Faux Stoneware Pumpkins

Wren’s Little Nest
by Wren’s Little Nest
5 Materials
$10
1 Hour
Easy

I have recently been seeing so many tutorials of creating faux stoneware vases, by using paint mixed with baking soda and then painted on to glass jars. I love the look and texture that this technique gives, and I thought that it could look absolutely gorgeous to transform some cheap dollar store pumpkins. I was never a fan of the bright orange plasticky look that they had, but now that they have had a mini makeover I love them!

To begin this project you will need some fake pumpkins. I picked these up at the dollar store and they are super light weight and made of a hard foam.

I gave the pumpkins a super quick coat of primer to get rid of the shine and make sure I wouldn’t have any bleed through of orange in the future. You don’t need to be perfectly even with this. I like to use sewing pins as little feet to keep my pumpkins from sticking to anything as they dry.

Mix one tablespoon of baking soda into some regular latex paint. The more baking soda you add the more texture you will get, but don’t add to much that your paint turns into a paste and you can’t actually paint with it. I found that 1tbsp baking soda to 2tbsp paint worked great.

You can see here the texture that the baking soda gives. It l dries to a matte finish and it feels exactly like a piece of stoneware.

I used two different colours of paint. For each pumpkin that I painted I added a small amount of the darker paint and mixed it to create a slight colour variation between the pumpkins.

To add a bit more dimension to the pumpkins I painted a line in each crease using a darker shade of paint. To complete the look I used some gold craft paint to paint the stems. I am so happy with how these turned out, and I think that they look very elegant and classy now.

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Frequently asked questions
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3 of 8 questions
  • June June on Sep 16, 2020

    I love this idea. My question is: After you add more of the different colours Did you have to add more of the baking soda and if so how much extra did you have to put in??

  • Susie Fuentes Susie Fuentes on Sep 20, 2020

    Would this possibly work with acrylic paint?

  • Jan piner Jan piner on Sep 12, 2023

    Did u address the origin or the stems?

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3 of 40 comments
  • Shelly Moore Shelly Moore on Sep 20, 2020

    I'm gonna try this!!! They look Great! Love the gold on the stems! Very Classy and elegant. I'm thinking of All Kinds of things I can paint with this!

    • Wren’s Little Nest Wren’s Little Nest on Sep 20, 2020

      Yes for sure! This project is so versatile! Please feel free to share what you end up creating, I would love to see 😊

  • Kathleen Vanblarcom Kathleen Vanblarcom on Sep 23, 2021

    These are beautiful. I definitely will try. Selling my home and need ideas to stage this will go great in my dinning room. Thx

    what do you have in the vase?

    my table is large ( length as well as width) so I need to do a grouping)

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