Last year, we were still trying to recover from 2020, and I went with a Picasso theme for my annual Pumpkin adventure. Another year has passed and while many more things have opened up and things are happening again, I don’t think we’re “back to normal”. I feel we’re still in a strange place and the word that has been floating in my head a lot lately is “surreal”. With all the crazy that is happening in our world, I guess it makes sense that surrealism would be having a moment again. In fashion, revived House of Schiaparelli is becoming the go-to for those red-carpet moments. I recently saw this amazing bag, and funny enough, the first thing I thought of was, this has to be a pumpkin!
So Schiaparelli was the starting point for this year’s Pumpkin Adventure, but then I started to do a deeper dive. I looked into other surrealist artists, like Magritte and Dali, and then I came across images from the infamous Bal Oriental Party from 1951 and the Rothschild party from 1972.
Doesn’t that look like an incredible time?! How fun would it be to have been a fly on the wall at those events? I love seeing all the decadent glitz and glamour paired with the attendees fantastic costumes. I think it makes for a fabulous alternative approach to more traditional “spooky” Halloween party themes.
So with that as inspiration, I decided to keep a simple palette of gold, black, and cream.
For the Schiaparelli-inspired pumpkin, I started with getting some chocolate body part lollipop molds I found from a cake décor supply site. I got one for an ear, nose, and eyes. I didn’t end up using the ears, but maybe for something else later… I then just used Model Magic clay and squished them into the molds. Pro-tip: sprinkle a little flour or powder in the mold to help it come out easier. I then let it dry and then spray-painted it gold. For the eyes, I found a package of plastic eyeball stickers and just glued them into the molds.
I bought some fake pearl trim, a little kit of metallic beads and bobs, a bunch of inexpensive costume jewelry bits and charms, and some plain plastic face masks.
For the multi face one, I just bought 4 gold plain masks from Party City and glued them edge to edge all the way around. By the way, I used fake pumpkins for all of these.
I thought it would be fun to also do a pumpkin inspired by Magritte’s “Son of Man” painting, and found a cheap bowler hat on Amazon and just got a fake apple spray-painted gold, and attached it with a skewer.
To finish things off, I just draped some white sheets on the walls for ambiance and added some spray-painted leaves, a plaster column, and a bunch of votive candles.
I hope everyone has a weird (and over the top fantastical) and wonderful Halloween! (oh by the way I have a youtube channel now… “like and subscribe!”)
Image Credits:
Schiaparelli Collection inspiration (via)
Le Bal Oriental images via 1,2,3
Rothschild Ball images via
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