Pumpkins!

Here are a few photos of some craft pumpkins for sale at a local gift shop, which I had a lot of fun creating. For the pumpkins with images I copied from Webster's Pictorial Dictionary, I experimented with staining the copies to make them look aged. Arranging them was like a putting a puzzle together. I did one for birds, one for creepy crawlies, and a few for spooky and odd things in general. For Edgar, I stained the words of his famous poem The Raven
and pieced together clip art for his image in the frame. The tricky part that required a lot of patience (I had a first failed attempt) is covering the image with three layers of Modge Podge and then (carefully!) getting the back wet and peeling off the paper. That gives the see-through effect so the words show behind him. Then the finishing touch of a little nest on top with feathers and a perching raven! For the two pumpkins with the leaves, I used the Eric Carle method of painting tissue paper and then cutting and collaging them onto the pumpkins.



These are faces that I normally paint on real pumpkins (I did lots for a grocery store this year, another blog with photos of them soon) but this was my first attempt at painting them on the artificial pumpkins. I've been painting these faces for many years, and it is always a little sad to me that the real ones don't last.



While walking through a store with Halloween decorations, I saw this tree and got the idea that my pumpkins would look so cute as miniature ornaments, and it was another way to paint my faces on pumpkins that would "keep." So I got some Crayola air dry clay, a little wire for the pumpkin bucket "handles" to hang them on the tree. I am so pleased with how they turned out!