Fancy Pumpkins

I was asked to decorate some pumpkins for a wedding this past weekend. I had tons of ideas and looked around on Pinterest for some inspiration. I purchased the pumpkins at Aldi. You can't beat a $3 huge pumpkin...except if it is impossible to carve by hand. It took A LOT of effort to carve these and eventually I resorted to power tools but we'll get to that in a minute. Here are the pumpkins!

1. Monogram
This was the obvious first choice of pumpkin, especially because it was a wedding. I looked around on the internet for a fancy font and mimicked it on the side of the pumpkin with a washable marker. I used marker because it wouldn't leave an indent and could be wiped off. To carve this I used a knife and exacto knife. I WISH I had carved it with my husband's Dremel like I did the later pumpkins.

2. Mr. and Mrs.
I used a few fabric scraps to make the bow and veil and used puff paints for the rest. Surprisingly the puff paints didn't stay on very well and I had to emergency glue some of the letters back on last minute! The other writing on it said phrases like "Just Married", "Happily Ever After", and "M+C 4ever" For the Mr. I tried to do a block manly font and for the Mrs. I used cursive.

3. Glitter Dipped
This was the first pumpkin I made. I taped off an area and applied Mod Podge and glitter. I wasn't very patient and put on too much Mod Podge. For the second coat I used a Mod Podge/glitter mix which filled in the gaps really well. I wish I had done one more coat but I didn't have enough time for it to dry.

4. Rhinestone swirls.
So when I was getting supplies for this venture at the craft store I purchased a ton of stuff. I ended up using almost none of it. I got lucky with this pumpkin. I purchased some rhinestone border in the dollar section and it worked out great! It was self adhesive and already easy to apply since I didn't have to add each stone. It was two stones wide so I cut them up the middle and applied them in swirls. I think this one was my favorite pumpkin. That may have been because it was the easiest!

5. Spray painted
I first cut out a swirly shape out of contact paper and applied it to the pumpkin. I taped around the pumpkin to prevent over spray.  I only had to apply one coat of gold spray paint. I let it dry and removed the tape. I used puff paint to add the date and a few more swirls. Then while it was drying I had some help in the form of a little girl who thought she was helping with painting. It turned out okay, though!

6. Drilled pattern
I used three different size drill bits in a pattern to create this pumpkin. The largest one was 1". After I drilled all the holes I added some rhinestones for some sparkle.

7. Initials
This is when I figured out using the Dremel was a super easy way to get the carving done without so much effort (or at all because my hands were so tired from carving and I was having an extremely hard time).  I used the drill to make some pilot holes and used the Dremel to carve between the holes and perfect the shapes of the letters. Just FYI you will have pumpkin crumbs EVERYWHERE after using the power tools but it's worth it!

Here is a shot of how they were displayed:

Which one was your favorite? Are you going for a scary face on your jack-o-lantern or a decorated one?

Next Week: Christmas Parade of Homes

I'm super excited to announce our Christmas Parade of Homes! We have some awesome homes coming up for you next week as well as a link up for you! Tune in next week for the parade of homes!

Happy Friday the 13th! Since it happens in December does that mean it's extra good luck?

Lord of The Rings Picture

(Don't worry, there will be more wedding posts) My husband's favorite movies are the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I wanted to decorate our wall that the TV is against with the movies and other things we love. So I thought I would attempt to make a LOTR picture. I started out with a picture.

Not too ambitious, right?
So we ventured out to WalMart and bought paints, brushes and canvas board. I started by painting the sky. I started at the top with the darkest part. (I didn't want to paint the mountains so I just didn't) Then I added a small amount of white to my paint and moved down the canvas. I got to the lightest part and painted it white to help with blending and texture even though the canvas was already white. I painted the bottom black for the ground. Then I set it in the sunshine with a fan pointed at it to dry.

Next, I traced the images of the people onto printer paper. Then I cut them out and spaced them on a scratch piece of paper. Then it was time to draw them on.

Here's where it really made it look good. I drew just some scribbles on the back of the cut out making sure there was pencil where the outlines were.

Then I traced the outlines on the front hard onto the canvas. The pencil transferred onto the canvas. I then drew it in a little darker and moved on to the next character.

After I did all the people, I took a sharpie and traced the outlines again. Then I colored them in with sharpie as well. And voila! A totally awesome LOTR picture worthy to hang.

Tulle, Tulle, Tulle!

So I really like tulle. The skirt of my wedding dress was a whole lot of tulle. And we bought 400 yards of it...for decorating. Ok so decorating...a lot of times in the Latter-day Saint church wedding receptions are held in the church building's cultural hall and our wedding was no exception. It's big with tables and plenty of chairs. What more could you ask for? Except, well in the church building closest to us, it's not the prettiest thing in the world. I wanted to transform our cultural hall and make it a romantic and elegant setting. With heavy duty wire, Christmas light strands, tulle and some nails, we achieved exactly what I wanted.

We bought a spool of wire, a dozen light strands, 400 yards of tulle (online is far cheaper than going to Michael's or JoAnn or anywhere really) and had some nails handy. We, and by we I mean my brothers in law, strung the wire from the basketball backboard to the other one then on the sides of the wall. Then, starting from one side, we strung the tulle from wire to wire, draping it slightly. We secured some of the sections with nails if it was necessary.

Then, we hung tulle down the wall and tied it in the middle with a decorative bow with wired ribbon. Between the sections of tulle, we strung the light strands. We didn't drape those down the wall though.

We also had a couple strands of swagged Christmas lights from Brooke's wedding that we hung on one wall with Command Strips and hung tulle down the wall from an additional wire. We didn't turn on the cultural hall lights. The Christmas lights offered enough light for a romantic setting. It was completely transformed into the perfect wedding reception hall and it was beautiful!