DIY Painted Pumpkins

 I've had a crush on those pretty blue-green heirloom pumpkins for some time now.  After finishing my lanterns hand crafted by Natalie from Crafts 2 You,  I knew I needed some of those perfectly colored pumpkins to display in them!  Nothing will ever beat the real deal live pumpkins.  Nothing.  haha!  But I think I found a pretty close second!  Let me share how you too can create these easy painted heirloom pumpkins...

 I first found pumpkins that stacked nicely, and that fit my lanterns.  I didn't care about the color (obviously) haha!  Just the shape and size.

 I found these pumpkin picks at Hobby Lobby.  They were perfect for my project!  It was simple to remove the stems and picks.  They just pulled right out.  I then used a wire cutter to cut off the picks.

 Now for the trial and error part:  Paint!  I just used some acrylic paint that you can find in any craft store.  Lucky for you, I did all the testing for you!  The green heirloom pumpkin definitely
 took me a few tries.  But I think I got it pretty close to the real thing.  From top to bottom of my stacked pumpkins, here are the colors I used:

 "Warm White" Americana acrylic paint. 

For the second pumpkin, I wanted it more of a blueish gray, to contrast with the heirloom pumpkin.  I first mixed equal parts of the "Sea Foam" and the "Drizzle Grey" and covered the whole pumpkin  with that.  It was still a bit too blue for me, so I lightly went over it with the "Dove Grey" on top, making sure to let the blue still peak through in some spots.

 Now for the heirloom pumpkin... I mixed together "Sea Glass" and "Mudstone" together... first adding the "Sea Glass" and slowly adding in the "Mudstone" till I got the shade I wanted it.  I would say about 3 parts of the sea glass to two parts mudstone.

 After that dried, I thought it still needed a little more dimension.  So I took the paint colors I mixed from pumpkin #2 (Sea foam and drizzle grey)  and added a bit of "Barn Wood" to darken it up a bit.  I watered it down also, and painted it into the creases of the pumpkin, wiping it down some with a paper towel to take away any brush strokes.

 And that's it!  Here is a close up of them, so you can see the details.  When you're finished, you can just pop the stems back on, or hot glue them on.  If you have some real pumpkin stems hanging around, that would be even better!  I left my stems off two of the pumpkins so I could stack them.  I will list all the colors for you at the end of this post, so you can easily make your own list of what you'll need.  I hope this tutorial was helpful!  I appreciate you stopping by!

I haven't officially started decorating for fall yet, but of course I had to style these real quick to show you the final product:  ;)

List of paint used:
Americana Acrylic Paints: Warm White, Dove Grey, Sea Glass
Delta Ceramcoat Paints: Drizzle Grey, Sea Foam, Mudstone
Folk Art acrylic paint: Barn Wood