How to Decorate a Fake Pumpkin Using a Paper Napkin

How to decorate a fake pumpkin using a colorful pattern paper napkin. 

Yeah!  The first day of Autumn – my favorite time of year. To help celebrate its arrival I decorated one of the many pumpkins I bought at a nearby farm with a few paper napkins that were leftover from the pack I used for one of the foam monograms I made for a wreath that I posted about earlier in the week.

I love pumpkins just the way they are – they are one of my favorite things.  When I was cleaning up after doing the foam monograms I still had a few of the orange and white napkins left and decided to see how the design would look on a pumpkin.  I experimented and finally came up with the following method to give the pumpkin some modern style.

Create a napkin covered pumpkin. It was very easy to do.  Now that I like it so much I should have covered a fake pumpkin so it would last a few years.  Covering a real one will be one season only décor.

 

How to Decorate a Fake Pumpkin Using a Paper Napkin

supplies needed:

• Pumpkin
• Paper napkins – I needed 3 to cover my pumpkin which is about 8″ x 8″ stem included.
• Pipe cleaners in a color to coordinate with your napkin
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Spray glue
• Scissors
• Optional: white paint if your napkin pattern has white in the design. Since the napkin is very thin, the orange color of the pumpkin will fade out the white on the design when applied over the orange color of the pumpkin. By painting the pumpkin white first, the white will stay true white. You could also just buy a white pumpkin.

1. Paint pumpkin white. I used spray paint, but any white paint will work. Let dry.

2. Remove the 2-ply backing on the napkins. Cut as shown.

3. Spray the back of the cut napkins with a light coat of spray glue. Let it get tacky – 2 minutes before applying to pumpkin.

4. To apply to pumpkin – Center the horizontal uncut section of the napkin on the center of the pumpkin and wrap around.

5.  Gently one by one bring all the strips up and smooth them out with your fingers.

6. Turn the pumpkin on its side to cover the bottom half. If any of the strips stick to each other – gently separate them. If one rips – it is okay – just line it up and place on pumpkin after all the other strips are smoothed on the pumpkin.

7. Repeat with another napkin until you have the pumpkin covered. If you have a small section that is still uncovered there is no need to cut another napkin as in Step 2. Just cut one strip from the napkin and live it up with the design and attach with glue. Trim excess napkin on bottom of pumpkin and smooth with your fingers.

8. Carefully trim the excess napkin around the stem.

9. Wrap a pipe tightly around stem. Use hot glue to attach. Where one ends – start another until the stem is covered.

Since this is a real pumpkin, I did not seal it to protect the napkin. If using a fake pumpkin – to prolong it for many years – seal it with a water based non-yellowing spray sealer.