fall pumpkins

I absolutely L-O-V-E to decorate for holidays. I made these pumpkins this weekend.

I found this tutorial at Craftberry Bush, she has very detailed instruction.

I did make one change. My first attempt I took the cover all the way off, pulling most of the paper off of the spine of the book. When I hot glued the book around the stick for the stem it melted the book binding glue and all of the pages fell apart....sad! So I just cut off the cover with a craft knife leaving the paper on the spine. I hope the picture above helps to illustrate what I am attempting to explain.

I did not have any book I wanted to sacrifice for this project. I picked these up at a thrift store- 5 books for $1. I felt a little bad about cutting up a book, but they are SO cute now!

Little Pumpkin Family

I had to take a picture with the cemetery in the background SPOOKY!

before & after

Before:

After!

The gloss paint worked out great! I was a little worried before beginning the project after reading so many horror stories of high gloss paint. I did sand each piece very, VERY well before painting as well as in between coats. I used two grits of paper, the finest being 320, between each coat of paint. That might have been overkill. Honestly, I just kind of took a guess selecting the sandpaper. It did work out well. I know people also have really good results with spray paint for a high gloss finish. I wanted a very specific color and there is always the problem of finding spray paint in the city of Chicago... very difficult.

Centsational Girl has a ton of tips & tutorials for using spray paint- check it out.

I am on to my new search. The perfect desk to complete the room!