Pumpkin Man Home Decor

Are you sick of your boring house not being filled with pumpkin spice and fall leaves? Well I have the remedy for you. With the coming of the spooky season also comes the need for some new home decor and this Over the Garden Wall inspired instructable, should do the trick. Try out this tutorial and make a fall favorite come to life with this Pumpkin man carving a pumpkin display.

• insulation foam board
• small amount of hay
• glue gun and glue sticks
• paint brushes
• paints - brown, orange, yellow, white, black, red, silver
• blending gel (also known as floating medium or blending medium)
• paint pallet(paper plate)
• pencil
• foamclay
• craft foam or small piece of poster board
• contact cement
• twine
• small peice of 1/8 in balsa wood
• fake mini pumpkins in various sizes(preferably with no sparkle or texture)

pumpkin man torso 3 1/8" x 3 1/4 "

pumpkin man head 2 3/8" x 3 1/2"

carved pumpkin 1 3/4" x 2 1/2"

Greg and Wirt (less important because they can be any size) 1 1/2" x 1 3/4"

• 14- 16 gauge wire
• scissors
• xacto knife

Lets start with one of the easy parts. Making a bail of hay.

First you'll start with cutting out the base which is made of 2 layers of insulation foam sheets. Dimensions of each piece is 6.25" x 3.25" . Once you've cut those 2 pieces out, hot glue them to each other. This doesn't have to be anything fancy because it will be covered.

Next it is time to glue hay to the insulation foam block. Glue the strands of hay to the block from left to right instead of randomly. On the small sides of the block, also run the hay left to right. You can skip doing the bottom of bail if you would like because it won't be seen. Continue to cover the hay bail until you can't see any more insulation foam or you are happy with the look.

Finish it off by cutting 2 peices of twine in your preferred color and wrap them around the bail, tieing them at the bottom. Trim excess twine.

Many of the plastic/foam pumpkins that you find at the store will likely be the wrong color and won't look like real pumpkins at all. So we are gonna make 'em pretty.

• Start by basing out your pumpkins in white paint mixed with orange. This will cover most colors that you will find in pumpkins and will especially cover any dark colors. Just make sure not to skimp on the white. You want a fairly light orange base coat. Apply a second coat if the under color shows through the first coat.

• Then apply your coat of regular orange. Make sure to give yourself a solid base of orange to start with.

• After that you'll be starting in with highlights. Mix your yellow paint with some orange to create a light orange. You'll apply this to all of the high spots on the pumpkins. But you should do this in sections. Do one or two high spots at a time because blending is done while the paints are still wet. After applying this color to a few spots, clean off your brush and put the base color orange on your brush and run it around the edges of the light orange you applied. This should effectively blend the base orange into the highlight color. If when your highlight color dries, it is not bright enough to be seen, add more yellow to your light orange mixture and reapply.

• Now you can move onto the shadows. The shadow color you'll make out of brown, red, and orange in about equal parts. You will want to apply the shadow color into all of the crevices and wherever shadow would be. (eg. if a pumpkin is sitting on top of another pumpkin, the shadow would be where the two pumpkins meet. Also at the tops of the pumpkin, where the stem comes out) For this part you'll use a smaller brush to apply the shadow color down those crevasses and stipple some color towards the top and the bottom of the pumpkin as well. Feel free to use your fingers to smush that paint around.

• Lastly, you'll just need to apply a glossy clear coat to give the appearance of a real pumpkin. Apply with a good size clean brush.

Since we already know how to paint a pumpkin, we can skip that step and head on onto the rest of what makes up Greg's pumpkin head.

NOTE: Do not paint the pumpkin until you have done this next step.

The pumpkin sizes needed for this step are 1 1/2" x 1 3/4".

GREGS HEAD

1. Draw on Gregs happy face with pencil, trying not to press too hard because you don't want to make any accidental mess up indentations in the pumpkin. Once you are happy with the drawn face, carefully use your xacto knife to cut out the mouth and eyes. You don't need to go super deep with your cuts as long as you can carve out just a little of the foam.

2. Once that is done you will want to paint the inside of the mouth and eyes black. Trust me, you do not want to paint the pumpkin before you do this step, there will be many regrets, messiness, and sadness that you messed up your pumpkin paint job.

