And now some Gourd Guys....

Yes last week I showed some Grungy Gourds and today I have some Gourd Guys... there seems to be a theme here... vegetables on parade perhaps?? As I've said before, I'm gaga over wreaths and I saw one on Instagram about a month ago that I just HAD to make...

Aren't they a hoot????  The idea came from  My Paper Crane... you can see her blog here.   And you can see more of these wreaths here on Instagram.  She gives instructions on how to paint the faces which you can see here and make the wreath here.

That said this is a very labor/time/$$ intensive wreath... but like I said before ... I HAD TO MAKE IT!!! And what follows is my experience and what I did and what I  would probably do differently if I made another...but right now I'm thinking this one will be it... but we'll see, we'll see.

I started with 4 bags of foam pumpkins from Michaels... 2 bags of "big" ones and 2 bags of  "small" ones.  She used a 16" wire wreath form... I had a 20" wire wreath form so mine is bigger and took more pumpkins.  You also need paint... black and white...  the craft stuff in the little plastic bottles ... and get 2 kinds of brushes ... a flat one and a small tapered one... and to speed up the painting process get  2 of each brush so you won't have to constantly clean them (ask me how I know).  You will need floral wire and a glue gun... and I hope yours in is better working order than mine was... I had to push the hot glue out all day long till I broke down and went back to Michaels and bought a new one.  And I almost forgot the noses are clipped from those fake spring of Christmas berries... this may be the only time I was happy they had Christmas stuff out so early. When you clip off the berry hold onto it...so it doesn't go shooting across the room and under the couch ... or wherever some of mine went to... those babies really fly...LOL

Okay you start by painting the faces... the way I went about this had me handling each pumpkin 5 times ... in retrospect I could have gotten it down to four times if I had done it in this order.

1.)  Start by painting the black mouth shape and the white eye shape... the eyes are going to take 2 coats of white.
2.)  When that dries you can go back and give the eye shape a second coat and add the teeth. I made the teeth with the wooden end of the paint brush  which seemed to speed the process along.
3.)  When that dries go back and do the  black part of the eye.
4.)  When that  dries add a little dot of white for the pupil...this adds so much to the faces.


Now onto wiring the pumpkins... take a length of floral wire... about 8"... fold back an inch or so at one end, twist it and shove it into the back of the pumpkin... apply a little hot  melt glue where you inserted it. When I got to this point I couldn't decide whether to wire all the pumpkins up a one time or wait till I decided where they were going to go on the wreath. I opted for waiting till I placed them and this did slow down the process.

As I started putting the pumpkins on the wire wreath form I wasn't happy with how much of the wire form was showing so I glued some silk leaves from a garland I got at Michaels to the form... they were black with orange glitter...oooooohhhh....I love glitter!!!  It took quite a while to get them all the pumpkins wired onto the form...and then I filled in here and there where I could glue little pumpkins.


I'm not convinced that a wire wreath form is the best base. I'm thinking a grapevine wreath that is kinda flat ...perhaps spray painted black... and then use black floral wire...might have been easier to use.  Also I contemplated cutting the backs off of the pumpkins so they would lay flatter but decided I was too far into the project to change things then. Flat back pumpkins would give you more surface to glue...just saying.

I finished the wreath off adding some sparkly ...orange glitter again...plastic feather-y kinda  garland I found at Micheals... (they should give me a kick-back here... I spent quite a bit there but they had  the best Halloween stuff in this area). .. I cut pieces off of the feather-y kinda garland and stuffed them in here and there.


Here are some close ups.. and yes I took the pictures with the wreath hanging on two different doors... the blond wood one is  an interior door and the white one is the back of my front door and that glass in the top of it is a bit distracting...

I ended up using about 32 pumpkins total... I had 4 left over and I suppose I could have squeezed them in but by 11 o'clock last night I had had enough of these gourdy guys and just wanted to clean up and call it a day.

So my Fall and Halloween decor is multiplying... however the Fall temps I so enjoyed have gone elsewhere ... it is 88 degrees here today... gotta crank up the AC again...ahhh the weather... it always gives me something to be crabby about...LOL

happy crafting...

carol fun