Welcome, Pumpkin Season!

It's that time of year when school shopping lists come out, sweaters start making their entrance, pumpkins start popping up around every corner, and fall is in the air!

Eh, who am I kidding?! These last few days it has been, like, 85 degrees and 90% humidity with rain and thunderstorms nearly 20 hours of the day! It's nothing like fall in the air...

BUT IT IS SEPTEMBER.

So that means my craftological clock is a tickin' and it's time to start preparing for the fall season decorations and PUMPKINS!

So, as a part of the kick off to the season, I wanted to add a few new fall decorating projects to the house. So after a whole lot of pinning and hunting, I found a few things that I wanted to try. So I present to you, my cross cut tree stump pumpkins.

If you give them a shot, please comment and share! I would love to see what you come up with.

So here was my initial supply gathering, I found later that I did have to add a few more items, so pay attention to the supply list. You will want the following to complete this project:

Orange acrylic paint -- I decided to use three different colors of orange to vary up the different pumpkins in my project.
Brown acrylic paint
Three cross cut tree stumps
Six small scraps of wood
Wire cutting pliers or multi tool
Scissors
Two paint brushes -- one thinner/finer and one square brush
                                      Hot glue and glue gun
                                      "Natural" fiber wrapped wire
                                      Three burlap or earthy toned ribbons


I started by painting each of the wood slices different orange colors with the square paint brush. I made sure to take special care to avoid the bark of the wood at the edges. I liked that this made a very specific line for me to follow so I could keep the edges looking really clean. I also found that it took two to three coats to get a nice even coat on the wood.

Then I added detail to each pumpkin to help give it a little dimension. I just stitched back and forth between the three orange colors to create the lines and ridges of a pumpkin. looking at the base of the wood cut, I followed the lumps to make the ridges of the pumpkins.

Then I needed to paint the stems of the pumpkins. I had just a homemade decorative wheelbarrow made the evening before and had these scrap pieces of wood in the garage form that project. I originally picked three of them, but found in the end I also needed three more. You will see why later in this blog. I also took a look at the craft store and saw lots of options that would also work for this. But I am thrifty (read cheap) and knew I could find something at home to complete this. 

I then used the brown paint to paint the stems with the finer paint brush. 

To match up the styling of the painting on the pumpkin, I made sure to avoid the edges of the stems. After that, I went back with the orange paint and put in a little light stem detailing into them. I made sure to REALLY lighten up on my touch with the square brush and remove a lot of the paint from my brush for the "texture" of the stems.

While all the paint was drying, I starting to make the little vine twists that I had added to the pumpkins. Using the thicker part of the square brush (after I cleaned it) I cut longer lengths of the natural wrapped wire. I cut them just a bit longer than my paint brush and then wrapped it around the handle of the paint brush to make the little curls of the wines. I did find I needed a scissor because the multi tool/wire cutter did cut the wire, but the wrapped fibers around them needed a little extra coaxing to cut apart.  The fibers on the wire were starting to come undone a bit, so I glued the edges of the wire and fiber to help keep it from unraveling. 

Everything was dry at that point so I glued the stems onto the back of the pumpkins. Make sure you are PLENTY liberal with the glue because you really want it to stay. I also glues the twisty vines onto the back of them at that point too. I positioned some of the same side together and some with one on each side. 

It was at that point that I tried to set the pumpkin back up on its side to get it to stand up... and found that the stem I had glued onto the pumpkin now made them all just a little top heavy and each one would fall backwards. So this is where the three extra pieces of wood come in as promised. I glued those to the back and bottom of each of the pumpkins to get them to stand upright. 

 AND THEY WERE ALL DONE!!!!

Well, almost...

At this point, I originally thought that this was where I was going to be all done with these pumpkins, but something just seemed to be missing for me. So I went to my drawers of ribbon and decided to give a few scraps a try. This seemed to be what finally tied them all together for me and finished them all in a nice... well... bow. :) So I hot glued them to the top of each pumpkin and cut the ribbon ends to my desired length.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! Tree stump cross cut pumpkins!

ENJOY CREATING!

Please create and share your pumpkins with me! I would love to see what yours look like too! 

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