Stained Glass Pumpkins

All hail the mighty pumpkin with its unrelenting versatility! Stop it, you tempting pumpkin!

Our contribution to the ever changing face of the decorative pumpkin is the Stained Glass Pumpkin. We kinda like it! And we hope you do too! Read on for the inside scoop! (Get it?)

Let's get started!

Gather:

*Pumpkin

*Ribbon (3/8th of an inch, 1 inch and 1.5 inch)

*Hot Glue Gun/Glue

*Contact paper

*Tissue paper

*Duct Tape

*Black Paint

*Sponge brush

*Serrated knife

*Bowl and spoon for scooping/collecting innards

*Construction paper

*Scissors

Create:

1. Wash and scrub your pumpkin free of dirt.

2. Decide how you will light the pumpkin. That will decide the size of the hole to cut in the back. *DO NOT PUT AN OPEN FLAME IN YOUR PUMPKIN!* There are loose papers that could easily catch fire.

3. Cut out the hole for the light to go in.

4. Measure the circumference of the pumpkin. Determine how wide, long and what shape you would like each opening of the pumpkin to be. Leave at least 1 inch in between each opening in your pumpkin to ensure stability. If your pumpkin has really thin walls (you'll know after you cut into it!), leave larger pieces between the openings. Do not cut too close to the top or bottom. Again, you want the pumpkin to be stable. We maintained about 2.5 inches from the stem and the bottom.

5. Cut a template from a sturdy piece of construction paper. We cut a diamond shape about 8 inches in length and 3.5 inches in width. You will need to determine the size of your pumpkin and the width of the stabilizing columns to determine the appropriate size of your template. Draw the template after doing so and cut it out.

6. Lay the template on the pumpkin and trace around it. Do so all the way around the pumpkin. Ensure you leave at least an inch between the tracings for stability, as stated! And I may

state it again! Because it would be a darn shame if your pumpkin collapsed. Keep your template for later.

7. Use your serrated knife to cut the pumpkin pieces out. Scoop out the pumpkin innards. DON'T THROW IT AWAY! Roast the pumpkin and make soup. Roast the seeds to eat AND top the soup with! SO, SO GOOD.

Moving On...

8. Roll out about 2.5 feet of the contact paper. If you have a huge pumpkin, you may need more!

9. Tape it to the table with the clear side down. Pull off the backing, exposing the sticky side.

10. Cut squares out of the tissue paper. I recommend using three similar colors for a cohesive look.

11. Apply the tissue paper randomly on the contact paper. Let the kiddos go wild. While they are doing that, paint the top and bottom portion of the pumpkin. Leave the center pieces unpainted. The glue will adhere better that way. Let dry completely.

12. Use your template to create another template. You want the exact same shape, just about .25 inch larger on all sides. Use this new template to cut out the contact paper stained glass. Just remove the tape and flip it over to do so. You may have some loose pieces of paper. Don't worry about that.

13. Glue the pieces of contact paper stained glass to the pumpkin with the exposed paper side toward the pumpkin. Use small amounts of the hot glue as it will melt the contact paper if you use too much. Glue all edges of the stained glass to the pumpkin.

14. Trim out the stained glass to give it a finished look. You can see we went around the points of our diamond with small ribbon and down the sides with larger ribbon to give

the illusion of lead, like stained glass.

15. Now take the larger ribbon and glue it over the seams where the stained glass panels meet. You can marry it with the smaller ribbon trim at the top by creating an angle in the ribbon and matching the edges.

You can skip the application of small trim on the bottom as it will not show. Or do it anyway, because you are a perfectionist.