Frosted Pumpkins

When my stitchery friends came over on Saturday, they all wanted to know about the place tag pumpkins at each of their seats, so I thought you might like to know too.  Here you can see mine, with the candy corn ribbon and my name tag.

This is a super simple little craft idea that seems to impress just about everyone.  I took my pumpkin to the office on Monday and put it on my desk--several people have asked about it.  To make these, I started with a bag of real mini pumpkins, although the same application can be done on a large pumpkin to create a Thanksgiving centerpiece.  In order to add a ribbon, chose a pumpkin with a stem.  You can also do this with fall gourds--spilling out of a cornucopia, maybe?

The first step is to paint the outside surface of the pumpkins with clear acrylic gesso.  Although it purports to be clear, it actually dries a little bit more opaque unless it's applied very thinly, but opaque is okay.  I started by painting the bottoms of the pumpkins to a point about a third of the way up the sides.

While the gesso was still wet, I sprinkled the pumpkins with glitter.  Any kind of glitter works fine, but I like the opalescent white type--I think it makes the pumpkins look a bit frosted.  But for a more elegant pumpkin, pick a fine metalic glitter.  Or you could go a little wild with orange glitter!

While the bottoms of the pumpkins dried, I went off and worked on some of the other party preparations.  After about an hour, I returned to repeat the gesso and glitter steps on the tops of the pumpkins.  After they were completely dry, I tied a ribbon to each stem.  For a larger pumpkin, I'd suggest a more elaborate ribbon be added.

So that's it--simple, isn't it?  And cute too!  I hope you try this out and have some fun with it.