-and-shoot digital camera during the time when I couldn’t access my iPhone photos. And then I robbed the memory card out of the point-and-shoot to use in my work camera. And then when I downloaded the work pictures, I apparently deleted the blog pictures. Grrr.

pumpkin crafts

Anyhoo, I’m much happier with how the pumpkins and gourds look now than they did before.

before and after
An old crackle pumpkin (that I always set in the back because it seemed a little garish) now looks like this:
crackled pumpkin

The number 4 is from an old perpetual calendar that I bought at a thrift store. I repurposed the calendar part long ago, but the numbers were still in a cabinet, waiting to be used. I may tie a few more to some of the other pumpkins.

crafts
This fakey fake big orange pumpkin has now been transformed….
white pumpkins
 … into this. I like it ever so much more now.
decoupaged pumpkins

I did this project about month ago. It just took me forever to get photos rounded up and get everything together because (if you read my last post you know) my life was kind of in chaos from about Sept. 14 through about yesterday (knock on wood). I started a new job, was taking a night class and my home computer died.

pumpkin crafts
I also somehow managed to get Mod Podge on the lens cover of my old point-and-shoot when I was attempting to use that as a backup for my iPhone camera. Now the lens cover won’t open at all. So my old Cannon Power Shot may be joining my old Windows Vista PC in technology heaven.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: