After Christmas, Halloween is my next favorite holiday. I've been coveting the vintage Halloween look for years and decided this time to create some of my own. I got the inspiration for the pumpkin in the 2011 Holiday Crafts magazine from Better Homes and Gardens, but used my imagination to create the others! I'm by no means a sculptor, but it gives me an adult version of Play-Do when Fender and I play!
Here's what you'll need:
aluminum foil
air dry clay (I like Papercraft)
toothpicks
24 gauge wire in black
18 gauge wire in silver
18 gauge wire in silver
acrylic paints in orange, brown, black and white
Roll the foil into a ball - you can do any size you want, but I did about a golf-ball size since it needs to be small enough for table decor.
Then cover the foil in a thin layer of clay. You need to roll it around in your hands a lot to make it smooth. If any foil starts showing, you can just cover it up with a bit more clay.
For the pumpkin add a stem at the top
Using the cap of a sharpie make two eyes
Then with a toothpick carve out a nose. After you've carved it, you can use your toothpick to smooth it down by pressing the side of the toothpick into the lines you've dug out.
Carve out the mouth, making large teeth. Press down the lines with the side of your tooth pick to smooth them out. But the more rustic looking now the more vintage looking it will be in the end.
Add details to the eyes and stem. I used a Bic pen end to make the smaller circle inside the larger one.
Add a curl of black 24 gauge wire to the stem and make a hole in the top for your 24 gauge place-card wire Now let it dry for a few days depending on your weather!
Once dry you can paint the pumpkin orange, his eyes and teeth white, stem brown and nose black.
At this point the pumpkin looks brand new and needs to be aged a bit! Mix 1 part brown paint with 1 part water to make a really loose solution to paint the entire pumpkin with. Before it completely dries, wipe it mostly off, making sure that the brown color stays in the grooves, giving it a weathered, vintage look!
My favorite is this witch with a spider hanging from her hat!
