Pumpkin Painting!

I was inspired by an October Family Circle magazine cover to create a fun and festive Halloween centerpiece for my kitchen table.  As you know, I don't have kids yet, but I do enjoy being creative and decorating according to a theme.  This magazine cover showed a twist on traditional pumpkin decorating ~ painting instead of carving.  In less than an hour and a half {start to finish}, and for less than $20 {including materials that I can use again}, I created my own unique decor.  So if you're looking to skip the pumpkin-carving mess and do a little something different this year, read on.

I grabbed six mini pumpkins {three orange and three white} at Whole Foods at 75 cents each.  {I hear the price of pumpkins is high this year ~ I haven't bought pumpkins in several years, so I don't know this for a fact...but $4.50 for six little pumpkins sounds good to me!}  Mini pumpkins aren't edible but do last a long time before starting to rot, so you could display these for the full month of October without worry.  I debated grabbing a sugar pumpkin as well to have one larger {but not too large} pumpkin to paint too, but ended up just going with the minis.  You could paint any size pumpkin though.

I got four containers of all-purpose acrylic paint at Michael's, where they were on sale for 50 cents each {I got black, white, orange, and silver sparkle}.  I didn't have any small paintbrushes at home so I also purchased a value package of brushes for $6.99 {if only I'd had one of their frequent 40% off one item coupons!}, knowing that I'll be able to use these time and again for other craft projects.


I knew that I would want to display the pumpkins on top of dark, drapey fabric on my table.  I swung by Ocean State Job Lot {for those who don't live in the area ~ Ocean State is a bargain store that sells past-season, overstock, discontinued, and irregular products.  It is not pretty or fancy, but it does serve a purpose}.  I found a four-pack of chocolate brown cloth napkins for $2.00, which is perfect ~ I can use them to decorate for Thanksgiving too!

Drawing inspiration from both the Family Circle magazine and from my own little imagination, I painted the pumpkins in different ways ~ some got stripes painted along the vertical grooves in the pumpkins; some got polka-dots; one got the word "Boo!" scrawled across it; and two were painted black.  I covered one black-painted pumpkin with little white flecks, and the other I used a key to scratch lines into to reveal the white pumpkin color underneath.

{After paint dries, gently scratch lines with a key for a cool effect}

After letting the pumpkins dry {which did not take long}, I set up my table display.  I covered the table with a plain gray tablecloth and laid a Pottery Barn Kids Halloween table runner across it {a gift from my mother-in-law years ago}.  I stacked  two empty plastic food-storage containers upside down in the center of the table {to allow my display to have different levels}.

Then I draped one of the cloth napkins on top of the containers, bunching it up in different areas until I liked the way it looked.

Last but not least, I put the pumpkins into place, added two skeleton-decorated votive holders, and voila!  A quick and easy Halloween centerpiece.

Happy painting, dolls!

xoxo

Bean