Three Boho Nuetral High End Natural Textured Pumpkins That Are Budget Friendly/ Pumpkin Patch Collab

Hello my crafty tribe, this is Artsy Maddie and let's get creative. Today's video is part of the Pumpkin Patch Fall Pumpkin collab and I am so excited to be a part of this. This is my second collab and Ellie from DIY From House to Home invited me to join this wonderful group of ladies. We're gonna have a playlist in our description boxes. I really hope you'll go and check it out. These are all very talented creators and I'm sure you'll see some great inspiration. So for this first pumpkin I wanted to show you what inspired me. This gorgeous pumpkin from Kirkland's. I spotted it in someone's shopping video so mine will differ from this pumpkin but I just wanted to show you what inspired me. So I inflated a balloon to full size like pretty big pretty big balloon full size and then I just did a quick paper mache on top of it. So I made sure that there was about three layers of just ripped printer paper, just white regular paper on it. So it's not going to be super strong but it's just going to give me the form that I need to start building it. So then I'm using two bags of this, we're just going to call it craft string because I think it varies a little bit from like fine crochet, needle point, it's used for all sorts of things. So I used this roll of wrapping paper like it's three rolls all together and I would wrap the string around it 100 times. So I just mixed and matched the strings that I had and I would do each of them just 100 wraps around that wrapping paper to get just random mix matched bundles of string. So then once I had that done I made 23 of them all together. So I'm going to make 23 braids to run along the outside of my pumpkin. Okay so here I have my bunch. This is my wreath hanger on my door so this kind of works out as a great height to work from and then you're just kind of letting gravity help you a little bit. So I'm just going to cut the bottom of my loop here and then we're going to be doing a fishtail braid. So I don't know if any of you have done this with hair but it's just a very similar idea. So I'm going to grab a bit from the left, so a bit from the left and take it over to the right hand side and then a bit from the back of the left and take it over to the right hand side. So I'm doing quite a chunk, I tried doing this with smaller amounts but it's much too finicky so you need to be a little bit less, less perfection with this is the better. Okay so just keep it kind of loose and grab quite a chunk. Like I tried doing it with smaller amounts but it's just it's not super forgiving so using the bigger chunks like I would guess, I guess there's probably about 15 to 20 in this little section and then just bringing that over to the opposite side. So you just keep pulling from the back and then over to the other side and then pull from the back and then over to the other side. Now if you drop it it's okay, it's quite forgiving to just pick it back up again and tell where your pieces line up. So again if you drop it or you lose track you can kind of just tell by the way that the threads are going and just pick it back up and start again. So I can tell that this was the last one to come over and then I just need to start from the other side. So just grab from the back and pull to the opposite side. Grab from the back and pull to the opposite side. Grab from the back and then if you get it kind of tangled like this and then that's kind of when you let go if if you had to but usually it works itself out. That's why I couldn't do the smaller amounts it would get too tangled. There you go you can see it's pretty forgiving, pretty easy to do but I would definitely recommend kind of the bigger to grab a bigger amount here like this. There we go, just keep working your way down. So then after my paper mache had dried I was just gonna coat it with a coat of paint that was a little bit closer to the off whites and creams and light tan colors that I was using. So I'm just using a mist tint that I found at Home Depot. I just thought it would be a handy color to have so always keep an eye out for those it was good quality paint. And then I'm just going to take each strip and glue a little section right in the middle of the pumpkin so right around the largest part of the balloon like the fattest part of the pumpkin. I'm just going to glue each strip on that middle part of the pumpkin and then I just made sure that the top is going to line up and leave a little bit of space for the stem. I could have left a little bit more I didn't actually know what I was going to use as the stem so technically I should have left just a little bit more room for that stem but it's okay it all worked out the the string or the yarn is a little bit forgiving it's kind of squishy right so I was able to work that around the stem. So just working my way around the balloon you'll see kind of the variations of the string that I used so like just mixing some of them together like 50 wraps of one and 50 wraps of another but just made sure that they were all a hundred. Some are a little fatter some are a little thinner but I kind of like that look. So this is where my inspiration kind of ended up going but it's okay I like the end product. I wasn't sure at a couple points but I do like the way it turns out so I fit 23 of these braids all around the fattest part of this pumpkin and then I just ended up using this funky bit of branch that I had from the other pumpkin and glued it to the top with just lots of hot glue got it really secured well and then I'm going to be bringing all of these braids up to the top of the pumpkin so I'm only going to do one little strip of glue and just make sure that the back left side of the braid is in the glue and then they're almost turning to a point where they're vertical instead of laying flat on the on the pumpkin balloon they're actually kind of laying on their side on the pumpkin balloon so I'm sure hopefully you can kind of understand