Halloween Crafts & Pinterest Challenge

Last Christmas you all got to see the crafty ornaments Brandon and I put together for our tree.  As poor students then we had nearly no money to be decorating our tree for the holidays (though I did manage to get some nice purchased ornaments from Canadian Tire also), so instead we busted out the craft supplies and used our imaginations.  Brandon got super crafty.  You can check those out here.

Because we won't be putting up our own Christmas tree this year (and instead enjoying our parents' trees), I wanted to get crafty some other way. Then I spotted this cute DIY monogrammed pumpkin from Pinterest:

Originally found here

As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be super easy for me to make and I could appeal to my Eco-Warrior self and use a fake pumpkin to reuse for future years.

Around the same time, over on Young House Love (one of my favourite blogs!), Sherry was announcing their seasonal Pinterest Challenge (completely unofficial). So why not participate in that and show others what I achieved?

My end product isn't exactly the same as the above inspiration, and we had originally thought to make 3 other little pumpkins to finish off his (and soon to be my) last name, Webb, but time got away from me. So for now we've got this:

To create this monogrammed pumpkin was quite simple. To start, I went to our local discount department store (after scouring the dollar stores for weeks) to purchase a small faux pumpkin. Originally, it looked something like this:

 

Then, using some Antique White spray paint, I coated the pumpkin. The fake pumpkin soaked up more paint than a real one would, and stayed wet for a bit longer but it worked out fine in the end. Although we did have a painting mishap...

Poor Waldo

 After the spray paint had dried, I looked for a font I liked and printed out a large W (on scrap paper of course). I cut the letter out using a craft knife and scissors and taped then traced the letter in pencil onto the pumpkin. I removed the makeshift template, and took out some black crafting paint to fill it in. After some time and a couple coats of paint, we got the final product. I'd still like to seal it with a clear spray to keep it looking the same over the years if possible. But for this year it looks great.

Check out the other Pinterest Challenge posts and Sherry's project here, as well as the other hosts', Katie, Carmel, and Sarah.