RedThreadDIY

It’s October 24th – ONE WEEK UNTIL HALLOWEEN! I am SO EXCITED! I’m going to a pumpkin patch today to pick out some pumpkins to carve up! Can you tell I LOVE carving pumpkins? I mean, if you haven’t seen my other two posts on pumpkin carving tutorials, you most definitely should take a look to ensure that you have the perfect ideas for your pumpkins this year!

Why am I providing you with all of Better Homes and Gardens’ links, you ask? Why don’t I just give you the links to the Better Homes and Gardens website? BECAUSE – in order to view ALL of the pumpkins, you have to literally click on each link. Here, you can directly go to the pumpkin or gourd tutorial that you are interested in, without wasting a ton of time searching for the perfect one!

The first section will focus on carved pumpkin and gourds, and the second section is a whole bunch of ideas for no carve solutions.

This is the last set of pumpkin tutorial links that I will be posting. Have fun carving!

General Tutorials:

• Halloween Pumpkins 101: Better Homes and Gardens
• Pumpkin Carving Basics: Better Homes and Gardens
• Pumpkin Carving Instructions: Better Homes and Gardens
• Pumpkin Carving Tips: Better Homes and Gardens
• Free Printable Pumpkin Stencils: Better Homes and Gardens
• Free Pumpkin Carving Stencils of Favorite Dog Breeds: Better Homes and Gardens
• Silly Face Pumpkin Stencils: Better Homes and Gardens

Contents for Carved Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

• Basket and Vase Tutorials
• Candy Holder Tutorials
• Non-traditional Carving Tutorials
• Celebrity Stencil Tutorials
• Engraved Carving Tutorials

Contents for No Carve Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

• Object Attachment Tutorials
• Party Favor and Decoration Tutorials
• Painted Tutorials

Carved Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

Basket and Vase Tutorials:

Pretty Pumpkin Pots: BHG

Candy Holder Tutorials:

Goody-Bearing Gourds: BHG

Non-Traditional Carving Tutorials:

Jester Jack-o'-Lantern: BHG

Jolly Jack-o'-Lantern: BHG

Pumpkins All Aglow: BHG

Bird Haven Pumpkin: BHG

Floral Face Pumpkin: BHG

Curly Locks Pumpkin: BHG

Sly Grin Pumpkin: BHG

Shy Guy and Flying Witch Pumpkins: BHG

5 Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin: BHG

Dripping Face and Happy Halloween Pumpkin: BHG

Bats in the Belfry Pumpkin: BHG

Joyful Pumpkins: BHG

Little Critter Lodge Pumpkin: BHG

Tower of Pumpkin Power: BHG

Tabletop Totem: BHG

Make a Goofy Group of Pumpkins: BHG

Carve a Pumpkin with Eerie Cat Eyes: BHG

Carve a Scared Pumpkin: BHG

Carve a Fallen Witch Pumpkin: BHG

Carve a Cute Pumpkin Puppy: BHG

Make a Mouse House Pumpkin: BHG

Monster Pumpkins: BHG

Make a Pumpkin Mouse Chef: BHG

Spiderama Pumpkin: BHG

Bat Pumpkin: BHG

Birdhouse Pumpkin: BHG

How to Carve a Sky Pumpkin: BHG

Owl Pumpkin: BHG

Creepin' Cat Pumpkin: BHG

Fun Feline: BHG

Black Cat Pumpkin: BHG

Fall Pumpkins with Drilled Holes: BHG

Flame Design Pumpkins: BHG

Haunted Mansion Pumpkin: BHG

Flower Power Pumpkins: BHG

Floral Face Pumpkin: BHG

Happy Goblins: BHG

Celebrity Stencil Tutorials:

Michael Jackson Pumpkin: BHG

Barack Obama Pumpkin: BHG

Jon Stewart Pumpkin: BHG

Sarah Palin Pumpkin: BHG

Joe Biden Pumpkin: BHG

Oprah Pumpkin: BHG

David Letterman Pumpkin: BHG

Rachael Ray Pumpkin: BHG

Hillary Rodham Clinton Pumpkin: BHG

Michael Phelps Pumpkin: BHG

John McCain Pumpkin: BHG

Stephen Colbert Pumpkin: BHG

Engraved Tutorials:

• Monogram Pumpkin Letter Stencils: Better Homes and Gardens

Are You My Mummy Pumpkin: BHG

Chip Away a Pattern Pumpkin: BHG

Willard the Warlock Pumpkin: BHG

Spine Chilling Spider: BHG

Welcome Home Address Pumpkins: BHG

No Carve Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

Object Attachment Tutorials:

