Pumpkin Time

Ah yes, its that time of year again where I normally get out my pumpkin carving tools and start hacking away at 10 pumpkins to help decorate my friend Karen's house, in preparation for our annual party. But this year I thought I would try something new. So out went the knives and in came the spray paint and glitter.

Obviously I thought it was going to be a doddle, and if I had left it at just spray painting them, then yes it would have been a breeze. But then again when did I ever take the easy route?

My idea was to spray each pumpkin with one of four colours - black, white, gold and red. Then prepare a stencil of a spider's web or an owl or bat, stick this onto the pumpkin and then spray over in another colour. This was trickier than I thought.

At first my idea was to draw the image out on paper - but how to stick them onto the surface of the pumpkin without glue? All the edges needed to be stuck down so no bleeding occurs during the spray painting process. To combat this I used masking take to stick the edges of the template down, but this was fiddly. So I thought why not make the templates out bands of masking tape stuck together? Great idea, not so great in practice. When I peeled away the bats, they simply took the underlay of colour with them. The effect looks quite charming (see below) but it wasn't going to work on a large scale.

The same thing happened with the little circle stickers I had bought from Rymans. So instead of putting them on and peeling them off, I decided to spray paint them and stick them on after and I'm loving the result!

Inspired by the fantastic Yayoi Kusama, they look like pumpkins that Louis Vuitton would be proud of! I even added brass tacks to some to create a polka dot effect and finished off the look by brushing the stalks with pva glue and dousing them in gold glitter.

I then decided if my silhouettes weren't going to work, then why not decoupage? I plucked some Lady's Mantle leaves from my garden, spray painted them and when dry, coated both the top and the underside in a watered down PVA solution. Quite baroque.

I also like keeping the wonderful textures and shades of these decorative gourds but enhancing them with some more glitter stalks. I put them in a glass bowl on my kitchen table in lieu of freshly cut flowers and they look fantastic.