3. Next you need to make Greg's teapot. For this part you'll need the foamclay to sculpt the teapot. Keep the stem on the pumpkin but cut it down just a little if it looks a little too tall for the teapot. . You'll need the stem there for the clay to grab onto. Having a little tray of water will help with the moldability of the foamclay and make it adhere better to the pumpkin. Dab a couple drops of water on top of the pumpkin and take a wad of foamclay to make the body of the teapot. Form it on the top of the pumpkin. on top of that, you'll put a little disk of clay to create the teapot bottom, a little long piece for the handle on one side, and form a small piece into a spout on the other side. Wait a minimum of 1 hour to dry.

4. Last its time to paint the teapot. You will start with a base of black. Black will make your silver paint look more metallic. Once the black is dry, apply your silver paint to the whole teapot. Next go in with silver mixed with black for some shadows. Apply them to the top of the teapot, below the spout and handle, and around the lip of the teapot bottom.

5. Paint the pumpkin the way described in the last step.

WERTS HEAD

1. Repeats step 1 and 2 from Gregs head.

2. Next you'll need to make the hat for Wert. You can do this by cutting out the shape provided out of thick paper or 2-3 mm craft foam. If using craft foam, glue the edges together with contact cement and the hat is done.

3. Put hot glue on the inside edge of the hat and place on top Werts head.

4. Paint Werts hat.

5. Paint the pumpkin head

This one is the easy one. The pumpkin dimensions are 1 3/4" x 2 1/2". Since we now know how to paint and carve. Use the face pattern provided and create the carved pumpkin that goes on the pumpkin mans lap.

For this step you'll need your xacto knife, the small piece of balsa wood, and a little sandpaper

You'll start by drawing onto your wood the knife pattern. Cut it out with your xacto knife. You can then sharpen the one side of the wood blade with the xacto, chipping away until its flat-ish. You can also carve the edge off of the handle to make it more rounded or you can just use sand paper to sand down all of these shapes if that is more comfortable for you.

You'll then paint the knife black on the blade and then silver once that has dried and paint the handle brown.\

Now that you've got a good idea of how to paint and carve the pumpkins, we can move onto the arms, legs, and assembly.

Take the torso pumpkin and attach it to the bottom pumpkin by using a small piece of dowel about 3 in long. stab it into the Styrofoam of both pumpkins. Then hot glue the dowel in place on both pumpkins.

HEAD and BODY

To make the head, use pattern provided on the pumpkin with the dimensions 2 3/8" x 3 1/2". The pumpkin mans torso is 3 1/8" x 3 1/4 ".

Paint both as described in Step 2.

Arms and Legs

To make the arms and legs you'll need to get out your wire and run it through the top of the torso on the sides, closer to the front. Same goes for the legs. I chose one piece of wire for each limb and stuck them into the pumpkin torso at least 1-2 inches. Once you are happy with your arm and legs positioning and length, you can move onto the hay.

Remember that long hay i had you put aside earlier? Now if the time to use it. Start by laying out multiple pieces of hay and gluing them together side by side, once at the top of the strand and also closer to the bottom. Once you've got about 5 pieces together you can apply it to an arm or limb. Don't focus on the lengths of hay all being the same or meeting up at the ends, you want it to remain a bit messy.

Next, take this strip of hay you've made and turn it over. That side should look better and you can now hot glue it to one of your wire limbs. Fold your piece around the limb and glue it on. You mostly want to focus on getting it on there. Once you've glued it on, you can glue on individual pieces of hay to fix any bald spots or weird spots as well as will out the arm more.

Follow this step for the rest of the limbs.

Once the arms are done, take a small peice of twine and wrap it a few times around the wrists of the pumpkin man and tie. Add a little dab of glue at the tie point, and trim the excess twine string.

Now we get to do the fun part, putting it all together.

Set the pumpkin man on top of the hay bail until you are happy with his position. Mark on the bail where the center of his pumpkin butt sits and stab it with another small 3 in long dowel. Also make a hole in the middle of the pumpkin mans bum. Glue the dowel in place on both.

Next figure out where you want the carved pumpkin to sit. Take a piece of wire 4 in long and run it through the bottom of the pumpkin. With the wire sticking out of the bottom of the pumpkin, stab it through the top of the leg on the pumpkin man where he would be holding the pumpkin on his leg and also continue to push the wire through the hay bail until you are happy with the position. You can place a little dab of glue beneath the carved pumpkin to hold that position

Then you can glue the little knife into the pumpkin mans left hand on an angle with hot glue.