DIY: Awareness Glitter Pumpkins

October might be the best month for different DIY projects for my nana and I.

it also means something else too. It’s National Breast Cancer Awareness and Domestic Abuse Awareness month too. October is the only month were I don’t mind seeing all of the pink around. I’ll wear anything pink with pride to spread awareness for it. I’m a big fan of the color purple, but the supporting of domestic abuse started just last year after different happens with certain family members, so I’ve been trying to find a way to basically show my support in both charities and I thought decorating a pumpkin would be the perfect solution.

We honestly didn’t know what we were going to do with our second pumpkin Thursday afternoon. When we were finishing gluing on the crayons onto the pumpkin, we only had six of them left, five dark ones and one bright orange. That would have made the pumpkin very interesting! At first, we were thinking of combining the left over crayons with one of our many choices of glitter, but then I got the idea about using the pink and darker purple for the two celebrations of October. It makes our pumpkins very different from our past ones and I haven’t decorated anything for a charity in YEARS so I thought maybe this would work. I talked my dad into getting the package of different colored glitter shakers at Wal-Mart last weekend. Last year, trying to do the glitter was a bit of a disaster for us! The container was too large for me to grab ahold of and shake up and down, and so we had to use a spoon to pour the glitter into the spots we wanted it to go. This time I’m happy to say that I could actually grip the whole thing in between my toes and shake it, that was actually the difficult part out of the whole thing. How to explain shake a container. You can tell I don’t do it very much.

What We Used: 

• Pumpkin
• Glitter
• Aluminium Foil
• Hot Glue Gun

Directions:

1. First’s thing first, we lined our work station with aluminium foil, only one sheet to start off with, and then you place the pumpkin directly in the middle. Fold up the edges to keep the glitter inside the foil.
2. Plug in your hot glue gun so it’s ready for you.
3. Now about the glitter, there was two options as far as the tops, it had a part with little holes on it and as you move it to the other angle there is a part that gets bigger. My nana had to basically break it a bit, by placing it down so move glitter would come out of it. She did this to three glitter bottles.
4. When the glue is hot enough, we slowly made a circle on the very top of the pumpkin and I poured the glittered out of the bottle. We used the pink first.
5. After we got made a circle of pink, we started making small lines of glue and I poured the purple glitter around them.
6. When that resulted in small lines of purple, we got the idea of getting a second sheet of foil and switched the pumpkin onto that sheet and used the other one with the excess pink and purple glitter and directly poured it onto the tops of the pumpkin.
7. After doing that, my nana got creative and made a swirl of glue around the top layer of the pumpkin and any excess that didn’t make it onto the first downpour, we did it step 6 again, but this time including the white glitter too.
8. We kept both sheets of foil underneath the pumpkin just in case anything else decides to come off in the couple of days.

Our choices of different colors to use. Was it bad that I was coming up with future uses for Christmas?

Sorry for the pictures being so blurry, my feet wouldn’t stop shaking. Irony at its best!

Pink and purple mixed on top.

Ain’t it cute? ♥

DIY: Infamous Melted Crayons

I think I should say that October is the month of DIY projects.

I’ve decided not to combine these pumpkins together even though they were made on the same day. The first pumpkin we made was the melted crayons on the pumpkin. I’ve been thinking about whether or not if I should explain what we did, as it’s basically the same things we did as last year, but I’m going to explain the important things. This is always a fun thing to do between my nana and I. Doing it with a medium or large pumpkin is more ideal though, but smaller pumpkins are good too. We used a smaller pumpkin today.

What You Need:

• Pumpkin
• Several crayons
• Small cup or bowl
• Water
• Newspaper (optional)
• Aluminum Foil (optional)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Hair Dryer

Directions:

1. It’s best to do this first part a day before and not like 10 minutes like we did today. To be able to take off the crayons wrapping you need to soak them in a small cup or bowl. We also broke them before we put them in their bath. It’s best to do longer sticks for medium-large pumpkins than small ones. Also, the smaller you break them the more you can put on the actual pumpkins.
2. After soaking the crayons for a good 10-15 minutes, go ahead and take them out and start peeling off the wrappers. Dry them off with a towel and throw away the excess paper.
3. While you’re do that first part, I suggest you get out your hot glue gun (or any strong glue) plug it into the socket to heat up as you tearing off the paper from the crayons.
4. After both are finished, get your work area ready. We used aluminium foil and newspaper as our protection for a number of reasons. I’ll get to that in a minute.
5. Lay out two sheets of foil on your area flat. One going vertical and the other horizontal. You can roll up the sides so nothing gets out.
6. If you have an apron that covers down towards your legs, then you can just skip this step. Use your newspaper as your shield against the melting wax. Put it in front of you to protect your skin and clothes from spraying of melted crayons.
7. Next, you’re ready for putting your broken up crayons on the pumpkin. We don’t usually go up too far the stem. As it starts the go down the sides is a good place to put them. I wouldn’t suggest putting a lot of the glue on at one time, because it will look like a bubble once everything is melted. Place each crayon on the dab of glue and press it in slightly, try not to burn yourself in the process.
8. Once you have the crayons were you want them, plug in your hair dryer into the wall and put it on high and move it around the crayons. It takes them a bit to start melting, probably 10 minutes. When they start melting you can change your direction of your aim, we started by going down directly on the sticks, but once you have a good flow you can direct the heat sideways, it makes the colored wax collide into the other one next to it and it’s actually pretty good!
9. I’d turn off the dryer when the sticks have basically disappeared or even if you just have a little bit left. When you are finished, take a break and remove the paper from your lap gently as the wax is still hot. It actually dries pretty fast so you can move it somewhere else if you want to after like few minutes. I HIGHLY suggest keeping the foil underneath the pumpkin, because when it starts to rot and if you don’t have that underneath, it becomes difficult to move off and throw away. Plus, leaving it and you get this pretty bottom of dried crayon on the foil.
10. Now you are finally done with everything. You get the joy of cleaning up after yourself and admiring your new art project!

We saved the tops of the crayons for another time.

The pretty crayons soaking in their nice bath.

The crayons glued onto the pumpkin.

Sometimes the brighter colors make it look cooler. I really liked that silver there too!

The other side of it. Oh, don’t do what we did and use an orange, it looks like the pumpkin melted along with the crayons. Lol