Decorative Pumpkins

 As part of my quest to decorate my server mantel I made these decorative fall pumpkins which I found on the blog Design, Dinning and Diapers. We are currently building two rooms in our basement and we have tons of 2x4 scraps so I was looking for ways to put some of them to good use (this project fit the bill). The letter stencils I bought were 4 inches tall so Andrew cut all my blocks 4 and 1/2 inches long.

  I sanded each of the blocks to knock off any rough edges. I wasn't sure if the grain would show through so I took the time to prime them. I made five identical sets (four blocks each) so that I could give some away, so I had Andrew cut me 20 blocks.

  After priming the blocks, I spray painted them. It took two times, since I had to flip them over to do that backs and bottoms.

  Then I taped the stencils on to the blocks with painters tape and used a sponge brush to apply the black paint for the letters. The stencils still had a bit of give to them but it gave the letters an "artsy" kinda look which I liked.

  

The paints I used! The spray paint is from Lowe's and the acrylic paint is from Michael's Crafts.

  Here they are, all finished painting! 

  I don't seem to have any pictures of adding the screws for stems and the wire for the vines. Andrew drilled a pilot hole for each screw at a slightly different angle so that the stems go different directions. For the wire, I found a spool of silver wire at Michael's Crafts in the floral section - 12 yards for $3 something (they also sold it in copper and gold). I cut the wire into 3 to 4 inch pieces (longer was better) then I wrapped one end of the wire around the screw and used a pencil to wrap the remaining wire around to make a nice spiral that looked of a vine.

  Not hard at all and made a cute gift, you could totally do this for other holidays or seasons, skip the "pumpkin" look and be creative with colors and toppings - imagine the fun you could have!