DIY Painted Pumpkins and Gourds for Your Thanksgiving Tablescape

[ctt template=”8″ link=”ct8G8″ via=”no” ]Shop the sales after Halloween! Pick up artificial pumpkins and gourds for deep discounts and paint them white for a beautiful Thanksgiving tablescape! [/ctt]

Preparing The Pumpkins

   The stem is 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 a while, some of the glitter comes 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 soak the stem in alcohol and using a small stiff brush remove 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 topcoat is Ceramcoat light ivory.  

   Brush the base coat onto the pumpkins.  It isn’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, dab ivory-colored paint on the pumpkins and allow them to dry.  Touch up as needed.  Sometimes the ridges in the pumpkin are a little more glaring than I want them to be.  For this, just take a damp paintbrush and soften them, while the paint is still damp.

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

Painted Pumpkins Accident

   Accidentally, I dab some paint onto one of the stems.  I had planned to leave them the original color, but the definition is very pleasing.  More of the detail is visible, so they all are 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… 

P.S. I love these!  Can’t wait to place them down the center of the burlap runner!

For more ideas for pumpkin displays, paper-mache pumpkins, arranging pumpkins for a mantel, and velvet pumpkins, click here ►Pumpkins.

This post was inspired by pins on Pinterest ►Painted White Pumpkins.