The cute pumpkin craft today is brought to you by Amie, of Kitty Cats and Airplanes. She's the kind of blogger that always makes you smile, even though you're totally jealous of her creative genius. Go check out her blog, you'll see what I mean. When I saw this pumpkin post she did, I knew I needed here!
Hello Bugaboo readers! I am honored to have been asked to be here today, Kim is pretty much the bomb diggity and I had to jump on this awesome series!! Oh, I'm Amie by the way.
(I'm the short one. The tall, dark, and handsome fellow is my hubby, David)
I blog over in my own corner of the internet called {
Kitty Cats and Airplanes} I do crazy stuff over there, mostly craft related. My mega crating ADD keeps everything interesting, one week I'll sew like there is no tomorrow, the next I'll glue gun so much I lose my fingerprints, and the next I'll be knee deep in felt. It's fun.
Besides Halloween, pumpkins are my favorite thing about fall. Eating them, carving them, decorating with them, taking pictures of them, you know, all that fun stuff. This is one of my favorite pumpkin crafts for a zillion and one reasons.
- It's FREE
- Hello a million colors!
- Very customizeable to your current home decor
- Did I mention it's free?
- It's quick.
- Free.
It all happened by accident. David and I were at Home Depot looking for a part to fix a drawer. I wasn't all that interested, so I meandered over to the paint chips. I've always loved seeing so many different colors and reading the fantastic names they come up with! (One of my favorites was "cranberry zing.") I grabbed a particularly vibrant orange and read the name...
I was practically floored. Of course!! A paint chip pumpkin patch! I grabbed several of them so I could go home and make....
A paint chip pumpkin! I've seen tons of paper pumpkins on the internet, and with vibrant colors and stiffer paper, I thought paint chips would work perfectly! A simple and FREE craft!
Want to make some of your own? (Trust me, you're going to make "some!")
You will need:
- Orange and green paint chips (FREE from Home Depot!)
- Glue gun (or stapler, brads, tacky glue, whatever you have will work!)
- Ruler
- Scissors
- Pencil
The first thing you'll need to do is cut your samples into 1-inch wide stripes. I used 8 per pumpkin. You don't have to spell out your name with them, I was just having fun. :)
This next part is the trickiest of the entire project. Since the paint chips are so much stiffer than regular paper, they need a little help curving. Hold each end of the strip, and pull it tightly against the edge of a table. (In the picture I'm not pulling very tightly, it was just to show the technique.) Pull it back and forth against the edge of the table several times (ok, like 30-40 times, but it only takes a few seconds!) until the strip has a little bit of curve to it.
This is what you'll end up with. See how they're nice and curved by themselves?
Now to assemble the pumpkin! Make sure that glue gun is on! Take two strips and line them up perpendicularly. (You know, create a right angle using the two strips?) Dab a little bit of glue on them and stick them together.
To make everything line up nicely, it's helpful to always work with the side perpendicular to the one you just finished, not the one opposite of it. Glue the next one down...
And the next one to get a cross shape. Once you have that, you need to attach the tops together.
Working one at a time, glue each one together, still working with perpendicular strips.
Tadah!!! You can leave it like this if you want, but I didn't want to see the bar codes and writing on the inside, so I added some more strips.
I just added strips to the open sides of the pumpkin and glued them to the top. With the basic shape already done, this will be much easier.
Huzzah! We almost have a pumpkin!
I added a green star to it, and then realized that I'm making a pumpkin, not a tomato. Stupid me! Don't add a star!
You do need to add a stem though. Cut a small rectangle out of the green paint chip (I'm talking a centimeter wide and an inch tall!) Fold it in half.
Fold the two ends under, making a triangle shape. This just gives the glue something to stick to.
Cut a thinner, longer strip of green and coil it around a pencil to get a spring like shape.
Glue them both on and you're done! Make several more so your first pumpkin isn't lonely.
Admire your new, FREE, fall decor! And remember how I said they were very customizeable?
"Buttered sweet corn" on "Cinderella's dress." Aren't those the coolest paint names?
This one was fun, I cut up two different reddish chips and arranged them all in order from darkest to lightest (the lighting doesn't look right in the picture, stupid basement.)
It came out to this. It's one of my favorites, I wish I could show you how cool it is in pictures!
My little pumpkin patch. They're now scattered all over my bookshelf! I love them, I smile when I look at them.
Thanks for having me Kim! Happy pumpkin-ing.
Super cute, right? I know there are lots of pumpkins made out of strips around the internet, but the allure of "free" along with the varying shades of one color have me totally sold. Thanks Amie! Go check her out, her blog won't disappoint.
Want to play along? Don't forget to link up your pumpkin ideas!
*Be sure to check just below for all the fun parties I link to!
Adorable pumpkins! ;-)
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