I can appreciate some of the bloody and true Halloween horror decor, but I’m more of a fun, sparkly, colorful, goth glam girl myself. Especially with little kids at home.
Most who know me think I’m a HUGE Halloween freak (and I’m not denying this), but believe it or not, this is the first year I’ve really done much to decorate outside.
Here’s my front porch this year, with my finished Burtonesque Bench for my Jack Skellington.
It’s colorful and fun, and I like it. =) (Please excuse the dead mums. Despite my black thumb, I was convinced I’d have these lovely, colorful flowers this year. And I did, for like a week. I decided dead flowers still work with Halloween decor, right?!)
I was inspired to make the colorful pumpkin totem prop after seeing something similar online, so I thought I’d share how I made mine. I had several things on hand, which made this a relatively inexpensive project.
I used:
* Several plastic pumpkins (found at Walmart for $1 each)
* Plastic Cauldron (found at Home Depot for $6)
* Glue Gun & Hot Glue (Already had)
* E6000 Epoxy Glue (Had this on hand or you can order from Amazon $3)
* Halloween Lights ($1 clearance from last year or you can order from Amazon $9)
* Black Garbage Bag (had these already)
* Empty Boxes (from my recycle bin)
* Box Cutter (had this)
* Witch Hat (had this in the Halloween decor box)
First figure out what order you will stack your pumpkins. Then cut a hole in the BACK of the very bottom pumpkin, and cut holes in the very bottom of the remaining pumpkins. (I cut a hole in the bottom of the bottom pumpkin too, and later realize my mistake…the lights need to come out the back of that one so you can secure the bottom in the cauldron.)
String the lights from the bottom to the top…kind of like a pumpkin centipede! My string of lights has 100 bulbs so I just split them up and put about 20 lights in each pumpkin.
You absolutely need the two different types of glue because hot glue will NOT be strong enough to hold these together on its own, and especially not in cold weather. Not that I’d know from experience or anything. (Or maybe I do, just trust me!)
Once you’ve got your pumpkin centipede with the lights strung through all of them, then you start by applying a ring of the epoxy glue on the bottom of the second to last (in my case it was the orange pumpkin). Then apply a ring of hot glue around the same area, and quickly hold the two pumpkins together. Wait several minutes in between gluing each pumpkin section. The hot glue should dry quickly and secure it enough until the epoxy sets, but you should give it plenty of time to set up as well.
While the pumpkins are drying, find some boxes or other items that will fit inside your cauldron to give it some lightweight fill, and something that you can secure your pumpkins to when ready. I found some boxes and in my recycle bin, put them into the black garbage bag, and stuffed it all into the cauldron. I let my pumpkin totem dry for about 24 hours, then I used the same procedure with hot glue and epoxy glue to secure it to the boxes in the garbage bag. Then I let that dry for another 24 hours, tossed on a witches hat and plugged it in!
Truth be told I was really sad it wasn’t brighter in the dark. =( I wondered if it would’ve been better with just white Christmas lights, or maybe LED tealights, in which case I would have cut holes in the back of the pumpkins so I could easily put in the tealights and take them out. But, I think it’s pretty cute even without the lights (which would’ve saved me some time!)
What do you think?
