Summer Creative Retreat: Pumpkin Embroidery on Watercolor

The second project I completed during Summer Creative Retreat was this embroidered pumpkin. 

I made it during a workshop called "Embroidery on Watercolor" which was taught by Jessica Mack of Brown Paper Bunny Studios. 

As you can see on the graphic, Jessica taught us how to make different kinds of flowers. I went my own direction and made a pumpkin, which is the official state fruit of New Hampshire. She used a loop start to begin her embroidery, which is something I've never done before. I love taking classes, not only for the inspiration but for those little tips that I otherwise wouldn't have known. Affiliate links below. 

Pumpkin Embroidery on Watercolor

Materials:

• watercolor paper (300 series is best for embroidery)
• watercolors
• paper piercer
• embroidery floss

Steps: 

Cut your watercolor paper down to the desired size. Mine is 5" square. Add multiple bands of color to the paper. I used green, yellow, and orange and blended them a bit. 

When the paint is dry, use a pencil to draw the design you want as lightly as possible. Poke holes along the pencil lines (always poking from the front) with the paper piercer. Then use embroidery floss to backstitch the design. 

Then fill in the pumpkin and stem with watercolor. 

This is a fun and easy project that can easily be adapted to practically any design. It's a great way to introduce kids to embroidery. Give it a try!

Diamond Art Thanksgiving Pumpkin

I'm all about experimenting. I had no idea whether Diamond Art would work on a real pumpkin, so I gave it a try. I'm happy to report that it worked beautifully! This pumpkin will make a great Thanksgiving centerpiece, but it would be even more cool to use mini pumpkins with guests' names on them to act as place cards. In future years, anyway. In 2020, Thanksgiving will be deRosier, Party of Three. Affiliate links below. 

Diamond Art Thanksgiving Pumpkin

Materials:

• pumpkin
• Diamond Art liquid adhesive
• Diamond Art gems (8381)

Steps:

The first thing you need to do is transfer your design to the pumpkin. I printed out the word thanks, then used a retractable craft pick to pierce holes along the design to give me a guideline for where the gems would go. It worked really well, although I'm concerned that poking holes in the pumpkin's skin will hasten its spoiling. A smarter idea would be to print out the word, scribble on the back of it with a pencil, then trace the word, transferring the pencil marks to the pumpkin. 

Next, paint liquid adhesive along the marked lines. Let the adhesive sit for 15 minutes, or until it appears clear. Then start adding dots. I work from right to left since I'm left-handed. 

That's all there is to it! 

Dimensional Pumpkin Thanksgiving Card

Thanksgiving is going to look very different for a lot of people this year. So much has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many of those changes being negative, I think it's particularly important to focus on the good things in our lives whenever we can. It can be hard to remember at times, but I try my best to be thankful for everything I have and everyone I love.

I made the orange and green papers I used for the pumpkin using this crayon melt technique. In fact, the green pumpkin stem came from the scraps I saved after making my iguana! If you don't want to do crayon melts, then paint the paper or just use colored cardstock. (But crayon melts is the most fun.)

 

Dimensional Pumpkin Thanksgiving Card

Materials:

• cardstock (brown, blue, white)
• papers colored with melted crayon or paint (orange, green)
• scissors
• pen
• foam dots
• craft glue

Steps: 

Cut a card base from brown paper. Use the scraps to make the piece for the ground and the mat for the sentiment. 

Cut a piece of blue paper just smaller than the card front. Cut a rectangle just smaller than the mat for the sentiment. 

To make the pumpkin, you are going to cut three pieces from the orange-colored paper. The first is a pumpkin that is slightly smaller than the width of the card base. The second piece should be the same height, but narrower on each side to mimic the ribs of a pumpkin. The third piece is leaf-shaped and will be in the foreground. Cut a stem from the green-colored paper. 

Glue the blue card front to the card base, then glue the brown ground piece on top of that. 

