EASY UPCYCLED PUMPKIN

• Orange and green spray paint ... check. 
• Floral wire ... check. 
• Sticks, no problem...lots after Hurricane Irene ... check, check and, triple check! 
• Glue gun ... check.  
• Dryer vent hose ... check.  Wait, what?!?  Dryer vent hose you say?

What has all of this got to do with Fall crafting?  Well, put them together and you get the cutest and easiest little pumpkin ever, that's what.  Look at these!

This project caught my eye last year but I ran out of time to make it - the Fall decorating season was over and the Christmas crafting season had begun.  As usual, too many projects, too little time!!  Anyway, here I am a full year later and I actually remembered to give this a try (wonders never cease)!   I found the project in a book called The Big Green Book of Recycled Crafts, published by Leisure Arts.

To make one pumpkin you will need 20-25" of dryer vent hose - I bought some at my local hardware store since my husband frowned at the idea of my cutting into the vent hose attached to my dryer.  Go figure!    Measure the hose when it is extended fully and then cut.  Form it into a circle, matching the ends and glue to secure.  Tip:  I found that the longer length was better because I was more easily able to stretch it into the circle.  Another Tip:  I held the hose and glued it myself but it would be easier to maneuver if you had a helper to either hold the vent or apply the glue.  Yet another Tip:  I stretched a rubber band around it to secure the shape while the glue dried.

Spray the body orange and, when dry, spray a bit of green at the top.  (Spray a 6" long stick green while you are at it or, if you prefer you can leave the stick natural.)

Curl a 16" piece of wire around a pencil....

Slide pencil out...

And you have a completed curlicue!  Wrap the straight end around the base of the stick/stem.  Apply some glue to one end of the stick/stem and insert it into the opening in the center of the top of the pumpkin.

I made the "leaves" by knotting a 12" piece of ribbon at the base of the stem and trimming it into a leaf shape.

That's all there is to it!  When my husband came home from work he was surprised at how effective the pair of these pumpkins were.  He didn't even double-check to make sure our dryer hose was intact.

Crafty Tips:  If you hope to use these outside make sure you use a spray paint that is appropriate for outdoors.  Also, they are somewhat light and might blow away (can you imagine what someone might think if pumpkins were flying by them in the wind!! funny) so one thought I had would be to insert something weighty before you glue the ends together.

A LITERARY FALL LEAF WREATH AND PUMPKIN

This week I am not writing about a book per se, but about the pages in the book.  And I am not writing about the pages so much as I am writing about what can be done with those pages (once the book is no longer a viable reading option, says the librarian in me..)

I was wracking my brain for a different Fall wreath idea this year, thumbing through all those magazines and pre-holiday catalogues that had begun to pour, in when I noticed a recurrent theme:  leaves made from book pages, book pages with leaf shapes cut out of them and inserted into vases as table decor, pumpkins decoupaged with old book pages (hmmmm). 

I studied the pile of catalogues and magazines in my recycling bin.  I studied my book shelves and recognized several paperbacks that really were falling apart and waiting for me to accept their fate.  And an idea was born:   I decided to put them all to good use and created a Literary Fall Leaf Wreath!

Isn't is pretty?

To begin, I went through my catalogues and magazines looking mainly at the colors and tones, searching for areas that would make good Fall leaves.

Crafty Tip:  I used an old quilting trick taught to me by my sister who makes gorgeous quilts in her spare time.  When she is trying to visualize whether a fabric (or section of a fabric) will work for her finished piece she puts her right and left thumb tips together and her right and left index finger tips together to form an open triangular space in front of her.  If a smaller opening is required, she slides her hands closer together to make a smaller triangle.  She then holds this opening above the fabric so she can isolate the small section she might use while the her hands block out the rest of the image that may be visually distracting.  If she sees what she likes and feels it will "fit" the theme of her quilt, she buys it.  Easy-peasy!!

The photo above is an ad in one of my catalogues.

I use my hand triangle to block out visual distractions

 and determine that I like that section of color.
(Please excuse the visual distraction of the butterfly stamp on my hand ...
I went to a butterfly conservancy recently which was incredible!)

Ta da ... it is a beautiful Fall leaf!

I looked at everything on each page, the backgrounds as well as the image the photographer was trying to capture, isolating sections with my "hand triangle".

An ad for a blouse ...

  

... becomes a leaf!

Here's what I mean about looking beyond the picture itself.

If you look carefully you can see that I have traced my

 leaf template onto a section of the page

that might make an interesting leaf.

I do not own a leaf punch or a die-cutter so I made templates in the shapes of an oak leaf  and a maple leaf .  I cut two sizes of oak leaves from the magazines and catalogues and cut one size of maple leaves from the old paperbacks.  My fingers did get a little "scissor-sore" after a while.

Crafty Cutting Tip:   Make a rough cut first to separate the section you want from the larger piece of paper to reduce "drag" from weight of the sheet.  Next, when cutting around the shape, turn the paper rather than the scissors for a smooth, even cut.

I spread my leaves out in front of me, roughly sorted by color and tones and pinned a foundation layer of leaves around a foam wreath that I wrapped with burlap strips. 

I used leaves that were not my favorites for this foundation layer

 because I figured they would be mostly covered up anyway (as would the pins.)

I continued placing and pinning leaves randomly distributing the colors until the burlap was no longer visible and I was satisfied with the look.  I finished by placing the paperback book leaves around the entire wreath in a random fashion.

Crafty Tip:  I used some double-sided tape to keep some of the

leaves in place and to hide some of the pin heads.

Since I had some the paperback maple leaves left over I continued my literary holiday decor by using them to adorn a small pumpkin.  I had noticed some pumpkins in the magazines I was "leafing" through (bad pun but appropriate here!) that had been completely covered with dictionary pages and others that had tissue paper leaves decoupaged on them.  I combined the two ideas for my little pumpkin. 

I mixed some white all-purpose glue with a little water and decoupaged (fancy word for adding cutout adornments with layers of glue) them on using a small foam brush.   The spider is from one of my posts last year called: Fall Is Here - And With It Comes Halloween.   

Happy Fall crafting everyone!!