what I'm doing here just so that they all gather together and fit at the top of the pumpkin and then just kind of squishing them in around the stem here so it just took a little bit of finagling but it worked out fairly well so that is the top of the pumpkin all done and then I'm going to flip it over to the bottom my boys thought this was the most funny looking thing they'd ever seen and I did start to lose faith for just a little bit but I do like it it did turn out really neat so then I just cut a quite a large hole in the bottom of this pumpkin because I'm going to need to fold in all those braids into the inside of this pumpkin but to give it more strength because this is just you know three sheets of paper kind of holding this together with glue I decided to fill it with all the plastic so I kept all my plastics the last couple weeks anything that was clean and didn't have any like food in it but just you know like the toilet paper plastic that was holding all that together and oh it's so surprising how much plastic we have in our house it didn't didn't take long at all so I just held on to those to fill my pumpkins with just to give them more strength so again I'm just kind of bringing the braids up and just doing that thin strip of glue and just letting the left back side of the braid touch into that glue so that they can squish together as they come closer to the top and if they have to lay on their side a little bit then they can do that just all fit in there and fit together and this is actually really sturdy like it'll be no problem to pack this away now and I'm sure it will be just fine there'll be no dents in it or or damage to it or anything so I'm really happy with it it doesn't look really like the inspiration as much as I thought I thought I was gonna maybe dip them in plaster and put them onto this balloon but I ended up just loving the soft texture to it it's very boho very natural looking I love it so you guys might get a kick out of this this was three times of the charm so another balloon and I decided to take electrical tape and give it more of a balloon shape so I am pulling the electrical tape tight and trying to make the little bulges of the pumpkin and it actually worked really well um but it did take three three tries so my advice to you is don't pull back on the tape whatever you do just don't pull back once it's down it's down you don't want to accidentally pull back on the tape and it should be fine so I didn't pull it quite as tight on this last one either and I think that might have been a little bit of a saving grace too although you don't get quite as much of the pumpkin shape but it does look much less like a balloon than the other one so up to you just giving you options and ideas here so again I'm going to do a light coat of paper mache I live in the prairie so everything dries super fast here like this was dry within two hours I know like if you live in a humid area it's going to take longer but anyway so I've done some pruning on my crab tree outside I have a ornamental flowering crab and I had to prune it a bit so I cut off one big limb that was down too far and just getting in the way and so this is all just from basically one limb and then I went over to my dad's and used his bandsaw and just cut them into little slices so it did take a couple hours but it was actually like super therapeutic I really enjoyed it I haven't been doing a lot of woodwork lately and like if you are a woodworker you'll already know this but you really just kind of go into a zen mode and it's just very relaxing and very calming so I would recommend this and like a bandsaw or a scroll saw is such a nice thing to start with because they're so much less scary than a chop saw or a table saw like there's no kickback to them or anything to worry about that way so I've been using a scroll saw since I was a kid and I just love it I find it very therapeutic. So with the bigger slices from the bigger branch I laid those out on the bumps of the pumpkin so just kind of randomly onto the bulging parts of the pumpkin and then again I just glued on a stem so a little bit of wood glue and a little bit of hot glue to just hold it for the moment and then I'm just going in with my brush filling in parts with wood glue. Wood glue is so strong like if you're using wood or paper or anything kind of porous like that wood glue is as strong as it gets and I actually used wood glue to do the paper mache as well so it's very strong like it's holding together super well and this feels very solid when it's done and then it just kind of worked like a puzzle like just trying to fit in all those little slices and you know having all the different shapes like from that limb because there was you know the big limb right off the tree and then all the little branches that come from it and I just tried to get a nice variety so I didn't have quite enough to finish the bottom so I am gonna have to finish this project after the fact like I'll go back when I have time next week to go in and finish the bottom but it looks beautiful you'll see it looking all beautiful anyway so just I had just enough to kind of finish this ring up but had to leave a little bit at the bottom and if I didn't tell you guys you probably wouldn't even know but I'm just admitting that I didn't quite eye this up to be as much wood as I thought it was but I love the results I hope you guys like it too let me know what you think it's a great fun project even for kids like as long as you're supervising them and if you do have a scroll saw or a bandsaw those are such a great way to get used to woodworking and it's wonderful it's really therapeutic so I definitely recommend it and then for the last pumpkins so just look for a nice swampy area like this and then we're just going to gather up some of these reeds like the reeds that grow with the bullrushes and then just pick them while they're still green and have some flexibility to them and we're going to weave them and braid them while they're