Hi all,
Brace yourselves. It's Sunday and I'm posting my blog ON TIME! Yesterday was beautiful and I figured it may be one of the last weekends that I could go outside and spray paint without freezing my tail off, so I got real crafty yesterday. I was going to wait and save this post until next week, but I figured in case anyone got inspired and wanted to do glitter and antiqued pumpkins this week, I'd get to posting :)
I have decided that I really enjoy the fact that I have decided to have more of a "Fall" theme instead of strictly Halloween. First, I can keep these up through Thanksgiving (for the most part). Second, I figure with the money I am spending to make these crafts, I should be able to enjoy them for more than a couple of weeks. For you Crafty McCraftersons who already own a bunch of this stuff (read spray paint, gloves and masks, masking tape, etc), I'm sure these already pretty cheap projects are even cheaper for you. I am finding this is starting to be the case for me too, thank goodness.
Enough of the justification of spending money to decorate; on to the pins!
The pins of glitter and antique pumpkins are endless. Instead of posting a bunch of pins, here is one that has both-
http://pinterest.com/pin/329499638/
First, I'm going to go over the glitter pumpkins.
Here is my disclaimer/advice on these glitter pumpkins that I haven't really read anywhere else, so I apologize for the massive paragraph of advice I'm about to give you. You can make these pumpkins a bunch of different ways.
1) Krylon now makes glitter spray paint. This is the way you should probably go. I would have done this if I hadn't already bought glitter and spray adhesive. I thought this would be WAY easier than option two-
2) Glue or Mod Podge and then glitter. I really didn't want to have to sit there and paint glue on a pumpkin and have it drip everywhere. The advantage to this though, would be that you could probably do these inside.
3) Spray adhesive and glitter (the route I went).
Now, if you decide to do spray paint pumpkins and glitter pumpkins in the same day (and you aren't going the glitter spray paint route), here is some advice. I would suggest doing the spray paint pumpkins first, and here is why: SO YOU DON'T HAVE GLITTER EVERYWHERE (glitter sticks to everything in case you live in a cave and didn't know this). Now, the only reason why I didn't follow my own advice that I had thought of the night before is because it was a tad windy outside. I didn't want spray paint blowing everywhere (like in my face before I had bought the mask and gloves). I thought I could just do the glitter pumpkins inside... WRONG (for me personally at least).
Here was my process and my materials-
Pumpkins from Walmart $5 for 8 and some random leaves.
Masking Tape
Paper plates
Glitter (I refused to buy Martha Stewart's $4 glitter, I wanted to, but glitter shouldn't cost $4 per color). I went with $0.97 from Walmart and $5ish variety pack (I think there was 12 or 14 mini bottles) from Michael's
Spray Adhesive (I got it at Michael's for $6; apparently Wal-Mart had it for $4 or $5).
Clear Acrylic Sealant
Newspaper (or anything to lay down to catch the glitter.)
(the other spray paint and coffee filter is for the antiqued pumpkins)
I decided to use the lighter color pumpkins because I wasn't positive how coverage would work. After making these, you can use whatever color you want, the glitter will cover.
Some blogs say to use painters tape to cover the stems, but I used masking tape and it worked just fine. I highly suggest doing this so you can grip onto something that isn't covered in glitter. Plus, you'll smudge the glitter if you pick up the pumpkin and it kinda makes a mess and it's hard to fix the mistake (trust me, I did this by accident).
My original idea was to run outside, spray on the adhesive, and come back in and glitter. This is why that wasn't the best idea- that spray adhesive stinks just as bad as spray paint, if not worse. Plus the poor dog kept wanting to run back and forth with me. I packed everything up and moved outside.
So I resprayed the pumpkin and started to sprinkle on the glitter. Martha Stewart says to sprinkle the glitter in sections, and once coated, move onto the next. Maybe it was because it was windy, maybe it was because it was 8 am and I didn't have coffee, but this didn't really matter as much. I tried a variety of techniques- in sections, doing the top first, rotating and sprinkling; it all pretty much worked the same for me. What I did do was have 2 paper plates in rotation. The first one caught the glitter. Then, I switch out the first one (full of glitter) with a clean one and sprinkled the glitter from the plate over the pumpkin (so now i had 2 glitter filled plates). This worked pretty well. The cool thing about the spray adhesive is, you can respray it on while you're waiting for the pumpkin to dry so you can do the second layer of glitter. I don't know how many "layers" I did per se, but here are pictures of just one layer and then pictures after i resprayed and used more glitter.
"one layer"
"resprayed"
I let them sit for a little bit (mostly because it was windy and I had glitter going everywhere and I wanted to clean up before I started the sealant). Another piece of advice. Use gloves. I still have sealant on my nails today (no glitter, thank God). Ok, moving on. I followed the directions on the can. I did 4 or 5 short bursts that covered the pumpkin. I let them sit for 15 minutes and then sprayed side to side. I let them sit for 15 mins again and repeated. 3 coats seemed to work well. After they were dry, I took off the masking tape.
My final verdict- this would have been better if it weren't windy. It was actually really funny and I laughed a lot, but it was still sort of a pain. Advantage to glitter is you can do so many colors!!! My Michael's glitter was much more shiny than my walmart glitter, but the walmart glitter gave the pumpkins a vintage-y and more refined feel. I don't think the glitter spray paint comes in as many colors.
Next, the antiqued pumpkins-
Krylon spray paint in Black (flat finish)
Krylon spray paint in White (flat finish)
Krylon brushed metal spray paint in Nickel (satin finish)
These were so easy. Lots of techniques you can use. I went the lazy route and only used spray paint. I tried to layer the spray paint and wipe every with a coffee filter and foam brush; this did not work. It would have worked with actual stain, which I did not buy.
First pumpkin- I just sprayed with the Nickel and I LOVED it.
Second pumpkin- I sprayed white (which was adorable) and then I sprayed with the nickel (this was when I tried that trick and it didn't work). I resprayed with nickel.
Third pumpkin- I sprayed with black and then I added the nickel on top. AWESOME. Repeated with fourth pumpkin, when a happy mistake happened.
The wind picked up and some of the black went onto pumpkin #1 (which is the pumpkin on the left in front, you can't really see on this angle). It looked AWESOME. So I did quick bursts of black over the nickel. Final verdict- this was great! You can also do these in other colors (like the gold and bronze in the pin above), but I liked my color palette I had.
Here is what my mantel looks like-
From Left to Right- Orange Pumpkin I bought on sale (from Michael's) on spray painted candle stick (from week 5), black glitter pumpkin (using Michael's glitter), spray paint antiqued pumpkin (black, then nickel finish), orange/rose glitter pumpkin (using Wal-Mart glitter), spray paint antiqued pumpkin (white, nickel, black finish), Mod Podged pumpkin and spray pained candle stick (from week 5), orange glitter pumpkin (Michael's glitter), spray painted antiqued pumpkin (nickel, black), black glitter pumpkin (Wal-Mart glitter), spray paint antiqued pumpkin (black, nickel finish), and purchased antique pumpkin (from Michael's on sale) on spray painted candlestick (from week 5).
Love, Love, LOVE all of my fall decorations :)
Keep on pinning,
Marissa
