Pumpkin Makeover

Lisa Cestkowski
by Lisa Cestkowski
Over the years, I've collected a hodgepodge of plastic and Styrofoam pumpkins and gourds, mostly from thrift stores and garage sales. This year, I decided to give them a makeover.
Here's the basket of pumpkins and gourds that I started with. None of them really matched, and most of them looked very fake.
I basecoated the pieces with gesso to start. (I used gesso just because I had a bottle of it on hand from a previous project; white craft paint or primer would have worked just as well.)
I liked the white, but I wanted some variation amongst the pieces, so I decoupaged newspaper strips on a few.
The newspaper was a little hard to work with on the curves of the pumpkins, so I decided to scan a newspaper page into my computer and print it out on tissue paper. (I taped the tissue paper to a piece of regular 8 1/2" by 11" paper to get it to feed through my printer.) It was much easier to decoupage the tissue paper on than it was to work with the real newspaper.
Then I remembered I had some tissue paper with faux handwriting on it, so I dug that out of my stash. I cut that into strips and decoupaged it onto some of the pumpkins and gourds.
I dripped and splattered some beige and black paint on some of the remaining white pumpkins. I also wound jute twine around the stems.
Here's the "before" of an old gold crackle pumpkin...
... and here's the "after."
Here's the "before" of a very-fake-looking orange pumpkin....
... and here's the "after."
I love the updated look.
Lisa Cestkowski
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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 2 comments
  • Trixie63 Trixie63 on Oct 18, 2015
    I love this. Since we've an empty nest I don't decorate like before but I could just get all my old ones out, use your treatment and tuck them amongst the ironstone on the mantle. Thank you!
  • Hannah V Hannah V on Oct 19, 2015
    Pretty ideas!
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