Write THANKFUL on the blue rectangle, then glue it to the brown mat. Use foam dots to adhere the sentiment to the top of the card. 

Glue the largest pumpkin piece and the stem to the card front. Use foam dots to adhere the second pumpkin piece to the first, then more foam dots to connect the third pumpkin piece to the second. 

Add a message of gratitude inside and your card is ready to send.

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I did a search for THANKFUL on Amazon and found a lot of cool stuff. My favorite find is this shirt, which is so simple and so pretty. I love that it isn't seasonal, just like being thankful is not only for November. It comes in a handful of colors, but I think I like this dark grey the best. 

Boo Halloween Craft

This fun Halloween craft was one of my favorites back in my teaching days. Not only does it have tons of room for creativity and use inexpensive supplies, but it gave my 5th graders a chance to practice cutting out counters. For many of them, it was a new skill. 

Boo Halloween Craft

Materials:

• construction paper
• pointed-tip scissors
• yarn
• glue
• googly eyes

Steps:

Lightly write the word BOO in large block letters on a piece of orange construction paper. The letters should overlap slightly. Carefully cut out the BOO, cutting just inside the lines you drew so they don't show. Cut out the counters by using the tip of the scissors to poke a hole in the middle of each, then cut from that hole to the line. Do this several times to create flaps that will open up space for the scissors. Once you have a large enough space, cut out the entire counter just outside the pencil line. 

Create the items you want to dangle from the BOO. I chose a jack-o-lantern, vampire (in bat form), and a ghost, but you could include all sorts of other items. 

Cut three lengths of yarn and glue one to each of the dangling items. Glue the other end of yarn behind the BOO, placing it so that the dangling item hangs at the desired place. 

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Every once in awhile, I had a student who did not celebrate Halloween and did not feel comfortable making Halloween crafts. Since the point of this craft is about developing scissor skills and being creative, the content doesn't really matter. I remember one student changing the word to FALL (which still has counters) and dangling leaves from it. Perfect!

Cardboard Tube Stamping and Memory Game

Cardboard tubes are one of the most versatile free craft materials for kids. One of their less-common uses is for stamping. A cardboard tube fits nicely in a young child's hand and is much easier to control than small rubber stamps that require better fine motor skills. Obviously, you can use cardboard tubes to stamp circles. But there are so many more shapes you can make by folding, pinching, and snipping the tubes.  Check it out:

I made the heart, leaf, diamond (kite), oval (football), and pumpkin just by pinching and bending the tubes into the shapes I wanted. For the sun and the flower, I cut slits in the top of the tubes, folded out the cut portions to make tabs, then cut those tabs into the pointy rays of the sun and the rounded petals of the flowers. 

Once the tubes were ready, I spread some craft paint on my Frisbee and stamped the shapes onto thick index cards. I made two of each shape. Then I colored them in with pens. 

Now the cards are ready for a game of Memory! Shuffle the cards, lay them out in a grid, and take turns turning over two at a time. If you get a match, you get another turn. 

There are so many more things you can do with your cardboard tube stamps. Use them to decorate cards, wrapping paper, or tablecloths, just to name a few. Challenge yourself to come up with other shapes you can make with cardboard tubes. There are so many possibilities!

Plaid's Let's Paint Live: Farmhouse Pumpkins

Time to share another painting from Plaid's Let's Paint Live events! (Click to see my sunset cactus, my starfish and my other cactus.) I always learn so much during these paint events, which is what I love about them. This one took me WAY out of my comfort zone.

Not only is it about as far from my usual style as you can get, but it was my first time painting with a palette knife. That was a really fun challenge.

