Beautiful Fall No Sew Easy Fabric Tray Pumpkins / So You Think You Can Craft DIY Challenge

Hello my crafty tribe, this is Artsy Maddie and let's get creative! So I have been collecting some silver metal trays over this past year for this specific project. I couldn't wait to do this project. I've been inspired by Pinterest for quite a while now, so I was looking for some perfect trees. These ones were half price at one point, so I got some great deals and this is going to be a really budget friendly craft. So I'm starting off with three of the oval trays. These are just from Dollar Tree, so one dollar trays. These are awesome and I am just giving it a coat of primer, so just around the edges because that's all that's going to show. So just stippling in some primer all around the edges of the trays. And then once that was dry I'm going in with this salmon color ceramic coat paint. I love this color, it's so rich, it's such a beautiful color. So this is going to be my base coat and same thing, I just go in and staple this all around the edges of these trays. So I have three of them and then I'm going to go in with a wash. So I added the same salmon color with a little bit of orange just to give it that orange tinge and I mixed it with some water to turn it into a wash and then I'm just going to be going over this base coat that I have on the trays. So just, it can be messy, it doesn't matter, just getting it on there. And then this blue cloth is a lint free shop rag. So I have a roll of them, you can get them at any auto supply store, but they're lint free, that's the main thing because you don't want to get a bunch of fuzzies into your paint. So just going in and doing a wet distress now. So once this is dried I went in with a baby wipe and just wiped some of that detail back down to the primer and actually showing some of the silver of the tray. So I would call this wet distressing and it's with a baby wipe and then you just rub away some of that paint. So now I'm going to be using this white wax. I don't know if you guys have had a chance to use the waxes yet, I know a lot of you use antique wax. I really wanted to try some of this white wax so this is my first project using it and I love it. It's so great, it gives such nice depth and a softness to your project. So I let the white wax dry and then again I'm using this lint free shop rag to just go in and buff it so you just kind of wipe off all the the wax and then it'll just stay settled in the little divots and grooves of your project. So then I am tracing out giving myself a template for the middle of the bottom of the tray. So I want it to be the right size for the inside bottom of this tray so I get it all cut out but then I need it to be just a hair smaller because I'm going to be kind of upholstering this for lack of a better term. No staples or anything needed but it's kind of the technique we're doing. So I just trimmed inside of this shape just a little bit to make it a tiny bit smaller and then once I had that done I cut out three of these out of foam core. So this is just from Dollar Tree as well. Like kids use it for science fairs and stuff it's just called foam core, well that's what I refer to it as. It just has a little bit of thickness of foam between two pieces of cardstock and then I cut out three pieces of cotton batting. So this would be like the old batting they used for quilts and stuff. It's fairly inexpensive you can get it at Walmart. So I cut two to be the exact size of the foam core and then I cut one a little bit larger because it's going to wrap around the edges of the foam core. So three pieces of foam batting, two the same as the foam core and one just a little bit larger and then I cut out some fabric to upholster it with. So just leaving lots of room like a an allowance around the edges and then once I had that cut I'm just going in with some hot glue. So then I'm going in with the hot glue and just pulling over the edges of the fabric. So if you've ever done any like upholstery on a stool seat or anything like that same idea. So we're just pulling that fabric over quite snug it doesn't have to be super tight but just snug and moving it in with that hot glue and just getting a nice fit all around the edge of the foam core. So just take your time work in small sections. I was actually running out of hot glue at this point so I was kind of panicking a little bit. It was the middle of the night and I couldn't just go out and get more and I really wanted to finish up so um I'll show you here. I actually had to start breaking into my gold and silver glue that I was so excited to find at Dollarama but it was worth it. I got this project done and hopefully I'll have time to find more before Christmas. So anyway just getting this glued down to the tray now and here's the three of them together. I'm just going to be tacking it together. This is going to be kind of temporary just because I was running out of hot glue. If you're building this which I hope you guys will you'll need to reinforce the back of this with a paint stick or a strip of wood and some e6000 or you know some sort of permanent glue that's good with metal. So for the stem of the pumpkin I'm just dry brushing a little bit of orange and then a little bit of cream onto a branch that I had just a little section of branch and then I will be getting that glued onto the top of this pumpkin as well. So again you just want to be using a glue that's good for metal um like e6000 or super glue or something and then get it tacked on. So you guys I'm a co-host for the first time of a challenge. This is the So You Think You Can Craft Challenge and it is hosted by Melissa Makes It DIY. My wonderful friend Melissa I'm so excited I was so honored when she asked me to be a part of this. So I picked fabric as our craft item. So there will be a playlist today and everyone will be using fabric. I'm so excited I can't wait to see what everybody makes. So be sure to check that out I'm gonna have a of course a link to her channel in my description box as well as the playlist. So now I'm moving on to my second tray here my blue pumpkin and it has kind of an odd shape but I just did the same thing. So I'm tracing out a template and then I wanted some curved lines to line up with these little bumps in the tray. So I'm using a bendable ruler and kind of lining up those edges and giving myself a template here some lines. So just taking my time lining it up with those little bumps and then once I had it all drawn out I'm going to do the same thing. So we're going to trace that out onto some foam core and then once I had that traced out I'm going to actually separate these into five separate pieces. So using that template