Painted Pumpkins and Great Floral Design Class

I wanted to have something special to have as door prizes for my very SPECIAL Floral Design Class that we had last week.  I normally try and have something that goes along with my event.  Example: like bag full of apples, jams and canning labels for my applesauce canning class.

I grew some pumpkins in the back, not that many plants but some that weren't quite turning orange.  I think the seeds were for the white pumpkins but may have teamed up pollination with a squash plant.  I took out my clippers and filled up my cart with them, gave them a good washing and set them all up in my garage to paint.

Out came my blue Annie Sloan paint and thought that would take about an hour to do them all, but the paint wasn't covering well.  Needed two coats and then the finish was that "chalk" flat color.  I went to my spray can stash and decided to try painting a few in silver, gold and bronze.  Spray painting took only seconds and covered so well AND I thought made the pumpkins look

fabulous.  I did about half of them in the metallic, then I spattered some of the silver/gold paint over the top of the Annie Sloan pumpkins and rubbed them while it was wet.  That did the trick.  Then my mind went to the REAL chalk paint, the blackboard paint and thought how cute it would be to have black pumpkins that you could write on with chalk.  I have painted chalk paint many times using a brush, but couldn't find any left over paint. 

 

So I ran down to Mac's and looked around and saw they had Rust-O-Ileum Chalk Board spray paint-terrific.  And boy was it easy, I held a rag in my left hand to cover the pumpkin stems while spray painting them with my right hand. 

After they dried, I tied raffia, burlap and took some strips from canvas drop cloth and made bows to finish them off.  I think the people who attended the class loved them and I believe I have started a new trend to Halloween decorating!

I will share with you later about what a fabulous class we had learning how to make flower bouquets.  I have so many pictures, it will make this post way too long.  Talk to you in a couple days!!!  Have fun spray painting pumpkins or gourds or even plastic pumpkins.