Marbled Blacklight Pumpkin DIY

October 9, 2018 by Alexa Leave a Comment

If you’re a pumpkin crafter, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of nail polish pumpkins. The thing with nail polish pumpkins; however, is that you have very little polish to work with and you generally can only dip smaller-sized pumpkins with them. Also I personally think using nail polish is a lot more stinkier than spray paint (this may be a personal preference). Anyway, after seeing this post a few years back Alisa Burke marbleizing paper and ornaments, I knew I wanted to try it with a pumpkin and I’m actually happy with how mine turned out. Let me show you how easy and fun these are to make!

What you need:

— faux pumpkin
— various colors of spray paint (I used neon so they’d look good under blacklight)
— large bin filled with water
— Gloves (get the gloves, see below)

Before you begin:
Fill a large plastic bin with water. You want enough water so you can submerge your entire pumpkin.

Spray the first color on top. It will spread out as you spray into a halo shape in the water.
Keep spraying and adding more colors till the surface of the water is totally filled with colors.

Once you’ve sprayed the surface, immediately dip your pumpkin.

It takes a little force to push the pumpkin below the water. It was hard for me to capture on camera, but once your pumpkin is totally dunked, you need to pull it up lifting off the paint from the surface of the water.

If there’s an area of the pumpkin that you’ve missed, you can dunk it back in and focus on that area. You may layer over top of a. section you’ve already covered, but because this is abstract and random, it’s hard to mess it up!

Remember when I said you needed gloves. This is why. I got the spray paint on my hand and it took a couple days for it totally to be off my hand. There was a lot of hand washing those two days. LOL.

Here’s what it looked like when I set up my blacklight. I was wanting the neon to really pop and pop it did! I am looking forward to putting this in my glowing decorations this Halloween!

Make your own paint pour pumpkin DIY

November 2, 2017 by Alexa Leave a Comment

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

How To Paint Your Own Pennywise Pumpkin

October 16, 2017 by Alexa Leave a Comment

This Halloween season, Pennywise, from the movie IT is the go-to movie to see. I’m seeing all kinds of articles on how you can rock this clown custom for Halloween 2017, but I thought I’d turn Pennywise into my kinda craft- a pumpkin, of course. Let me just tell you, taking the above pic was pretty amusing. Instead of scouting for models, I went scouting for gutters in my neighborhood. LOL. I think the end result turned out pretty sweet. And fun fact, I’ve never seen this movie or the original that all my friends were scared of when I was a child of the 90’s. I do recognize a viral character when I see it, and knew I had to get on the clown action.

What you’ll need:

– White medium-sized pumpkin
– Red, black, and white acrylic paints
– Tacky Glue
– Paintbrushes
– Red feather marabou boa
– Scissors

Before you begin: I painted the off-white pumpkin with white acrylic paint to give the clown a more pale complexion.

Next pull up a pic of Pennywise for reference…I did my project freehand, but you can plot yours out with pencil if you’d like.

I then painted my pumpkin as shown below…I started with a liner brush drawing the red on the lips, I then went back in around the lips adding outlines and shading. Around the grin, I added lines to accentuate.

Next I drew the red lines that go from the grin to above the eyes. After I did that, I added in more additional shading detail and started to draw the eyes and frown lines.

I finished up the face with additional shading and red eyes. For finishing touches, I added some chin and face shape definition. Also clean up any messy details with white paint after everything has dried. My last step was to mix a little glue and paint to make faux cracks and gritty details to the forehead and face. The final step is to cut, then glue on the feather boa to the top of the pumpkin in a horseshoe fashion.

This turned out pretty fun (and creepy). When I get into the zone painting, I realize how much I enjoy it.

Taking photos of this pumpkin may have been more fun than actually painting it. For this one, I hid the pumpkin in some bushes and peeked through to get this shot. Nothin’ quite like a creepy clown lurking in the shadows.

And I thought the dead grass and wooden fence at sunset made for a nice backdrop as well.

Let me know what you think of my pumpkin and if it creeps you out. And fun fact, I actually like clowns…I grew up with paintings of them in my room as a toddler. They were mainly the hobo and circus clowns type. I don’t know if I should watch this movie or not and change my perception.

If you love this project, share it with your friends, and check out this cute stop motion video I did using the steps above to create this DIY project. I made this little vid for the Darby Smart app! If you want ot make your own DIY vids easily using only your phone, give this app a try. Available now in the app store.

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Fall Shimmer Glitter Pumpkin Tutorial

September 2, 2013 by Alexa Leave a Comment

This pumpkin project is one of those that will last you from September to Thanksgiving! The colors and glitter shimmer just scream fall and all it takes are some of your favorite puffy paint colors and a steady hand.

What you need for this project:
– Pumpkins (any size will do)
– Tulip 3D Fabric Paints (gold metallic, gold glitter, pomegranate, copper, and red glitter)
– Foam Brush
– Plate or palette
– Soft cloth

Start off by squeezing some of the Tulip 3D paint in metallic gold onto the pumpkin and stem. Rub it off with a soft cloth. This will give the entire pumpkin a pretty metallic sheen.

Now make a flower shape on top of the pumpkin using your Tulip 3D Glitter paint.

In between each “petal” squeeze out another petal

Repeat this over the entire pumpkin. This will create a cool “scalloped” effect on the surface.

For added visual drama, I added vertical and horizontal paint strips inside each petal.

For the red mini pumpkin, I painted it with a coat of copper 3D paint mixed with pomegranate 3D paint. I love adding metallics to add sheen to my paint colors!

I then covered the surface with red glitter 3D paint leaves. The funny thing is that this pumpkin actually looks like a pomegranate too me (which means my fiance will like it…he’s obsessed with pomegranates!)

Here’s some photos of them when they dried. They turned out so shimmery!

Don’t forget to glitter your stems so they match the rest of the pumpkin!

I love the way the glitter dries!

This is so easy and has an amazing impact on display. I think the tone on tone effect really works here!

Until next time Swellions!

Alexa

Starry Night Pumpkin Painting Tutorial

August 13, 2013 by Alexa Leave a Comment

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

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The Thankful Pumpkin (Repeat)

November 13, 2009 by Alexa 2 Comments

Here’s a repeat project from last year that I made. It’s quick and simple…yeah, that’s me. And if you don’t want to use paint, you could use a silver or gold pen too!

The Thankful Pumpkin

Supplies:
– medium or large pumpkin
– Copper Pearl paint
– thin drafting tape (I used Rainbow Tape)
– newspaper
– damp cloth

Instructions:
1. Wipe off any dirty spots of pumpkin with cloth.
2. Spiral tape around pumpkin as a guideline for your writing.

3. Lay down newspaper, and using writer, write “I’m thankful for…” and then list things you are thankful for. You may need to do it in sections at a time, so not to smear your paint. Let dry.

Oh, and enjoy your pumpkin with family and friends!

Until next time Swellions,

Alexa

The Swell Designer

Random musings of a crazy, crafty, pop culture-obsessed girl!

Marbled Blacklight Pumpkin DIY

Make your own paint pour pumpkin DIY

How To Paint Your Own Pennywise Pumpkin

Fall Shimmer Glitter Pumpkin Tutorial

Starry Night Pumpkin Painting Tutorial

The Thankful Pumpkin (Repeat)