This week I decided to make another item I keep seeing in real size Halloween/fall decoration photo, this metal pumpkin. It is a bit of a fiddly project but still really easy. It requires very few materials and they are all things that are easy/cheap to find.
We will need a wooden skewer from the kitchen, I get most of mine from the dollar store. Mark 1/8” from the end of the skewer all the way around, this will act as a gluing guide.
Next we need 6 strips f heavyweight card-stock cut 2 ½” long by 1/8” wide. Mark both ends of the strips ½” from both ends again to act as a gluing guide. Now pre-curl the strips by gently wrapping them around a fat paint brush handle or something similar.
Glue 2 of the strips onto the skewer lining up the lines you drew and making sure the paper strips are across from each other. When you are done it should look like this. Allow the glue to dry.
Repeat the gluing process with 2 more strips adding them on one side of the skewer to fill in the area between the first 2. allow to dry.
Finish up by adding the last 2 strips to the other side of the skewer and again allow the glue to dry.
Now to make our lives easier later in the project I suggest painting what will become the inside of the pumpkin with some black craft paint. You can wait if you wish but it is so much easier to paint this side of the strips now while they are basally the outside of the project. Try to not get too much paint on the reverse side of the strips we will need to be able to see the gluing guidelines in the next step.
Once the paint dries it is time to start making the pumpkin shape. Again start with 2 strips across from each other. Add a bit of glue to the area at the end of the strips starting at the guideline we made earlier. Carefully flip the end to meet the skewer, lining the guideline with the spot where the other end of the strips is and hold it in place until the glue grabs. Once both are in place I did suggest using a small clamp to hold them in place until the glue sets up nicely. It should look like this.
At this point I decided it would be best to just glue one strip at a time since the area was pretty small and I wanted to make sure it looked really nice. If your fingers are more nibble than mine you might be able to do both on one side at a time. Just glue these the same way as in the last step being sure to leave space for the one to line up next to the one you are gluing.
Repeat this same step with the rest of the strips, I did mine one at a time waiting about 20 or 30 minutes at least between to give the glue plenty of time to get a good hold. Since each one took just a few seconds it was a good project to have on my table and glue a strip between other tasks I had that day. Once all 6 steps are glued you will want the glue to dry completely before going to the next step.
Once the glue is dry and you are happy with how the strips are placed it is time to finish the coat of black paint on the outside of the pumpkin. Be sure to up the skewer a little bit also since that will be the stem of the pumpkin when we are done. Allow the black to dry completely before moving to the next step.
Once the base of black is dry it is time to make this paper strip pumpkin look a metal one. I really wanted mine to be copper but I don’t have any copper paint. I was just about to settle for silver when I remembered I have some copper nail polish in my polish collection. I decided to use that and I am so glad I did. I think it looks way better than any copper paint I’ve used in the past and it has the bonus of not needing to have a finish coat of any kind over it.
Once the copper is dry go ahead and trim the stem to the length you want it to be. Touch up the cut edge with a dot of the black and once that dries add a dot of the copper. Allow to dry and your pumpkin is ready for display in your mini scene.
As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.
great project
ReplyDelete