EASY Coffee Filter Pumpkin

Easy
Glue coffee filters to a dollar store pumpkin? Pumpkin + Mod Podge + coffee filters + buttons + rickrack = another inexpensive fall pumpkin craft. (Before I'm attacked by the spelling police, I want to acknowledge that rickrack is also spelled ricrac, rick rack, and ric rac. It varies by manufacturer. My dictionary prefers rickrack, so I'm sticking with that. However you spell it, I'm talking about that wavy/zigzag ribbon trim.)
Let's get started. I already had a Dollar Tree pumpkin that I purchased with faux flowers, leaves and an acorn attached to the top with some hot glue. There was nothing wrong with those decorative elements, but I wanted to do something different with the pumpkin this year. I began by removing the elements that had been glued on. That left me with a plain pumpkin with a hole on top, but I was going to cover the hole with a stem anyway. I had some brown coffee filters on hand, and I tore a few of them into smaller pieces.
I used a small foam brush to paint Mod Podge onto the pumpkin, grabbed a piece of torn coffee filter and pressed it onto the glue. Repeat - overlapping the filters in some areas. Repeat again. You get the drift. After most of the pumpkin was covered, I painted on more Mod Podge over the coffee filters. I was going for a mottled appearance on this pumpkin, so I was really liberal with the Mod Podge - making it thicker in some places. I placed the pumpkin on a foam cup to dry.
After drying for a few hours, I turned the pumpkin over and repeated the process on the bottom of the pumpkin and let it dry completely overnight. Here's how it looked the following day - mottled. Yes, sometimes a plan actually comes together!
Next, I cut some rickrack trim (Walmart) into 9 pieces of equal length - long enough to cover the ribs of the pumpkin from top to bottom. (My pumpkin had 9 ribs.)
I attached each length of rickrack to the top of the pumpkin with a dot of hot glue - making sure to align each piece with a rib.
After all the pieces were attached at the top, I flipped the pumpkin over and attached each piece to the bottom of the pumpkin with another dot of hot glue - again making sure to align the pieces with the ribs.
A dot of glue at the top and bottom of each piece of rickrack was all that was necessary. The bottom could be finished more completely if you have plans to expose it. I did not.
This is how the pumpkin looked at this point.
Now for a stem. I used a stack of 3 buttons attached with hot glue for mine.
I could have added a bow or some other embellishment at this point, but I chose to stop there.
Less is sometimes more.
I think I'll try white coffee filters on a larger pumpkin next year to display near this one.
I have one more fall project up my sleeve, but it's not a pumpkin. It's a wreath I made entirely out of bits of things I already had on hand. I'm calling it my Leftover Wreath. That will be coming up soon on my blog.
Julie@Cut Off in the Keweenaw
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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