Being an Army wife means LOTS of moving through the years! Though my soldier is retired now (can’t believe we made it the full 20 years!), on our last move, I was going through the normal routine of getting rid of as much stuff as possible. I had tons of old books that I wasn’t sure what to do with – I didn’t like the idea of just throwing them away. I decided to get crafty! These adorable pumpkins were the result!
If you can relate to having a whole bunch of old books, you don’t like the idea of just tossing them, and you enjoy crafting, then you are going to love these lil’ cuties! They are really easy to put together, and they are really inexpensive since you already have the books! The only things you have to pay for is the ribbon, glue, and a small can of spray paint. I already had my glue gun, glue sticks, the books, and the ribbon, so I only had to pay for a small can of spray paint to make these.
Originally, I wanted to use cinnamon sticks for the stems, but I figured why not save myself a few dollars and a trip to the store and just go outside and grab some sticks off the ground – they worked great! That being said, if you have cinnamon sticks on hand, they would lend themselves well to this craft as they would add the extra goodness of a delicious Autumn scent!
Here’s the instructions for this cute craft!
AUTUMN/HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN BOOK CRAFT
Materials:
- an old book
- pencil
- scissors or an Exacto knife
- glue gun with plenty of glue sticks
- small can of orange spray paint
- green ribbon
- a stick from outside for a stem
Instructions:
1.) Start by tracing out or drawing a pumpkin shape on a piece of paper, then cut out your shape.
2.) Fold your pumpkin shape in half, and trace it out onto the first page of your book. Use an Exacto knife to cut through 5-10 pages at a time, or you can use scissors. I started out using an Exacto knife, but then ended up using scissors as I found it to be easier since my knife wasn’t very sharp (time for a new one).
3.) Continue doing this until all the pages are cut into half a pumpkin shape. Cut off the ends of the book backing keeping the part that is part of the pumpkin intact. Remove the cover and the back cover page. You want to end up with what looks like a stack of pages in the shape of half a pumpkin.
4.) Use your glue gun to glue the edges of the backing together spreading out the pages into the shape of a pumpkin. Spread your pages out to your liking, and if you have any stubborn pages that don’t want to stay in place (I had a lot of them), use your glue gun to glue them to the next page fanning out the pages as much as possible.
Now I must pause for cuteness! Here is a picture of our cat Sophie being curious as to what was being created here. Fitting as this is can serve as a Halloween craft as well as an Autumn craft, and she is a black cat!
Okay, getting back on track.
5.) Use your spray paint to LIGHTLY color the edges of the pages. You don’t want to overdo this, you just want a really light and even dusting of color.
6.) Once paint is completely dry, you now want to add your stems. To do this, I just used A LOT of glue from the glue gun. Since this glue dries fairly quickly, I was able to just hold the stem in place and gob glue around it, then wait till it dried enough to hold the stick in place on it’s own.
7.) Really you can stop here if you would like, but I wanted to cover up the gob of glue that I created to put the stem in place, so I added a ribbon, and that did the trick while still looking really cute! Just tie the ribbon around the base of the stem and arrange how you would like.
You’re done! Put them proudly on display for some really cute Autumn decor!
Aren’t they so cute? Happy Autumn and enjoy!
Loving and Laughing 