Pumpkin-Palooza 5

As my final pumpkin project of 2016, I transformed another Dollar Tree pumpkin with Mod Podge, coffee filters, rickrack and a few buttons. (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 that's good enough for me. However you want to spell it, I'm talking about that wavy/zigzag ribbon trim.)

Let's get started. I had a Dollar Tree pumpkin that I purchased with faux flowers, leaves and an acorn already attached to the top with some hot glue. There was nothing especially wrong with those decorative elements, but I wanted to do something different with the pumpkin. 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 #4 cone coffee filters that I needed to use up (story on that subject coming soon), and I tore a few of the filters 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 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 spots. 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 into 9 pieces of equal length - long enough to cover the ribs of the pumpkin from top to bottom. 

I attached each length of rickrack to the top of the pumpkin with a dot of hot glue - positioning the pieces so they would align with the ribs of the pumpkin.

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 the rickrack aligned 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. 

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 use white coffee filters on a larger pumpkin next year to display next to 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 things I already had on hand. I'm calling it my Leftover Wreath. That will be coming up soon on my blog. Plus, I still have more fall color photos to show you.

All is well in the Keweenaw.