Create Stylish Halloween Decor With Painted & Pimped Up Pumpkins!
With seasonal decor I always like it to be made with natural elements, rather than being too plastic-fantastic. Halloween you can go a little bit craaayy-zeee, but I still want the decor to look stylish.
This year for Halloween I decided that I'd make the most of the steps leading up to my front door and experiment with painting pumpkins and using flowers in the design, rather than traditional carving.
METALLIC PUMPKINS:
I couldn't ignore the huge trend in metallics that still rules in interiors, so decided to give a few of my pumpkins a good coating of copper, silver and gold spray paint.
I simply taped-up the tip of the pumpkins so that they did not get spray painted, then gave the pumpkins one even coat:
I have to say I think the gold pumpkins came out brilliant. They didn't look like they were real pumpkins at all - more like a ceramic ornament. The silver was OK, but the copper wasn't great as it just made the pumpkin look a bit brown. So my tip is if you are going to spray paint some pumpkins - go gold!!
THE WHITE STRIPE:
I gave one pumpkin a base coat of matt white paint, then some gloss black stripes on top. It came out quite Tim Burton-like and is my husbands favourite pumpkin out of the lot.
First I applied some left over white emulsion paint from our kitchen and left it to dry. Later that evening I painted the black gloss stripes (left over paint from the back door makeover) freehand. I just followed the grooves in the pumpkin to try and keep a straight line.
THE VARDO VASE PUMPKIN:
For this jazzy pumpkin I combined paint and flowers. First off, I roughly painted the bottom half of the pumpkin in 'Vardo' by Farrow & Ball from a sample pot I had laying around. Once dry, I carved off the top of the pumpkin, scooped out all the seeds and soggy bits, then made drill holes where I wanted to insert flowers into the pumpkin:
Inside the pumpkin I placed a block of soaked oasis, which will keep the flowers alive over the Halloween weekend, then threaded through individual stems of cheap supermarket-brought chrysanthemums:
THE BOWIE:
Using the same method of drill holes and an oasis block for the flowers on this pumpkin, I also used Frog Tape and kitchen roll to stencil on these lightening bolts with spray paint.
Simply use Frog Tape to mark out your lightening bolt, cover the rest of the pumpkin in kitchen roll so it doesn't also get sprayed with the paint, then use gold spray paint to create the effect:
SIMPLE PUMPKIN VASE:
For this pumpkin display vase I used the left over flowers, oasis and spray paint. I cut off the top, scooped out the insides, spray painted it gold, stuck in the soaked oasis, then arranged the flowers in the oasis.
What do you think to my pimped up pumpkins? I have to say they are alot easier than carving an intricate design (which I usually do each year - one year i made a pumpkin of my dogs face!). What have you done for Halloween decor this year? Let me know in the comments box below!
