Painted Pumpkins for Thanksgiving Tablescape

Shopping the sales after Halloween, I picked up these artificial pumpkins and gourds for 80% off the regular price. You notice the orange colored one has a glittered stem, which I don't want, but I figured that could be removed.

The stem was easily removed, by loosening the glue around the base and gently and slowly pulling it out of the styrofoam. After soaking it in warm water for awhile, some of the glitter came off easily, but not enough.

Isopropyl alcohol will take acrylic paint off of most surfaces. It's what I use to easily take the paint off of my fingernails, which hardly ever happens! So I soaked the stem in alcohol and using a small stiff brush removed almost all of the glitter. You know how glitter is, impossible to remove all of it!

I chose two colors to base coat the gourds, a Skyline blue Folkart acrylic paint and Ceramcoat Wedgewood green. The top coat is a Ceramcoat light ivory.

The base coat was just brushed on and it wasn't necessary to make a completely opaque coat, since a little of the original colors showing through makes them a little more interesting.

My idea is to have a uniform color and an understated Thanksgiving tablescape.

Next, with a little foam sponge, the ivory color was dabbed on, allowed to dry and touched up as needed. Sometimes the ridges in the pumpkin were a little more glaring than I wanted them to be, so I took a damp paint bruch and softened them, while the paint was still damp.

The gourd to the left was the same hue, but a paler shade of the Wedgewood green, which I used on two other pumpkins, so it seemed unnecessary to base coat it. Just dabbing the ivory on it seemed perfectly fine.

Accidentally, some paint was dabbed onto one of the stems. I had planned to leave them the original color, but the definition was very pleasing. More of the detail was visible, so they all were touched up with the ivory paint, too.

Below, you see the finished pumpkins and gourds. Aren't they pretty? They are all ready for my Thanksgiving tablescape... Now the burlap runner I bought at Michael's the other day, using the 50% off coupon, for a total of $6.50, is the next project on my list. Will keep you updated...