Pumpkin Pins
Materials needed :
1 bag Jumbo Walnuts
Orange and black paints
Green felt
Safety pins or pin backs
Glue
Butter knife
Cutting board
optional - polymer clay in green or brown.
optional - cardstock
Once you have all the materials you need, we'll start off with the walnuts. This is perhaps the hardest part. Placing the walnut on the cutting board and taking the butter knife, you're going to stick it in the bottom of the walnut where the two sides meet. Then, wiggling it back and forth along the join and pushing downwards, the knife will start to open the walnut. Due to the texture on the walnut though, you'll only get it to seperate perfectly with both sides being usable about half the time. If you fail at it the first time, just try again, that's why we bought a whole bag, plus walnuts are delicious.
When you finally get the walnut split in half, you're going to pick out the walnut meat inside and rub off the papery bits inside the walnut to make it as clean as you can. We don't need any of that rolling around your pin later.
Before we get to the painting, you're going to trace the walnut onto the green felt and cut it out. Put it aside for now, you'll be using it later.
Now that your walnut is all cleaned out, time to break out your paints! Starting with the orange, cover the outside of the walnut. It may take several coats before you gets the color you want. Once the orange has completely dried, you use the black to make a jack-o-lantern face on your pumpkin, or you can skip the black for a more natural fall harvest pumpkin.
Time for the stem. I like to use polymer clay to make my stem, in green to match the felt backing we'll use in a later step. You could also use brown for the harvest time pumpkin, or using a bit of the felt, roll it and cut it into a pointy fringe. The fringe lets you glue it down to both the inside and outside of the shell securely.
At this point we're going back to the felt tracing from earlier, and gluing it to the back of the shell. I like to also sandwich cardstock between the shell and felt to make it a bit more sturdy. Finally you're going to glue the pinback to the felt, or wait for the glue to dry from the previous step and use the safety pin to pin it up.
Creative Casket
Materials :
Paper Mache or wooden casket. I got mine from A.C. Moore
Chalkboard paint
Paint of your choice for the inside color
Chalk
After prepping your area like before, you're going to start with the chalkboard paint. Be sure to follow the instructions on the paint you bought, mine at least 2 coats, first one way horizontally/vertically, then a second coat the other direction with an hour dry time between coats. Also it has a 24 hour curing time before you can use chalk on it.
Once the paint has dried, but not cured, you'll be painting the inside of the coffin with your secondary paint. I used orange to make it Halloween-y, but you can use any color you want. Once you're done painting the inside, it should look like this with orange paint.
When the chalkboard paint has finally cured, it's time for the fun part. Using the chalk, draw decorative patterns or messages on it, then fill it with treats and you can give it as a gift.