and those bent lines that I drew with the ruler that's what I'll actually be cutting out here. So I get all five pieces drawn out and then separated and then I actually thought to mark them with one two three four five before I cut them apart thankfully because you'll want to keep track just so they can fit together again nicely you know just in case one is a little smaller than the other end or something like that. So good idea just to mark them and keep track. Now ideally I should have actually made these template pieces just a little bit smaller as well so that they would have fit snugly into this tray but you'll see how I managed to make it work anyway but learn from my mistakes. So if you do want to do this project you just want to do the same thing as I did on the previous orange pumpkin and just make those template pieces a little bit smaller. So I am just mixing a nice I don't know what to call this blue but just kind of a mixture here I'm using a little bit of aqua and a little bit of a bright blue and then just a little bit of the cream I'm just using the primer paint just to lighten it up a little bit. So once I had that base coat on and dried I'm actually going to go in with a wash on this one as well so I wanted it to be more of a aqua green over top of this blue just to create a nice depth to it. So again I have a lint free rag here and I've watered down the paint and I'm just going to go over it doesn't matter it can be messy as you want because I'm actually going to be kind of dabbing it off with that lint free rag here so you just get a nice flat area on the rag not a lot of wrinkles or bumps so that you're not getting a pattern into it and then once that was dry I'm going to go on to this with that white wax as well and I just love it I no wonder everyone's using it it's really nice to work with and gives you such a nice soft feel and look to your project so I just brushed it on let it dry I think I let it dry for about an hour and then it was dry to the touch and then I just buffed it off again with the lint free rag and it just sits in those little divots and grooves I just love it and then because this is already dry and I'm just buffing it then I can just move right on to the next part of the project here so for this one the fabric I'm going to be using is actually just a throw blanket that was on clearance at the thrift store for two dollars same thing again I have the three layers of batting so two that are almost the exact fit and then one that's a little bit larger and then I'm just going to cut out some of this blanket here to be my upholstery fabric so same thing again I'm just going to be pulling the edges of the fabric over and gluing them down to the back of the foam core so just taking your time work in small sections um the fabric was okay like I wasn't feeling the heat of the the hot glue too badly through the fabric but you just want to be careful maybe if you have one of those silicone spatulas or the little silicone finger grips that would be a good idea I did get a couple of little burns through this these projects so do better than me learn from my mistakes so once I had all these pieces um upholstered then I'm just gluing the two outer pieces together so I just held them as tight as I could together realizing that I hadn't cut down those templates to be smaller so these were barely fitting into the tray the way I wanted them to so I'm just trying to get them in there as tight as I can so gluing them together and holding them together really tightly here so to make this more of a permanent hold I'm just using some fix all from Dollar Tree and some hot glue of course for that quick hold so I got the outer pieces glued down to the tray so ideally they all would have fit into this tray but I just didn't cut down those template pieces enough so then I'm just tacking now the middle piece on top and it still looks great it still worked out so so no worries we saved the project but if you're going to do this project then you could just do that differently and cut down those template pieces to be smaller so for the stem of this pumpkin I'm just giving this little block of wood that I have just a watered down stain with a little combination of green and the aqua color and then to decorate this I'm going to be using this floral foam from Dollar Tree and I'm just going to coil it around my paintbrush and that'll work like the little tendrils on the pumpkin so I just did a couple of those and the colors I was inspired by were these fall colors that they were bringing in in Dollar Tree florals I just love them all I bought a whole bunch of the fall florals and I felt really inspired by them so I'm just gluing in some of those Dollar Tree leaves and some of the Dollar Tree sunflowers in the blue color and I get that stem glued on so I'm just using hot glue for now and I realize I will have to go in and reinforce the back of this afterwards but we'll just get it done for now so you guys can see it and then I'm just gluing those tendrils on as well and then that's so that's it for the blue pumpkin we'll move on to the purple one so this is just a little round a little bit of a deeper tray and I knew that it'd be a little hard to get this template done but we're gonna do it we're gonna work with it so I got kind of a rough outline just with a chalk on the paper and then just kind of judging what kind of size this circle is so I use this margin container lid to get a perfect circle and then I'm just gonna cut a little bit inside of that line just to kind of give me the size that I'm wanting because I know I don't want it to be as small as the bottom of this dish but just a tiny bit larger so again same thing I'm just gonna trace them out on trace out the template onto some foam core and get my exacto knife sharpened and then I'm gonna cut out the foam core and then test it out to see how it fits down into that rounded dish it was just a little bit hard to fit with that rounded bottom so just having to trim it down just a little bit more and then once I have that size this is the fabric that I'm going to be upholstering this pumpkin with I found a nice purple to match those purple flowers from Dollar Tree that I was inspired by how about you guys did you guys pick up these colors of the new fall florals so then for this circle to kind of take on a pumpkin persona I just did some curved lines so I'll share this with you in my google drives like this circle with the curved lines in case you guys want to replicate this so there'll be a picture of that in my google drive the public folder that I share with you guys so I'm actually going to be cutting three layers of foam core of this circle pumpkin so there's going