Amos Artus @amosartus - Tumblr Blog

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday for crafting!

Although I love Christmas, and it's a very close second, there's just something about Halloween that pushes all the right buttons for me.

This is my favorite project of the season. I had so much fun making it and just love every yummy page of it!

#Halloween #Halloween junk journal #homemade journal #Halloween journal

I loved all the different pumpkins I saw in stores this year—all the different fabrics, colors, and textures!

I purchased a couple chunky yarn pumpkins from AbbyRoseBoutiqueShop on Etsy. I chose a sea blue and a navy one since they mixed nicely with the coastal decor in my home.

I couldn’t see the yummy texture of the yarn as well on the navy one, especially from far away, so I added some twine and rope to add more dimension.

Since I had some white chunky yarn and an old plastic pumpkin, I tried making one of my own. My husband drilled holes in the top and bottom of the pumpkin (which ended up splitting it in two, but I fixed that right up with some E600 glue). Then I just cut lengths of yarn that stretched a little more than top to bottom and stuffed the ends inside the holes.

It gets hard to push through the holes toward the end with the amount of pieces needed to cover the pumpkin. I used the wooden dowel that comes with a bag of stuffing; it worked great!

I like how my white one turned out, but it needs something else up top…maybe moss like Abby’s, a bigger bow, or some pumpkin leaves made out of felt or book pages.

While there were so many fabric pumpkins I liked, at $5 or $10 a pop, I thought I’d try making my own. (I used this tutorial.)

I picked up a cute pattern in those rolled Crafter’s Square fabrics you can find at Walmart or The Dollar Tree.

Out of that one piece, I ended up with a small and a medium pumpkin.

I also saw a tutorial on The Graphics Fairy for decoupage book page pumpkins and just had to try it!

Of course, I jump right in without reading the directions and had trouble getting the pages to adhere to my small foam pumpkins.

Instead of just reading the darn entry, I decided to try paper mâché.

But while waiting for the top section to dry, I finally read the post and found that she used Mod Podge, so I tried that too.

I like both the cleaner, shinier finish of the Mod Podge and the chalkier matte of the paper mâché, but I did try to put the latter outside and it started to get all gooey, so that only works for indoor pumpkins.

I hope this has inspired you to try your own pumpkin crafting!