green and then let them dry so I've been really inspired by this creative basket weaving book that I got from the library and I think you're gonna have to purchase it because I really like it there's so many ideas in it and that's what inspired me to use these cattail leaves um leaves reeds I'm not really sure what to refer to them as but um I'm just gonna walk you through these weaving some reeds and creating these woven type pumpkins that are so popular right now I see them everywhere and they're quite expensive so this is kind of a fun project to be able to create for just this one dollar basically for this pumpkin form this is just one of the carvable styrofoam pumpkin forms from Dollar Tree and I just gave it that same um mist tint of paint I just added in a little bit of leaf green and a little touch of the caramel tan and I added in a little bit of baking soda just to make it a little bit thicker and kind of cover up any little um I don't know like little marks or whatever that are in the styrofoam and then I wanted a little practice pumpkin so that's what you see me doing here if you do this please be super careful I'm used to carving I did it for years so I'm very comfortable with a a box cutter or an exacto knife but you need to be careful they are very dangerous and very sharp so please don't be this comfortable unless you've used one a lot so just just as a word of caution so I just gave that a coat of the baking soda paint as well and then for the reeds so I'm just going to show you here with these leaves I just split them right down the middle with my fingernail so if you run your fingernail just straight down the middle they're so easy to split and they follow the vein that's in them so they always split right down the line that you stick your fingernail in and there's like a little bit of a soft cellulosey feel right at the bottom of the leaf but they get very thin at the top and they rip so easily so I just split them all in half and then it made them much more easy to work with so it makes them much more manageable for braiding so I live in a very dry climate I'm not worried about these molding at all in the book she does describe like that you can dry them and then reintroduce moisture just to weave them but you'd have to like learn more about that if you do live in a really humid climate but here I am I'm just gonna weave these three together in a very intricate weave here so just it's like a folding it kind of works out almost like folding paper is what it reminded me of because they're so flat so the hardest part is just getting it started but then once you have the braid started they just naturally fold for you just like folding paper and this got to be very therapeutic as well I ended up doing about I would say 24 like about two dozen braids like all together to do the one pumpkin and then I end up doing two so I had to go and harvest some more cattail leaves a couple nights later but just to kind of give you an idea like I had just grabbed that handful there that you saw and that was plenty to do the little tiny practice pumpkin and the full pumpkin that I did as well as you can see up close there it just folds so nicely I it's so wonderful and it's so meditative like you start to think would I know how to make a basket how did people know how to make a basket like you would have been so dependent on your ancestors to teach you everything right and back 5,000 years ago anyway I'm just grateful that we can just buy one now so here I am on this little tiny practice pumpkin here and I just wanted to practice the way that I was going to lay out the braids so I started with two meeting in the grooves of the pumpkin and that seemed to work out well so this was great to practice on and figure that out so just two that meet directly in the lowest part in those little divots in the pumpkin so that's what I'm going to do on the bigger one as well and then just work your way up the bumps of the pumpkin and it kind of accentuates those bumps as well like makes them appear larger and then you're not losing that pumpkin shape so just kind of showing you how I would tuck them into the into the insides I actually got this idea of using the pool noodle from my friend Emily at farm charm chic I saw her use a little pool noodle to wrap some yarn around and make a little pumpkin and it was so cute so I'm just using my wood burning tool to make the holes in this styrofoam pumpkin this is just that dollar tree pumpkin and I thought like this is a good size hole I made them about almost an inch and a half for putting in the reeds into but it got very tight so I'm going to show you I actually show you another easier option for these reeds as well but we'll walk through that as we get there so so same thing on this one I'm going to go in with those flat braids and I'm going to meet up two in the divots like the the lower parts of the pumpkin ridges if that makes sense like you'll see here in just a minute I'm going to show you how I laid the two meeting up in each divot in the pumpkin so there we go hopefully you can tell what I'm doing and then I'm going to just build them up like layering them just a tiny bit and moving my way up the bump of the pumpkin and it'll just really accentuate that and give it more detail so here you can see I'm just overlaying the braids on top of each other just that little bit just so I get nice full coverage over the whole pumpkin so these pumpkins from Dollar Tree don't have like super defined bumps but like they are there it's just enough and doing this technique really accentuated that so as you can see that hole is really filling up with all those braids so it does get pretty tight towards the end and also I saved the fatter ends of the braids so I started with all the thinner ends and then I ended with all the fatter ends like the bottoms of the leaves if that makes sense just to help really accentuate those bumps and the shape of the pumpkin yeah it's so dry here that these were like almost dry as I was working but