DIY : CHEERFUL AUTUMN
Who says autumn decorations have to be dark, drab and boring?! Definitely not me!
I, for one, am not traditionally someone who gets into seasonal decorations. This is partially due to my tendency to forget to put things away after their respective seasons are over (leaving me eating breakfasts in March on Halloween-themed place mats), and partially due to my aversion to traditional holiday color palettes.
However, on my most recent shopping excursion to good old Target, I was starting to get into a festive mood and felt the urge to hit up the Dollar Spot and take home a couple of decorative pumpkins to spruce up and add a little autumnal flair to my apartment.
With some very simple alterations, I was able to turn these pumpkins into colorful, playful pieces that, even if my procrastination rears its ugly head, I could leave up as decor all year round and I wouldn't even feel guilty about it. That's what I call a win!
The CONFETTI PUMPKIN started with a white base and a light orange stem. I simply dipped the hard end of a paintbrush into some acrylic paint and dabbed dots all over in a random pattern. I tried to keep my dots evenly distributed for the most part and relatively equal in size, but you could definitely create more of a defined pattern depending on where you place your dots and could experiment with varying the sizes of the dots as well. Because all the pumpkins had different starting colors I decided to use silver as a unifying element and painted the stem of this one with silver acrylic paint. If you want to add another level of fun to this pumpkin, you could even paint the confetti dots with glow-in-the dark paint. A lot of brands carry bright neon glow-in-the-dark variations of acrylic paints. (I used the Hand Made Modern paints from Target and didn't even realize when I bought them that the orange and neon pink were both glow-in-the-dark. Happy accident!)
With these being Fall decorations, and Halloween being right around the corner, of course I had to add a little bit of spook to one of the pumpkins. This EYE SEE YOU pumpkin started as a dark metallic brownish-gold color but I decided to go with a bright marigold yellow. I did have to paint about three or four coats of the yellow because the acrylic paint I was using was a little thinner than I was hoping and I wanted to cover as much of the dark gold color as I could to get a very bright end result. Tacky Glue worked great to add the googly eyes all over and I finished it off by painting the stem of this one silver as well.
We see color-blocking a lot in fashion and accessories, so why not on a pumpkin? This COLOR BLOCK pumpkin started with the top already silver and all I had to do was divide the bottom half into four sections around the base and alternate painting them in orange and pink. I chose to keep it to the two colors but if you wanted to add more variety to yours you could paint each of the four sections in a different color.
Happy Autumn!
