My daughter found a box of assorted corks the other day. She was so excited when she found them and immediately wanted to know what she could do with them. Her excitement rubbed off on me and I had to find a project for the corks too. These champagne corks were perfect for our pumpkin patch.
Our projects are often inspired by the great artists. Last year, we made leaf and pumpkin pop art inspired by Andy Warhol. We were inspired again this year to mix pumpkins with various famous artist styles. These artist inspired pumpkin crafts are easy, cute, colorful and perfect for this time of year.
Our little girl loves books. She has gone through many different favorites in her five years on this earth. They usually change from week to week. Ever since we have gotten into chapter books though, there has only been one favorite and that is Captain Underpants. She cannot get enough of him and his sidekicks, George and Harold. We have read them all. She draws the characters all the time and the characters have even inspired her to want to become a comic book writer. We went to a local farm this weekend and stocked up on pumpkins. Since my girl loves that whacky superhero so much, I thought that I would make her a Captain Underpants pumpkin to greet her as she leaves the house and comes home from school every day. His simple features made this an easy and fun painted pumpkin.
Magazine collages were a favorite activity of mine when I was a young girl. They are easy and fun to make and the end results are just so cool. If you have a bunch of old magazines sitting around, these jack-o-lantern magazine collages are a creative way to make use of them before tossing them into the recycling bin. 
Nothing quite says fall like all things pumpkin. Everywhere you look, the world is decorated or flavored with pumpkin & I for one love it.
Every Wednesday I take my daughter to the library. Our local library offers wonderful story times, yoga for kids and Lego workshops. 
We were given a few small pumpkins yesterday. Last night, after a rather long & exhausting day, my family all fell asleep early. I was a little bored & was antsy to do something with my hands. I grabbed one of the mini pumpkins, some Sharpies & regular markers and decided I was going to make a stained glass Jack-o-lantern.
I sat on my chair & a half and watched ‘Identity Thief’ with the pumpkin & and markers on my lap.
I drew on the Jack-o-lantern’s face.
I drew random shapes around the Jack-o-lantern’s face.
I used my daughters markers to color in the shapes. Different colored Sharpies would work best, but we didn’t have any so we just used Crayola markers.
This didn’t take me very long to make & I thought that it came out pretty cute. This is what a bored mama does on a Saturday night.
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My picky daughter has recently discovered that she loved eggs. She like them in every form, scrambled, fried & hard-boiled. This is great news to me, as my husband & I love them too. We just finished an extra-large carton of eggs. Normally, I would store the egg carton away to use for craft projects at a later date, but since we are moving I can no longer hoard things away. What does that mean to us? That means last night we made a lot of egg carton crafts.
We decided that we were going to make pumpkins & jack-o-lanterns, so we cut up our carton & painted each piece in orange & then let them dry.
For our first craft, we cut a stem & leaf out of construction paper.
We glued them down to another piece of paper. We took 7 carton pieces & glued them around each other to form a circle.
Here was Mai’s finished project. Don’t forget that each child’s abilities are different in crafting.
Mommy went a little further & made her project into a jack-o-lantern. We used construction paper for the face.
Next we made more jack-o-lanterns.
Glue two painted carton section to each other.
Cut out and glue a stem to the top.
Fold a pipe cleaner in half & curl the ends to form vines. Glue construction paper leaves to the end.
You may leave these as pumpkins or cut out small face pieces out of black construction paper.
Our last craft was a pumpkin patch.
We cut out a corn-stalk & glued it to the paper.
Glue the carton pieces around the stalk.
Draw in the stems, vines & leaves.
We used up every bit of egg carton & made a ton of cute and fun crafts.
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Our house officially went on the market this week. We did a lot of work to get it picture perfect & ready for showings. We have been packing & cleaning around the clock for weeks. With all of the cleaning that we have been doing, I have gone through a lot of paper towels. I mean a lot. This left me with a lot of empty paper towel tubes & some crafting opportunities.
We worked on a couple of crafts this week to use up some of those empty tubes & here they are.
Paper Towel Roll Pumpkin
What you will need:
An empty paper towel tube
An empty toilet paper tube
Orange paint
Green paint
Green pipe cleaners
Green construction paper
Glue
Directions:
Paint an empty paper towel tube on the inside & out using the orange paint & then let it dry.
Cut a 3″ – 4″ piece of a toilet paper roll. Cut the roll open & paint it green on both ends & let dry.
Cut around the paper towel roll forming 3/4″ strips about 3/4 of the way down.
Round fold the strips starting from the cut end & tuck into the opposite end of the tube as shown.
Roll the green tube up & stick in the opening on top. Add a little extra paint to your pumpkin if needed.
Cut leaves out of construction paper & glue them to the green roll. Cut a green pipe cleaner in half & roll into spirals. Stick them in the stem to finish off your pumpkin craft.
But we were not done there. Mai chose to paint her tube black instead of orange. She wanted to cut her tube too. We chose to make a big spider out of the black tube. In fact we ended up making two because Mai wanted her spider to have a friend.
To make the spider, paint & cut the tube the same as above. Bend the strips out & then make bends for knees & feet.
Push the uncut core down & bend the legs up around it. Add a little glue behind the knees to make the bends stay. Add googly eyes & glue a pipe cleaner to the inside of the tube.
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Last weekend was a big fun fall weekend for us. We did our hayride, went apple picking, went to the fair & picked pumpkins too.
This weekend, in the aftermath of a bad tummy virus, we put a hold on our plans to go to the corn maze & leaf peeping. All is well now, but I wanted Mai to continue to rest at home rather than running around. Last weekend we picked up a lot of pumpkins. I bought two full sized ones for carving, but Mai really wanted the little pumpkins because they were so cute.
The mini pumpkins were great because they were just the right size for my little pumpkin. She may still be too small to be wielding carving tools, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t have some fun. Pumpkins are not just for Jack-O-Lanterns anymore, after all.
Painting Pumpkins
We painted pumpkins mid-week. She is getting to be such a great little painter. She painted one pumpkin red with a green stem. “Look mama, it looks like an apple.” It really does.
Yesterday she asked to paint more pumpkins, so we did. Then we broke out the glue & the glitter for some extra fun. Seriously nothing lights my daughter’s face up faster than the prospect of pouring glue & glitter on something. This is a super easy, moderately messy, but very cute craft. Simply let your artist pour or paint on the glue & then shake on the glitters of your choice. Let dry & then shake off the excess glitter. Use paper or drop cloths to work on & to catch the glitter. When you are done, if you are stingy like me, you can pour the excess glitter back into its container for next time.
Glitter Pumpkins
Mai had so much fun making these. She even made one as a present for her Auntie Linda. “I make this one for Auntie Linda. She is so proud of me.” I bet Auntie is going to love it.
Our little pumpkin family.
As I have told you before, our daughter has a very strong sense of family. It is extremely cute how she refers to everything in terms of mama, dada & baby. When we were picking the pumpkins, she would tell me, “This is mama pumpkin, daddy pumpkin & the baby pumpkin.” And so they shall be.
For daddy pumpkin, I fashioned him a Patriots hat out of foam.
It looks just like us doesn’t it? These were all so much fun, I think we will have to pick up more pumpkins next weekend.
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