Twine Pumpkins

My mother in-law, Teri, called me the other day and said, "Come over. We're crafting."

Anyone who knows me knows I can't turn down something like that! When we got to her house, I saw we were going to be making twine/string pumpkins while the boys played with Peyton and watched football.

Here's what we used:

-Orange string (twine, yarn, whatever you prefer)

-balloons

-mod podge

-wax paper

-plastic (or paper) bowls

-plastic cups (solo cups)

-various decorations (lights, ribbon, Halloween ornaments, etc.)

-hot glue gun

Teri had taken the string from its original shape/wrapping and wrapped it into smaller balls, so we each had one, and had them sitting in a bowl of mod podge.

Then we blew up balloons to the size we wanted our pumpkins to be. I ended up having three; small, medium, and large. Baby, mommy, and daddy pumpkins. I know, I'm cheesy. Set some wax paper under the bowls and on the counter. If you're anything like us, you also might want to put wax paper on the floor and wear an apron...

Take the end of the yarn not in the glue and tie it around the end of your balloon. 

Get ready to get messy. Start wrapping the glue covered strong around your balloon. 

 

Wrap and wrap and wrap and wrap...

I started just spinning the balloon in my hands and letting the strings stick where they landed. There's no pattern to this. Go crazy.

Once you think there is enough string wrapped around your balloon, set it on a plastic cup over some wax paper to let it dry. This step take a few days and you'll want to occasionally rotate your pumpkins so they don't glue themselves to the cup. 

When they're completely dry, take a pin and poke the balloon. It'll make a funny crackling sound as it separates from the pumpkin form. (If the balloon gets stuck inside, cut a small hole in the bottom and fish it out.)

Even when dry  the pumpkins are very flexible, so you can push in the tops and bottoms to make them take on a more pumpkin-esque shape. 

Here's the tedious part: Lighting. 

On the smaller pumpkins, I found the biggest gaps between the strings on the bottom and fed a string of lights through it. 

 

On the larger pumpkin, I had cut a hole in the bottom because the balloon got stuck. 

I wanted the lights throughout the pumpkin and not just sitting at the bottom, so I looped the first light through string gaps at the top of each pumpkin:

Then I used thin wire and "went fishing" for more sections of the lights on various areas of the pumpkins. Peyton helped me test the lights: 

Once the lights were done, I took wired brown ribbon to form stems, green ribbon for the greenery, and used the hot glue gun to glue them to the pumpkins.

(We found green ribbon we liked that wasn't wired, but I made it wired. Take two pieces of ribbon and glue a thin piece of wire between them.)

Finally, add any other little decorations you like! I found a glittery spider! 

(The spider has a clip so I can use the pumpkins throughout autumn, not just Halloween.)

Tah-dah!