Pumpkin Crafts

We were crafty with our pumpkins, all from local farms, this year:

Here is 3 year old Brycen's masterpiece. He used glow-in-the-dark eyes, which he thought were amazing. He might not be too artsy, but the kid loves science. 

We did these pumpkins a while back, when a friend was visiting. The striped pipe cleaners were a great addition to the "monster look."

My mom cut out the mouth and plugged in vampire teeth. 

Here is my monster pumpkin, minutes before it rolled off the table and hit the ground so hard it left blue stains on the cement.

My mom hot glued bulgy eyes to this monster pumpkin. 

We did carve a pumpkin too! I am going to make Brycen a book about this pumpkin, from finding it at the pumpkin patch to its status as a Jack O'lantern.

Adorable Pinterest idea using black felt.

I saw a Pinterest idea where someone put dot stickers all over a pumpkin. You know the kind of stickers people use to mark prices at a yard sale or garage sale? Then, the directions said to spray paint the pumpkin and peel off the stickers, revealing the orange pumpkin:

Fail. 

I was going to just paint over the dots in orange, but then I saw a cuter idea in a magazine while at chemo last week.

First I spray painted the failed orange dot pumpkin, and a smaller pumpkin too:

I was just going to use acrylic paint, but I had already purchased the spray paint, and it leaves a much shinier finish.

I cut off the lid to the BIGGER pumpkin and took out the seeds and guts. I spray painted around the edges of the top.

Meanwhile, I took SMALLER pumpkin and gave it goggly eyes, pipe cleaner whiskers and felt ears. I also painted on a pink nose.

It is hard to see, but there was a gap when I placed the cat head onto the body:

So we added an orange ribbon bow!

Much better! If we were real ambitious we could have found a long gourd and spray painted black for a tail. But we felt we were done. Definitely can be described more as cute and handsome rather than scary or spooky!