Painted Pumpkins Garland

We had a few crisp & rainy days here last week and it started getting me in the mood for some fall/Halloween decorating!

I am now working on my Halloween mantel and have had fun coming up with a garland that fits the bill this year! This one made me feel like an artist which is always an awesome thing to pretend to be for a while. Good for the soul and all that jazz.

Here’s the 411 on how to recreate it for your own home this season!

First of all, I found this adorable little paper pack of 6×6 cardstock at Hobby Lobby. I LOVE having professional designers coordinate my papers for me… easy! I then picked out the papers I wanted to use.

I wanted my pennants to be 5″ across at the top so I measured from the top left corner over 5″ and made a little mark. From the bottom left corner I measured over 2.5″ and made another little mark. Then it was just a matter of cutting from the bottom mark up to the corner and then again from the bottom mark up to the 5″ mark to create the pennant.

Now for the artsy-fartsy part! I got out some orange acrylic paint and simply painted on some pumpkin-esque shapes! I didn’t worry about them being perfect… as a matter of fact, I wanted each one to be a little different. Any variation makes it that much more interesting to look at! *TIP* Start out with a pretty dry brush and then go back and fill in as needed. Too much paint right off the bat will warp your paper more than you probably want.

After the orange paint had dried I went back and added some detail lines with some silver metallic paint.

Finally I added some little tabs of contrasting papers (scraps from the pennants) and hung them along some black & white baker’s twine with little mini clothes pins.