Decorating Pumpkins the Folk It way

As we welcome in the signs of autumn, the golden leaves and colder weather, it also means that its nearly time for Halloween. For some, this event is the best day of the year and while we are some way behind the US for celebrating the holiday, it is certainly becoming a bigger deal in the UK as the years go by. 

As pumpkins fill the supermarkets, we could not resist the urge to take a few home to decorate.  We could have got out the knife but we were inspired by this recent blog post we saw and decided to follow the 'no carving' trend. 

If you want to have a go at decorating your own, here's what you will need: 

DecoArt's Chalky Finish paint in Carbon

Paintbrush - we used a DecoArt 2" flat brush 

DecoArt metallic lustre wax in Gold Rush 

Luxe label No 3 or 4 Round Brush 

DecoArt Americana acrylic in warm white 

Paper towel 

First we painted the pumpkin in DecoArt Chalky Finish paint. As we keep saying, the beauty of this paint is that it needs no prep - grab your pumpkin and get painting. It gives a gorgeous matte finish which gives the perfect look for Halloween. 

Paint one coat of Carbon onto the pumpkin.

Once this coat was dry, (you could speed it up with a hairdryer if you needed to) we dry brushed the pumpkin with DecoArt Metallic wax using long vertical strokes to follow the curves of the pumpkin. To do this, lightly press the brush into the wax and remove the excess by brushing it onto the paper towel. When the brush feels almost dry to the touch, lightly brush the wax over the pumpkin. If you wish to build the colour, add a second layer of the wax to the pumpkin. 

Create a thing of beauty using Metallic lustre!

Now comes the fun bit! Grab your round brush, your chosen colour paint and get Folking! The beauty of this project is that you can paint whatever design you want onto it.  The curved surface of the pumpkin presents its challenges when painting but you can make your design as simple or as intricate as you wish. The important part is to have fun with it. 

We chose to decorate ours with comma strokes, flowers (from our bluebirds kit) and dots. Let your imagination go wild!

Here is our beautiful Folked up pumpkin 

Now we've got the bug we are going to have fun carving one.... 

If you have created a Folk It pumpkin, or if we have inspired you to have a go at painting one up for Halloween, we would love to see it. 

Happy Folking...and Happy Halloween, 

Carol x