Halloween is almost here! I find myself a little behind schedule this year. I always mean to really turn out the decor, but costume projects and life's hectic pace often derail me.
But it's not too late! You can whip up some fun pumpkins to add a little new All Hallow's Eve fun to the house without taking too much prep time.
Lace to the rescue! I love playing with lace. I have fond memories of draping it over things as a kid and marveling at the way it obscured them but also revealed new designs. Why not turn that magical transformative power loose on a few pumpkins?
For my first pumpkin, I wanted to wrap it with a piece of charcoal lake that looks a little like cobwebs. To calculate the size of the lace circle I'd need to wrap my pumpkin, I first measured around the fattest part of the pumpkin.
I cut a circle a bit bigger than my measurement. Since the pumpkin was 18 inches from one side of the stem around the bottom to the other side of the stem, I cut a circle 20 inches in diameter. Then I ran a quick running stitch around the outside of the circle.
As my circle gathered from the stitches, I snugged it up around the pumpkin.
There was a little slack in my lace once I pulled it up around the pumpkin, so I ran another round of stitching around the stem to tighten it up.
Then, I started working my way up the excess lace, stitching in circles around it. This created a fun, uneven stem out of the lace edges.
And here's my lacy pumpkin! This is a great treatment to do on real pumpkins as well, since you can unwrap them and use them for baking once you're done using them for decor. If you're careful with removal, you can also keep the lace and use it again next autumn.
It being the Halloween season, I can't stay away from spray paint. It's like a staple of creative fun for me. This time I used another piece of the cobwebby lace and just wrapped it around a white pumpkin, securing it at the base with a rubber band. Then I sprayed black paint over the whole thing and let it sit for a little while.
When the paint was dry, I peeled my lace off the pumpkin and had a super groovy piece of pumpkin art. I like to think that if Dr. Frankenstein had decorated his lab with pumpkins, this one would be right at home there. (It's truly one of my fave pumpkins of all time.)
I spray painted another pumpkin using a different lace as a stencil. The textile is a little too thick to wrap around a pumpkin, so I worked in sections, draping a small piece over one area of the pumpkin at a time and then working my way around as the paint dried. I think if you started with a black pumpkin and used brown and copper-colored paints, you could end up with a cool leopard look! I love the swirls on this one.
I hope all of you have a safe and happy Halloween, filled with fun and creativity and all the delicious treats you can handle. Happy haunting!
