Glitzy Faux Pumpkin

Hi Everyone,
I have been dying to glam up a faux pumpkin for ages but haven't been able to source a large one locally so I went ahead and used a small one that I have had for a few years which I bought in a Euro Store for a couple of euro.

First I painted the foam pumpkin in cream - two coats.  I then shaded the creases of the pumpkin using some watered down gold paint. When dry I glued on some gold leaves and painted up some cardboard motifs and glued them into place on the top of the pumpkin.  I added two pieces of gold ribbon and then I dabbed the top of the pumpkin with pva glue and sprinkled on the gold glitter.

I think the result is really lovely and there are lots of possibilities for more pumpkins - stripes, spots, découpage....

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial, please leave a comment below or send me an email through the link on the right hand side if you have any questions.

Bye for now

Autumn Wreath DIY

As this was my first time making a wreath I wasn't quite sure what kind I wanted to do - Halloween or Autumn? The Halloween wreaths that I had seen around seemed like a whole lot of hard work requiring difficult to get materials and as I just wanted to keep this one simple I went with the Autumn wreath - plus I had most of the makings of it to hand.

I bought a cheap euro-store Halloween wreath and removed all of the things that were stuck to it (a scarecrow and some plastic leaves) as I couldn't find a vine wreath anywhere else and that's what I wanted for this project.

That done, I made the two large bows from upholstery webbing that I had in the house, using a simple bow tutorial that I found online.  I bought some faux mini pumpkins/gourds (which also came in handy for the Autumnal Centrepiece in my last post). I added some straw that I had also pulled off the original wreath and glued everything on using a hot glue gun.  Two more tiny bows which I made with orange scrap ribbon from my collection and it was done.

Thanks for looking and good luck making your own Autumn wreath.

Bye for now

Have a Scary Halloween!

Witches, Spells, Cats and Brooms,

Pumpkins, Ghosts, Monsters and Tombs,

Ghouls, Zombies, Bats and Gore,

Halloween is here once more

In my last post I promised I would show you some more of my Halloween craft creations.  These are two mini plaquettes which I made using up some off cuts that I had left over from some recent work that I had done.  I just painted them up with acrylics and then used some cute vintage style prints that I found on The Graphics Fairy website (I love this site, it's a great source for free vintage graphics). To complete the look I added some holes and fed through some matching ribbon for hanging. 

Click to see larger picture

Click to see larger picture

I love this vintage Halloween look.  Hope you enjoyed my post, don't forget to stop by again later in the week when I will be posting another easy to make plaquette.

Halloween Countdown

Every year I post a Halloween craft and this year is no different.  You may remember the Scary Lanterns and the Painted Halloween Plates that I posted in previous years and which are still being used today and look just as good as when I first made them.  With only 6 days left, I am running a little late this year but I have been working hard creating some cute Halloween wall decor.  This year it's in the form of plaquettes large and small.  Today I am posting on one of the bigger ones.  I will post again later in the week on the others

For this one, I used a range of media from acrylics, tissue paper and print paper to sharpies etc. and ended up with this flying witch wall plaquette for my front door.  It has been given several coats of varnish so that it's weatherproof but this would look equally as nice as an indoor decoration.  It got the thumbs up from my DS so that's the main thing!!  Hope you enjoyed looking, let me know what you think by leaving a comment.  Have a scary Halloween!

Happy Halloween

For anyone who missed my earlier posts here are all three painted Halloween plates.  Baked for 30 minutes at 150 deg.  Happy Halloween!

Halloween Painted Plates

I loved the idea of plate painting for Halloween when it was brought to my attention recently and I decided to give it a go.  It's a great way to spend some quality time with the kids and keeps them busy for ages.  I picked up some €1 white plates for this project but you could use any colour. I painted mine with acrylics and they need to be baked in the oven briefly to make them durable and safe to use (more on this later).  This is the first of my efforts - I'll be posting more in the coming days so make sure to keep watch.

Painted Halloween Plate