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!

Rainbow Rhinestone Pumpkin DIY

September 13, 2018 by Alexa 3 Comments

Forget the orange and black pumpkin decor this year and really do it up BIG! Cause nothin’ says BIG like unloading a freakin’ rainbow of color onto a mini pumpkin. I’m kinda obsessed with this little DIY cause it combines both sparkle and color together for an absolute feast for the eyes. And this is something you can make in just under and hour. Let me show you how it is done!

What you need (links below include affiliate links)
— Mini pumpkin
— Paint in a rainbow of colors
— Mini rhinestones (with adhesive backing)
— Paintbrush and paint palette

I have to admit something before I begin telling you how to make this pumpkin……it is so insanely easy to make. The majority of the work involves painting on the paint and letting it dry. I went around the pumpkin, separating the colored sections by the ribs. Go around the pumpkin once, then go around it again to get two solid coats. Let dry thoroughly. Make sure to turn over and finish off the bottom (or don’t worry about it if the bottom isn’t going to show).

Next, use the coordinating color rhinestone sticker and position in the coordinating color section. This is literally a pull off and stick process, but you will want to make sure you space them in random polka dot style all around around your pumpkin.

And here’s the finished result. SWOON!!!!!!

This is a super fun craft to make for your rainbow-obsessed friends to give as a fall gift for their office or home.

If you aren’t a fan of rainbow, consider painting your pumpkin a solid color, then adding tone on tone rhinestone dots. You could also use a complementary color for fun contrast!

I’d love it if you checked out my other rainbow pumpkin creations…

How to Make a Rainbow Glitter Pumpkin
Rainbow Crayon Drip Pumpkin
Crayon Scribble Pumpkin
Glitter Drip 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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4 Ways to Decorate a Mini Pumpkin

September 24, 2013 by Alexa Leave a Comment

There’s a lot of ways you can decorate the average mini pumpkin and here’s just a few fun ways I’ve compiled if you are wanting a fun project to entertain yourself or the kiddos for a crafty afternoon project. If it’s not easy, I generally don’t do it, so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make these (but if you are, that’s pretty cool…I’ve never met a crafty rocket scientist). OK, here we go!

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Easy Typography Pumpkins

September 4, 2013 by Alexa Leave a Comment

Here’s a little fun inspiration for all those type lovers out there! Why not turn your passion for all things font into some cool typographic pumpkins? The reason I like this project is that is is quite possibly the easiest way to make a statement without having to try at all. This is pretty much my life motto too…do as little work possible and get big results is what I say!

So all you have to do for these orange fellas is randomly apply vinyl stickers that you get on a sheet from your arts and craft store. You could try scrapbooking stickers as well if you are going for a little bit more whimsy and less Helvetica. For the mini pumpkin, I simply cut up a black and white measuring tape I got at JoAnn and added applied it with some of my favorite go-to glue…Aleene’s Tacky Glue. I snipped it to contour up with the stem of the pumpkin.

And BOOYAH! There you have it, some fun, cheap pumpkins that will make a bold addition to your porch or mantel. I love that it’s the classic Halloween colors mixed with letters. Maybe I should call these FONT-O-LANTERNS? Hmm, whatcha think?

Until next time Swellions!

Alexa

30+ Swell & Fun Pumpkin Decorating Ideas

October 10, 2012 by Alexa Leave a Comment

Pumpkins continue to be my very favorite thing to craft! I really could decorate them all year long, it’s too bad the season is only a few months long. I thought I’d share some of my favorites in this handy dandy list, everything from my most popular of all time – the Crayon Drip pumpkin to some of my sentimental favorites like the Pumpkin man box. I think there’s a little something for everyone, from traditional to wacky! I hope to even have more to add to this list by season’s end, so check back 🙂 See any ideas you’d like to try? Until next time Swellions!

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Decorate a colorful pumpkin in 5 minutes!

August 30, 2012 by Alexa 1 Comment

I had one of those moments today where I just had to get up from my computer screen. My eyes and body was getting so tired and I needed to take a mini break.

So I walked into our design studio and saw a pile of ripped fabric scraps. Each of the ripped scraps were about 2 feet long and were in assorted colors. I picked four colors of fabric and alternated them around a small faux pumpkin. On the top, I tied it into a big tattered bow at the top of the stem. Since I did this in 5 minutes, I didn’t really use any glue to hold it together permanently, but I may go back and add a little Aleene’s Tacky Glue to attach it to the pumpkin. The bow covers up the stem, but if you were using a real pumpkin, you could just pull the stem off if that bothered you.

I actually think this would look really cute next to a red painted pumpkin and a turquoise painted pumpkins (like these from my friend Jen of Tatertots & Jello). I love the idea of non-traditional Halloween pumpkins, don’t you?