This idea was inspired by one of the Free Craft sheets found in AC Moore. While it doesn’t look as awesome as the one in their picture, I don’t think it came out all that bad considering that I have like zero crafting ability. Imagine how great it would look when made by someone with a decent sense of hand-eye coordination and a little more patience for painting! I think it’s supposed to actually just be a vampire according to the Craft Sheet, but the green face makes it looks more like a Vampenstein.

Supplies:

Pumpkin- I used a medium one, but you can use whatever size you want.

Paint- Black, Bright Green, and White

Paint Brushes- I used one of those foam brushes to put the base coat on, then a smaller brush to put the second coat on.

Step One: Trace the hair outline. I used a pencil first, then a black marker. My ears are a little crooked, so you may want to measure or something if you’re a perfectionist. Of course, those of you with some sense of spatial recognition may be able to just eyeball it better than I did. Then again, monsters aren’t supposed to be perfect, right?

Step Two: Paint the hair. You’ll need at least two coats. Let the paint dry between coats. I know this is obvious to most people, but I’m impatient and tried to just put the second coat on while the first was still wet. All I succeeded in doing was swishing the paint around a lot. I finally let it dry for about an hour before putting on what was technically the third coat.

Step Three: Paint the face green. Don’t forget to leave two circles for the eyes. I used quarters to trace them. If you’re using a really big pumpkin, though, go with something a little bigger. You don’t want totally disproportionate eyes. This is the face half-painted.

Step Four: Finish painting the face, then draw on eyebrows, a nose, and a mouth with black paint. Paint the eyes white and use the plastic tip of the brush to dot the eyes. Paint on white fangs.  If, like me, you forgot to leave the triangles for the fangs unpainted, use the plastic tip of the paintbrush to peel off the paint in that spot. This actually worked really well. My fangs aren’t totally straight because, as you recall, I have very little hand-eye coordination! This is my mostly finished project:

So, what do you think? If you think it looks awful, treat that as a rhetorical questions and please don’t tell me. I’d rather live with my delusion that I managed to actually make a decent looking pumpkin for once, thank you very much! Jacob thinks Vampenstein is spectacular and his Mommy is a total rock star when it comes to painting pumpkins, so that’s enough for me. He is now sitting proudly on our book shelf because I didn’t want to leave him outside where I couldn’t gaze upon his awesomeness (did I mention that this is one of the few crafts I’ve ever managed to more or less pull off?)