I know it would be a different story in a in a humid climate so you would just have to learn about like drying them out you know having air under them and on top of them and then she talks about using like a damp towel or damp rags to reintroduce some moisture into them for just like 20 minutes before you're gonna braid them and and work with them but she has so many techniques like for bark and all kinds of things it's such an interesting book so anyway this is the highly detailed um artsy maddie special I don't know what to call it but I kind of realized that most of you probably wouldn't be up for this like it is quite time consuming doing those braids also very therapeutic and mindful but I just wanted to give you another option so another option is to just bundle up 12 of those split leaves so I have 12 halves of leaves and then I'm going to group them into groups of four so you'll see me here I just put four into three sections and then I just do a rudimentary braid so it's it doesn't go like quite as smoothly as the other braiding but it does work so I just wanted to give you another option so and then as you work it like with your hand and you can kind of squish the braids together and kind of you know mash them with your fingers and make it a little bit softer um you will get that braid shape and this does work so I just wanted to show you this little bit easier way to do it so I did a whole bunch of these two I think I needed at least a dozen I want to say it might have been more than a dozen of the braids so that would be the full braid from the bottom to the tip of the leaf and then you can get two strips down your pumpkin per braid if that makes sense like per bottom leaf and the top of the leaf so you'll wrap it around the pumpkin twice with that so then I knew to make this hole bigger and especially for these bigger fatter braids so I made them almost two inches like they're just under two inches on both the top and the bottom and be sure to use this burning tool in a well-ventilated area or even outside would be best so now I'm going to mix my paint just a little bit greener and then I will also do a little paint technique on it before we start as well but I knew that it was going to show through on this pumpkin so I just wanted it to be a better match so I did add in more green for this one so again like you would just use an off-white or a cream color add in some leafy green and then a little bit of the like caramel tan just to kind of dirty it up a little bit and then I just did some streaking while it was still wet of almost just the direct green color just to be sure that it was going to blend in and match well so apparently if you don't leave these reeds out in the sun they will keep their color for quite a while so so I'm fine with that I love the green color of them but if you didn't you could definitely just bleach them with the sun there's no better bleach than the sun and then same thing just folding these in now this trick this did work a little bit better because I painted this after I actually painted the inside of that hole that we had melted as well and it actually protected the raw foam from the hot glue gun and I'm just realizing I also forgot to tell you guys that I am just using my hot glue gun on a low temperature just to be sure because this is foam and it does have a little bit of a skin on it and with the paint but I just wanted to be sure that it wasn't melting the foam so I'm I am just using my glue gun on a low temperature so I did the same thing with this although it's just one braid down the divot the divot part of the pumpkin and then I saved the bigger fatter part of the leaves so the bottoms of the leaves to do the bump on the pumpkin just to give it that same definition if I could just to accentuate the bumps in the shape and you can see I thought maybe that hole was going to be too big but it wasn't because once you start using those bottom leaf parts they are thick so it just fit it's a nice tight fit in there and then I just stuck some branches in I didn't even have to use glue because like they are in there like good it was really tight to get them in there so there they are there's the more detailed version on the right and then kind of an easier option there on the left I think they both look great so like either way if you're up for doing lots of braiding like it is very therapeutic and fun to do those braids and you might like it it might be kind of a nice mindful exercise so here they are hopefully you guys like them and if you're into the kind of that boho natural I know everyone's kind of doing a lot of neutrals right now so I thought these were kind of nice neutral nice textures to add into your little vignettes and and with your pumpkins so I'm sure all these other creators have some wonderful ideas to share with you too about pumpkins be sure to check out that playlist I'm sure it's very full of wonderful inspiration and hopefully I've inspired you inspired you today as well and if you haven't subscribed already to my channel I hope you'll consider it and if you are subscribed thank you so much for coming back and being so supportive and kind I have such a great crafty tribe and just be sure you can turn that notification bell on to um to be notified anytime I do upload a video I don't quite have a schedule yet I'm still just loving being a part of these challenges and any collaborates I get to do like this are super fun so not quite on a schedule yet but if you hit that notification bell that will let you know and also if I do change up this wood pumpkin I will be posting a picture of it on Instagram I am thinking about staining it a little bit and it might be kind of an odd color so you might want to see that um so if you haven't connected with me on Instagram that would be wonderful too and it's just artsy maddie I'll have the link for that in my description box as well and just thank you so much for joining me today and be sure to check out the playlist thank you so much for watching