I didn't realize it when I started, but I accidentally challenged myself further. Since I didn't see myself displaying a heavily distressed, farmhouse-style painting of a pair of blue pumpkins, I opted to paint on watercolor paper rather than a pricier wooden canvas. My paper was 9" square (rather than 12" like the recommended wooden canvas), which meant I needed to scale things down. Not a big deal, except that I had to be a lot more careful with the palette knife to fit it into smaller spaces. Combined with the fact that the palette knife didn't move as smoothly across the textured watercolor paper as it would have across the wood canvas, I hadn't exactly set myself up for success. No matter- I learned a lot and I had fun. Mission accomplished.

Just for fun, here's a look at the sample project:

Compare it to this screen capture of the one instructor Jessie Pniewski painted live:

When I look at her two paintings together, I see why mine is so heavily distressed, even though that goes against my usual style. Because the tool and technique were completely new to me, I was following along closely with the live version, distressing heavily while Jessie distressed heavily.

Plaid hosts Let's Paint Live nights on the first Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm Eastern, which means the next one is Thursday, December 5. Jessie will be teaching three adorable painted holiday ornaments. I can't wait!

Fall Roundups

It's been a long time since I've shared any Fun family Crafts roundups. Here are the latest ones I've done. You can click on each graphic to go to the post and find the tutorials. 

First, jack-o-lantern crafts. The graphic came together quickly and easily, but boy did I struggle with the text in the post! Should I use hyphens? An apostrophe? Spaces? Ack! At Fun Family Crafts, we use the tag "jack o lantern" on the back end for consistency, but use a variety of different spellings on the visible portion of the blog. I mixed things up throughout the text, hoping to capture a variety of search terms, but went with jack-o'-lantern for the graphic. One of these is mine. Do you recognize it?

When I made the graphic for the Mummy roundup, I intentionally chose projects with some color in them so that the entire thing wouldn't just be a wall of white with occasional eyeballs. Doesn't that pumpkin cookie mummy look delicious?! I would have chosen it even if it didn't have the bits of orange adding color to the photo. 

I just love fall colors, both in nature and in graphic design. When I made the graphic for the acorn roundup, I stretched one photo across three columns, making it a colorful header below the actual header. Not only do I love the way it looks, but it let me arrange the other nine photos into a perfect grid (and you all know how much I love a grid). 

When I looked through all 75+ ghost crafts we've featured, I was pleased with the variety. I was also impressed with how many were edible! Half of the ones below are edible - can you spot them? And speaking of spots, aren't the Charlie Brown brownies the cutest thing ever?

With 600+ fall-themed projects on the site, I was overwhelmed choosing just ten crafts for a fall roundup. I avoided anything that was more Halloween or Thanksgiving than fall, then tried to get a good assortment of materials, age levels, and subject matter. One project is mine... and I didn't even intend it to be for fall!

This roundup was all about pumpkins, as opposed to the earlier jack-o-lantern roundup. I made this right before lunch and it wasn't until I was pulling the pictures together that I realized practically every pumpkin craft I chose was edible! I made a few substitutions, leaving just four edible crafts. And then I had lunch. 

As always, I made these graphics with PicMonkey. It is so easy and they're constantly adding to their already-huge collection of fonts, graphics, frames, textures, and special features. I use PicMonkey for all of my photo editing as well. I absolutely love it! 

Tissue Paper Yarn Pumpkin

Here's the yarn trivet I made with the Premier's "Mint Swirl" Sweet Roll yarn. As promised, I'm sharing the tutorial for the pumpkin. If it's not obvious, it's made of yarn too.

I actually made a second yarn balloon using the technique I shared yesterday. Follow the steps up through popping the balloon. Then, simply tear orange tissue paper and apply pieces of it to the hardened yarn using Mod Podge. 

While that is drying, dip two strands of green yarn (approximately 2 feet each) into white glue and wrap them around a plastic fork. 

Let it dry completely (overnight, to be sure), then slide it off the fork.

Brush the yarn tails with white glue and wrap them around pencil stubs. Let that dry and you have curly vines attached to the stem. 

Glue the stem to the top of the pumpkin. 

Thanks again to Premier Yarns for providing me with these versatile yarns!