Sequins Pumpkins

I was looking at my mini pumpkins the other day and trying to think of what I could do with them. There are a lot of ideas out there, but I wanted to try something different. Somehow, my sequins ornaments popped into my head and I decided to just go for it! This may be one of the most impractical things to do with a pumpkin, but it was fun and they turned out cute :)

Beware! I advise against leaving these unattended outside. From my experience, squirrels like to eat pumpkins they find sitting outside and I would worry about those little guys somehow eating one of the pins, sequins, or beads. So, if you want them outside, don't leave them out long and try to keep an eye on them. Otherwise, I suggest enjoying these as an indoor decoration!

*I'm sorry for the quality of all of my pictures. We've had dreary weather and I've had poor lighting for picture taking and my photo editing skills, apparently, aren't up to the task of white balancing them.

You are going to need similar supplies to making a sequins ornament.

Supplies:

• Pumpkins - you can use full-size pumpkins, they will just take many sequins to cover. I chose to use mini ones because I had them already and they take fewer sequins to decorate.
• Sequins - I used 5mm to decorate my mini pumpkins. If you decorate a big pumpkin I suggest using 8mm sequins and/or larger. If you just want to do a jack-o'-lantern face, all you'll need is black.
• Sequin Pins
• Seed Beads - I use what came in this kit
• Pencil
• Optional: pointy tool like an awl to start holes in pumpkin - I didn't end up needing this, but it can be handy to have something nearby just in case. A safety pin works too.
• Optional but recommended: leather thimble (make your own!) and/or a flat sturdy object you can use to help push the difficult pins in (like a jumbo craft stick).

Also, if you'd rather not stab pins into your pumpkin, you can just use glue to stick the sequins right on the pumpkin.

For a traditional jack-o'-lantern face, just use black sequins with black beads.

I looked at the internet to get some ideas of what I wanted to do and tried to keep it simple since I would be recreating the face with circles.

You can try to draw your face on the pumpkin first but I had a hard time doing this with pencil and didn't want to mark it up with pen.

I suggest starting towards the top with the eyes and then working your way down.

Remember, to decorate with sequins, you take a pin, stick a bead on it, then add the sequins. Hold all of that on the pin and then stab it into the pumpkin where you want it.

It actually stabs in really well. If you hit something hard, it's just a seed. Just keep pushing.

I had one white pumpkin and thought it would great as my "bloody" pumpkin.

This one is pretty easy. Start by surrounding the stem with red sequins. It is HARD to push pins in by the stem. It is really tough there. I highly recommend using a leather thimble to help push them in or something flat and hard like a jumbo craft stick. You will really hurt your finger otherwise. Do about two rows or so of red sequins. I just put them where I thought blood would pool on the pumpkin.

Following the indents of the pumpkin, line up more red sequins. Don't make them go down all the way and don't make them all the same (or you can, it's your pumpkin).

Occasionally, add an extra sequin below the line for an extra drop of "blood". Since I had it on hand, I also added a larger 8mm sequin under the smaller one so that the "drop of blood" had a fat bottom like a drop would have.

This was Jessyratfink's suggestion and ended up being my second favorite pumpkin (behind the rainbow one).

Start by creating two small ovals near the top of the pumpkin for the eyes.

Next, add a simple triangle for the nose. Going right out of the bottom of the nose, create the mouth.

For adding the whiskers, I suggest starting with a center whisker. Have it go straight out and have it fairly long.

Then add a whisker above and below that one. Make them go up and down and make them shorter than the middle whisker.

I decided not to do anything for ears, but you could stab little holes on top of the pumpkin and bend two little pieces of black pipe cleaner to create ears!

I honestly wasn't happy with this one, but I'm going to share it anyway because I did it.

Take the color you want for the TMNT you want. I would do Michelangelo but I thought the orange might be lost on the orange pumpkin so I went for blue for Leonardo.

Create two ovals right next to each other for the eye holes and then continue around the whole pumpkin for the rest of the mask. You can do something in the back if you want like with my TMNT pregnancy shirt, but you can just leave it too.

After I finished all my other pumpkins, I decided I must do one with rainbow colors on it because I love rainbows. I had run out of pumpkins so I went to the store for another. I wanted a white one, but couldn't find any so I got the lightest orange pumpkin I could find.

To start this one, use red sequins with red beads. Outline the stem area and add a couple more to make the shape less circular. You can see I only did one row of red, but looking at the finished pumpkin I think more might have looked nicer, but do what feels right for you.

Continue on with your next color doing the same thing where you outline the whole previous color and then add a few more to create a wavy design.

Continue this with each color until you are done! You will use more of each color as you go, so you'll use the least of your red and the most of your pink (if you go that far).

Enjoy your cute little pumpkins.

Like I mentioned in my intro, please be careful of leaving these outside. Don't want squirrels eating pins and sequins.

When you are all done with the pumpkins and ready to dispose of them, my recommendation (which would be a pain, I agree) is to pry the pins and sequins out of the pumpkins and then compost the pumpkin itself. Again, this would be to hope that an animal doesn't get in the trash and accidentally eat those pins. Something like a knife or bead scoop should help with this. I suggest a needle nose pliers as a last resort as that might be hard to use still.