Make your own paint pour pumpkin DIY

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paint-pouring-pumpkin

Have you seen the latest trend in painting? Simply pouring paint on canvases is the latest big thing. I wanted to give a twist on this idea and make it a pumpkin instead…and the results were so, so fun!

I created this project for the Darby Smart app, watch the video above to see how easy it is to do this project, there’s literally NO skill involved to make this project. If you are looking for other fun projects like this one with the holidays coming up, download the Darby smart app and get inspired to create you own holiday DIYs for sell or gift-giving!

Here’s a pin you can save to keep this idea for next year!

paint-pour-pumpkin

Grumpy Cat Pumpkin DIY

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Each year on my blog, I get geared up to do atleast one celebrity pumpkin.  This year, my celebrity pumpkin wasn’t the obvious choice Amanda Bynes (truthfully, I think the girl has problems).  It was the favorite cat on the internet of the moment…Grumpy Cat!  Grumpy Cat a.k.a. Tarder Sauce has taken the internet by storm, so why not pumpkins too, right? Now here’s how you can make your very own Grumpy Cat pumpkin!
First up you’ll want to trace on the Grumpy Cat face with a pencil. I referenced some photos of Grumpy Cat I pulled up in a Google image search on my phone.
 I poured out my Tulip Soft Paint colors.  I left plenty of extra room for mixing colors on my plate.
 I next painted the iris and the pupil in a sky blue and black for the pupil.
 Then I outlined the entire eye with black.
Next up was painting the mouth and the pink of the lip and nose. I outlined under the nose to suggest nostrils and a little bit of a shadow.
I then mixed black and brown together to make the patches of brown around his eyes.  I actually used more darker colors around the eye.  I also used the bristles of my angle brush to fan out around the outside of the patch to look like fur.

Now I went back in and added details to give the eyes life using white paint and the liner brush.
My final painting step was to paint on whiskers.  This is the one I still need a bit of practice on!  I struggle with fine line detail while painting.

The final step was to hot glue on the ears using basic felt.  I pinched them in the back and glued them down at the edges to make them perky, attentive ears!

I had fun making some funny meme pics using my new pumpkin.


 As you can tell, Grumpy Cat is NOT looking forward to the upcoming Halloween season.

Here’s a comparison of the real Grumpy Cat with the pumpkin version.  I tried to recreate the original photo that went viral on Reddit, but darn it!  I forgot to put my hand behind the pumpkin head.

My cat Dexter isn’t really liking all this attention the Grumpy Cat pumpkin has been getting.  Turns out that Grumpy Cat makes other cats grumpy too!
Until next time Swellions!

Alexa

Starry Night Pumpkin Painting Tutorial

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Today I am here with another fun pumpkin DIY, this one inspired by the iconic impressionist Vincent Van Gogh!  I’ve been wanting to make this pumpkin for the past two years, and I finally got my act together and made it happen and I’m pleased with the results, considering I’ve never thought I’ve had great painting skills.  There is a little bit of a secret ingredient to getting this impressionist touch on a pumpkin…it’s the eraser on a pencil!  Check out below how I made it!

All you need for this project is:

– Pumpkin (real or faux)
– Various acrylic paints in the colors of the Van Gogh masterpiece…I used a range of Tulip Softs
in blues and yellow, with white and black for tinting
– paper plate or paint palette
– water for thinning paint
– pencil with eraser
– an image of Starry Night printed out or on your phone (I referenced my phone throughout the project).

Note: There is really no one way to complete this pumpkin as far as painting goes.  You can follow my steps below or branch out on your own if you think there’s a better option!  Also feel free to use a paintbrush or palette knife if you feel more comfortable using those.  I chose to use the back end of a pencil, because I knew it would produce a messy impressionist paint look that I was going for.

Start off by pouring some paint onto your plate.  I recommend a bigger plate than this actually. By the time I was done, my “palette” was a hot mess of color and I didn’t have much room to make new colors.

I started off by using the back end of the pencil to dot the top of the pumpkin. I left the stem black since that’s a natural color you would find in the painting’s landscape.  

I next mixed some a couple shades of yellow together and tried my hand at the sun. As you can see, the paint really sits off of the surface and has dimension using the eraser end.
I next mapped out the appearance of my the swirl in the sky and dotted that on with light blue and white. 
After that I started filling in around it and also made the sun at left.

 
Next up was the job of making the tower as well as the dark city landscape.
I mixed lots of darker colors together for this one with pops of streaks of yellow and white to suggest lights like you see in the original painting. 
After I was done painting the front, I painted the back of the pumpkin black…
…then mottled in some blue tones to make it a little less harsh of a transition from front to back.
As you can tell,  there’s a few orange spots poking through the color of the pumpkin. I’m actually ok with this, since it is a) a pumpkin and b) goes along with the impressionist look overall!

And here’s a couple more pics of how it turned out!

And of course, Dexter had to chime in on his thoughts as well.

If you like this project, please check out my 30+ more inspirational pumpkin projects. As you can tell fall and Halloween are my most favorite times of the year!

Until next time Swellions!

Alexa