to be a bottom piece a middle piece and a top piece so if you kind of just watch what I'm doing here it's a little bit tough to explain but I've cut out the bottom in the middle and now cutting down the template to be the top piece so I actually made these pumpkins in the opposite order that I've shown you guys this was actually the first pumpkin that I did so I was really just kind of learning from this one but um I knew for the bottom like I wanted each piece to have just that little bit of batting to make it a little bit soft yeah just to kind of soften the edges so you guys will have to let me know if you think it was successful or like if you would do it would you go back and do it in a different technique so just cutting out those template pieces out of the foam batting but I just did the one layer on each layer of this pumpkin so hopefully it'll make sense here in just a moment once you see all three layers so they're all gonna stack on top of each other and be upholstered separately if that makes sense so I'm just gluing down that batting to each piece just so that they stay in place for me and don't shift on me while I'm trying to work with them so then we're going to start by upholstering this top piece so the top piece of the pumpkin just leaving myself some extra fabric around the edges to pull over and same thing just hot gluing pulling up all those edges so this one I pulled pretty tight as well like you don't need to pull quite this tight um it's been a while since I've done upholstery so I think I was maybe a little bit overzealous so there isn't a lot of of poof to the to these pieces they're kind of flat but the batting still gives it that little bit of soft edges so so just getting it all tacked down so that is the top piece of the pumpkin and then we're going to move on to this the middle layer so the second layer of the pumpkin and again just cutting out that extra so we have that bit to wrap around the edges and then I'm going to actually glue down just the center of the top to the center of the middle so hopefully that made sense what I did there just getting it tacked down and then we'll wrap it all around to the back of the middle piece as well so same thing you just want to be careful I could feel the heat of the hot glue through this but um just want to be careful of course and then I of course got a little hot glue stain on the top piece of the fabric which was driving me crazy but I knew I could fix it with just some of the leaves and decorative touches I plan to add after anyway so then for that last layer just gluing the middle of the fabric and then the top two pieces right down onto that bottom layer and then same thing just wrapping all the edges around to the back of the foam core and there it is so there's the three upholstered layers of the pumpkin hopefully that made sense if you guys have any questions um my email address is always in my description box as well and I'll try and get back to you as soon as I can um so again just painting on some of that primer and then I had painted on um this really purple color and realized it was just way too purple so I tried lightening it up with um adding a little bit of gold and a little bit of a beigey color to it uh with some of that primer as well it's actually a paint primer combo and I thought that was a little better that was easier to work with so then I have this iridescent medium I've had this forever like I I would guess like 20 years and it's still going I'm always so frugal with these little special items I've been able to purchase over the years so it's such a pretty oh it just gives such a pretty iridescent to the paint so just using it sparingly over the edges and I will put a link to my description box I'll try and find some iridescent medium that's similar I might even be able to find the same stuff I'm sure they still make it so I just realized this was like too lavender I just needed to warm it up with a little bit of the pink so I added in some of that salmon color that ceramic coats salmon which I just love it's such a pretty color and then just ran some along the edges as well and then you see how much better it blends in with the florals and the fabric so this is the stem I'm going to use for this pumpkin it's just like a little bag of kids blocks that I had found that I'm working with so I just put on this purple stain wipe off the excess just so you can see a little bit of the wood grain through it and then same thing I'm just going to create some little wire tendrils for this and again this is just that floral foam from Dollar Tree so this one I just did on a straight pen I kind of liked it though on the brushes that coiled in smaller I feel like pumpkin tendrils kind of do that this this wire is so nice to work with though it's so flexible so then just getting this all glued down I probably should have put some of the like super glue or something down just to get a better hold to that metal I didn't think of it with this one though so then I finally got to hide that little stain that little hot glue stain that had happened on the top there and no one will ever know what's there except you guys and me so just getting it all glued down with the stem and these little extra little tendrils and stuff here and two more leaves so I remembered to add some flexol on the stem that'll be good I'll just have to reinforce that blue one and there we go that's our third pumpkin so you guys will have to let me know what you think of these and if it inspires you guys to try some they're really not difficult at all and I just wanted to show you some kind of variations in the technique and some ideas so hopefully they've inspired you to give it a try you just always want to remember like the hot glue doesn't really stick to metal all that well so just always use that like super glue or e6000 or something to get that strong hold so here they all are be sure to check out that playlist you guys I'm excited I'm excited to see all the fabric crafts that people come up with and especially Melissa and thank you so much for asking me to be a co-host and I can't wait to see what you've made too with fabric thank you to everyone who's already subscribed to my channel if you haven't hopefully I've inspired you and maybe you'll consider subscribing and sticking around becoming part of our crafty tribe it's such an awesome group I'm just so thankful for everyone that comes back to watch all my videos it's so so much effort but it makes it all worth it when you guys like watch them and get inspired and want to make some of these items or it inspires you to do something else crafty or creative thank you guys so much for watching we'll see you soon in the next video