Plastic Pumpkin Refresh

I don’t know about you, but after a few years of decorating with my plastic pumpkins, I had a small white one that was looking a little sad.  Let me show you because this photo is worth its thousand words.

See what I mean?  Scuffed up, scratched, and cracking, this little baby had seen better days.  A spell had been cast on her from the wicked witch that wasn’t so kind.  So just a few days before Halloween, I figure I better get cracking at giving her a facelift.

The first step would be to spray the pumpkin.  Don’t get too close as my daughter did in this shot.  The paint will begin to run.  I just used my finger to dab the runs and made it smooth.

I finished the whole project outside.  Before turning the pumpkin on its sides to paint the bottom, I let the first pass dry.  I carefully painted two coats and then finished with a touch-up coat to enhance this metallic facelift.

I measured the pumpkin to see how large my image should be.  I decided on two inches.

I then measured the two-inch mark on my pattern paper, which is typical typing paper.

After perusing the web, this is the image I settled on, mainly because I wanted this pumpkin to coordinate with my two black, wooden carved crows.

I figured the easiest way to transfer this crow to my pumpkin would be to trace it.  I thought I was full of ingenuity with this idea, especially after I tried to freehand it!

I turned my drawing on the back side and scribbled a layer of graphite.

I trimmed the crow and taped it to my pumpkin.  I would highly recommend taping with a paint-safe tape so that when you remove the tape, it won’t remove the metallic facelift.

I traced the top of the crow.  During the tracing process, the graphite on the back transferred the image onto the pumpkin.

See, it worked!

The last step was to paint the crow with acrylic paint.  I also used a sharpie to fill in edges and define the swirls on the branches.