More Pumpkin Projects

 Updated only affects title

Sorry about the picture placement.  This new blog platform will not let me move the pictures around.  I must say it has ruined the blogging experience for me.

Although I have not posted in a while, I have been busy working on my pumpkin projects.  Since Iposted the last picture of a pumpkin in October, I have worked on four different projects.  These projects take a lot of time, and progress has been slow.  Today, I will be writing about one of the more successful projects. 

I have looked at magazine Halloween pictures of yards covered in carved pumpkins.  They look spectacular.  A yard full of pumpkins is also extremely expensive.  Perhaps they get a discount for buying a truckload of pumpkins.  I would like to do a project with a yard full of pumpkins, but alas, even if I could rationalize buying that many pumpkins, I would not have enough interested friends to help me carve them in a timely manner.

My thoughts turned to using the foam pumpkins.  I could work on them all year.  I could use them for multiple years.  However, the foam pumpkins are incredibly expensive.  The craft store near my home was selling them at thirty dollars each for the small ones.  A few dozen of them is out of the question.  

Undeterred, I move to the next thought about making the pumpkins myself from paper mâché.  I have made two pumpkins from a form I made myself.  This form was made from plastic bags stuffed inside a plastic grocery bag, and then filled out with tubes of newspaper to give it more of a pumpkin shape.  That actually worked, but the pumpkins did not have a real pumpkin shape.  I decided that when pumpkins were available, I would purchase one and I could cover it in paper mâché. 

In the fall, we masked up and went to the farmers market.  We did not stay long.  I pretty much had to grab the first pumpkin I saw that had a nice area for carving.  We did not want to stay long in an area with people in it due to the Corona Virus.  I wish I had more time to hunt for the perfect pumpkin, because this pumpkin was a little large.  I would have preferred something a little smaller.  

So I brought home the pumpkin and covered it in three layers of paper mâché.  The pumpkin was heavy, and I could only work on half the pumpkin at a time.  Also, I had hoped to use this pumpkin for a second project, so I used Vaseline to cover the entire pumpkin before I started adding the paper layers.  My first layer of paper was just paper soaked in water.  That helped insure that the paper mâché would not stick to the pumpkin.   Once the first half had dried, I turned it over and did the second side.  

Using a layer of paper soaked with water is a little more tedious than other methods I normally use.  I would add a little water and paper to an area, then go back and layer on some paper with flour paste.  

This was not just an ordinary flour paste.  I was also trying something experimental with the flour mix.  I am not totally sure that this was worth the effort, but I wanted to make sure that the flour paste was water proof.  Instead of mixing flour and water, I used thin-set mortar add mix as the liquid.  This is a form of liquid latex.  In theory, it should make the pumpkin imperious to water.  (I will be blogging about the experiment to check for waterproofing in my next post.)

Once the pumpkin had on three layers of paper mâché, I cut the layers off of the pumpkin using a craft knife.  I ended up cutting it off in quarters.  I had marked it for eighths, but it came off easily in quarters.  There was not enough flex in the paper mâché to take it off in halves.  The trick is to ease it off so that there are no rips and tears in the layers.  (Or at least as few as possible.)  Another trick is to cut some notches as you take it off.  The pumpkin will go back much more easily if you have the notches as a guide.  

Marking some registration marks is a must.  After you get the thing apart, putting it back together without knowing which piece was next to which piece can take up a lot of time.  I usually mark the quarters on each side of the edges using either numbers or the alphabet.  It really took the guess work out of things.

Once the layers have been removed from the pumpkin, I put it back together using a hot glue gun.  I start with two adjoining pieces and glue them top and bottom to make sure the edges meet properly.  Then I continue gluing the edges and notches until the whole seam is glued back together.  I usually glue each half half, then the other two pieces to create a half.  Then I cover those joins in a couple of layers of paper mâché.  It is easier to do at least those two seams while the pumpkin is still open and easy to reach.  Then, I glue the two halves of the pumpkin together.  There are still two seams that have to be covered on the inside.  Cover them, then cover all the seams on the outside.

Once the pumpkin had on three layers of paper mâché, I cut the layers off of the pumpkin using a craft knife.  I ended up cutting it off in quarters.  I had marked it for eighths, but it came off easily in quarters.  There was not enough flex in the paper mâché to take it off in halves.  The trick is to ease it off so that there are no rips and tears in the layers.  (Or at least as few as possible.)  Another trick is to cut some notches as you take it off.  The pumpkin will go back much more easily if you have the notches as a guide.  

Marking some registration marks is a must.  After you get the thing apart, putting it back together without knowing which piece was next to which piece can take up a lot of time.  I usually mark the quarters on each side of the edges using either numbers or the alphabet.  It really took the guess work out of things.

Once the layers have been removed from the pumpkin, I put it back together using a hot glue gun.  I start with two adjoining pieces and glue them top and bottom to make sure the edges meet properly.  Then I continue gluing the edges and notches until the whole seam is glued back together.  I usually glue each half half, then the other two pieces to create a half.  Then I cover those joins in a couple of layers of paper mâché.  It is easier to do at least those two seams while the pumpkin is still open and easy to reach.  Then, I glue the two halves of the pumpkin together.  There are still two seams that have to be covered on the inside.  Cover them, then cover all the seams on the outside.

After those layers are all dry, I give the entire pumpkin three more layers of paper mâché.  It will look like it was never taken apart.  At this point, it would normally be ready for painting, but that is not the plan for this pumpkin.  I plan to cover it in a plastic wrap and then cast another pumpkin on top of it.  Then that pumpkin will be cut off, and the process will continue to complete it as above.  Using this as a mold, I should be able to make a number of pumpkins.  It might take a while, but by October, 2021 I expect to have several pumpkins, each individually carved and painted.