Black and White painted and stamped faux pumpkins tutorial

Hi guys! If you read my last post, yes..I forgot to take my camera to the Fall Festival! I am the worst blogger ever! It was really nice, fun, and yummy though! Today I am sharing some pumpkins that I just completed. I am SO slow on the bandwagon that these aren't even going in my Etsy shop, they are just going up to my local booth at Main Street Antiques (Sweetwater TN).Let me say, I am not much of a traditional orange pumpkin gal..but these would mix in with orange pumpkins nicely! I got these faux pumpkins at Walmart..they were about $5 each. You could certainly use real pumpkins, but I wanted something that lasted! If I was using real pumpkins, I would pick some with  flatter sides than these deeply lobed faux ones. These do not lend themselves to writing words on (which I had originally planned to do) I felt the deep ribs would throw off the text too much.

I hand painted these as the weather here lately (rainy) did not let me spray paint them..which would have been quicker. I'd use the spray paint for plastic if I was going that route. These have a coat of gesso and a couple coats of glossy white acrylic paint. If I did it again, I'd do TWO coats of gesso then the two coats of paint. To this one, I freehanded on some chevrons in black acrylic craft paint. I used regular but again, I'd use glossy if I did it again. I added a coat of Mod-Podge when the black paint was dry to make everything glossy. I just started at the top making a shallow V shaped strip on each rib working my way all around. Then I made another series of shallow Vs below the first ring at the width I wanted my chevrons to be. I then filled them in with paint. The I left a white stripe and added another black one working my way down the pumpkin. You could probably use a pencil to mark your chevrons before you paint, but it was just as easy to freehand it.

 For this one I stamped white tissue paper with stamps and StazOn ink. NOTE you want to put something UNDER the tissue paper to block the excess ink or you will be like me with inked shapes all over your dining room table! You cut out the motifs trimming close to the image and glue them on with Mod Podge. I just painted the Mod Podge right were the motif was going, placed it and smoothed over with more Mod Podge.

This one has a free hand painted vining motif...basic but pretty!

  This one has more stamped tissue paper motifs. You could also add text this way. I have had success running tissue paper ( use nice quality or it may tear) through my inkjet printer and printing online motifs, scanned images and computer generated text onto the tissue paper. You have to iron it to a piece of freezer paper cut to the same size as regular printer paper (8.5 x 11). I have found if you iron a regular piece of printer paper to the freezer paper and remove it and re-iron and remove it a couple times, it cuts down on the tackiness of the freezer paper and you can remove your tissue paper easier with less tearing. I have also heard of people using spray adhesive and a piece of transparency film  to add the tissue paper to for the same effect (haven't tried that yet). Play around with it! Stamps are really easy, but somewhat limiting as to what is available to print. Edited to add: You'll need to mist your printed tissue paper with a couple light coats of spray sealer/varnish. I use Krylon matte varnish. It keeps the ink jet motifs from bleeding when Mod Podged..

 I also glued on a few rhinestones for a bit of sparkle..these are the scrapbooking type. As I was making these to sell and didn't want to end up with a $40 pumpkin, I held back a bit. But if you are making these to keep..go wild! Add glitter, rolled paper roses (book page or scrapbook paper) lace, ribbon,feather boa bits, handmade tags..you name it!

I think they turned out pretty cool! Til next time! Julia