For this year’s annual Happy Mundane “Great Pumpkin Adventure”, I decided to pick up where I left off from last year. (click here for a refresher)
Generally, I like my pumpkins and Fall tabletop centerpieces to not necessarily be too “Halloween-y” but more just a general not do autumn. That way they can stay up through Thanksgiving!
I’m still totally drawn to pottery as inspiration for my pumpkins, but instead of just an abstracted texture, I wanted to try something more playful. You all know my love for mid-century, so It was only natural I go there first. I looked to Scandinavian pottery, as well as some good ol’ Jonathan Adler!
After a trip to the craft store, I came home with all these goodies:
Pre-cut straw pieces, little gold cylinder beads, Crayola Model Magic clay, and I also picked up a package of dried split peas, and some twine.
Basically this is what you do:
1) Create the face/design on the pumpkins (I used fake craft pumpkins for the two larger one but the small one is a real pumpkin.) I drew it out first with a permanent marker.
2) Glue the pieces to form the design (or in this case, faces)
3) Spray paint the pumpkin with a base coat
4) Apply a loose “glaze” coat of watered down white acrylic paint.
It requires a little trial and error, but I found that you had to sometimes apply a few coats of the “glaze” and also a slightly thicker consistency worked better than a more watery one- (but not too thick as it needs to be loose and light enough to allow the base color to show through)
Overall, I thought they turned out pretty good! They totally feel “Adler-esque” right?
Finally, I styled them with some dark toned candles with little hits of metallic copper and brass. For the large pumpkin, I put it with a glass vase and some dried “yellow yarrow” flowers.
Woo hoo! Happy Halloween! (and Fall!)