Junk-O-Lantern Pumpkins: BHG

Pumpkin Ballerina: BHG

Sequin Striped Pumpkin: BHG

Silver Swirl Pumpkin: BHG

Snowman Pumpkin: BHG

The Crow's Hideout Pumpkin: BHG

Night Light Pumpkins: BHG

Sparkled Pumpkin: BHG

Striped Pumpkin: BHG

Copper Leafed Pumpkin: BHG

Fallen Leaves Pumpkin: BHG

Haunted Pumpkin on Boo Avenue: BHG

Build a Border Pumpkin: BHG

Easy Pumpkin Topper: BHG

Metal Mug Pumpkin: BHG

Lace Face Pumpkin: BHG

Make Waves Pumpkin: BHG

Beads and Wire Trimmed Pumpkin: BHG

Veggie Lady: BHG

The Cowboy: BHG

Glamor Girl Pumpkin: BHG

Party Favor and Decoration Tutorials:

Painted Tutorials:

Craft a Pumpkin Quilt: BHG

Primitive Paintings: BHG

The Pumpkin King: BHG

How to Make a Stenciled Pumpkin: BHG

Paint a Pretty Witch: BHG

Apple Core Pumpkins: BHG

Bold Design Pumpkin: BHG

Create Witches Legs from a Pair of Pumpkins: BHG

Frosted Pumpkin: BHG

Leafy Pumpkin Candle Holders: BHG

Creepy Crow Pumpkin: BHG

Pretty Pumpkin and Stand: BHG

Nocturnal Creatures Pumpkin: BHG

Web Laden Pumpkin: BHG

Pretty Patterned Pumpkins: BHG

Carnival Pumpkin: BHG

Painted Patchwork Pumpkin: BHG

Pick Your Pattern Pumpkin: BHG

Patterns and Polka Dots Pumpkins: BHG

Gourd Greeting: BHG

I could be missing some pumpkins – the website is really complex for listing all of these pumpkins. If you notice that I’m  missing any, please let me know so I can add them to the list! Thanks!

Photo Credit: zizzybaloobah on flickr

It’s October 22th – almost a week before Halloween, and the PERFECT time to carve your pumpkins and dry your gourds! You can do so much more than carve a simple face.

When moving into my house past this past May, I noticed that there was something odd growing. I wasn’t sure if it was a weed, so I let it keep growing. Surprisingly, it produced one mini pumpkin (gourd), and I’m attempting to dry it! I looked up ‘how to dry gourds’ on Google, and found so many different results of what to do and not to do. I’m really confused about the whole process. For now, I’m hanging it up in my garage and seeing what happens. Anyone know how to dry gourds for real? I want to keep the seeds, too! Anyways, back to the real post subject.

I’ve collected several tutorials that I thought were interesting ideas for both pumpkins and gourds.

The first section will focus on carved pumpkin and gourds, and the second section is a whole bunch of ideas for no carve solutions.

General Tutorials:

• How To Make Halloween Spooktacular Pumpkins Video: YouTube
• Carving Artificial Pumpkins Tips: Craft Jr.
• Free Pumpkin Stencils for Halloween: Fantasy Jr.
• Scary Pumpkin Stencils: Fantasy Jr.
• Pumpkin Carving Patterns: FamilyE

Contents for Carved Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

• Non-traditional Carving Tutorials

Contents for No Carve Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

• Ribbon Tutorials
• Object Attachment Tutorials
• Painted Tutorials
• Picture Tutorials

• Inspiration, Ideas, and Photos

Carved Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

Non-Traditional Carving Tutorials:

Good to Glow Haunted House Pumpkin: Parents

Mummy Pumpkin: Ladies Home Journal

Geometric Pattern Pumpkin: Parents

In a Twinkling Pumpkin: Parents

No Carve Pumpkin and Gourd Tutorials:

Ribbon Tutorials:

Object Attachment Tutorials:

• Vinyl Pumpkin Decorating from OhMyCrafts on YouTube

This Aint Your Ordinary Pumpkin: Kari and Kijsa

More Pretty Little Pumpkins: The Shabby Nest

Pumpkin Costume: Dollar Store Crafts

Dried Leaves Gourd: Gingerbread Snowflakes

Stickered Mini Pumpkins: Cheeky Magpie

Painted Tutorials:

Doodle Pumpkin: The Swell Life

Setting Pretty Painted Mini Pumpkins: Parents

Spooky Spots: Parents

Let's Make a Pumpkin Penguin: WyldHare

Cuddle-able Scarecrows: Gingerbread Snowflakes

Bloody Pumpkins: The Swell Life's Blog

Creepy Spiders: Parents

Going Batty Pumpkins: Parents

Boo in the Face Eyes Pumpkin: Parents

Spray Painted Pumpkins: Crafty Crafty

Make Your Own Ghost Gourds: Cathie Filian

Picture Tutorials:

Inspiration, Ideas, and Photos:

• 10 Awesome Robot Halloween Pumpkins: Botropolis
• Button Pumpkins and Lady Monster Gourds: Ruffles and Stuff

Am I insane for spending hours to get pictures and links all set up? YES. In general. And NO – because I use my blog as a reference for myself as well. I can reference back to these tutorials and ideas for the rest of my life – without having to search ever again! YES! That’s why, if you  have any awesome tutorials, ideas, or comments for pumpkins or gourds – let me know so I can keep a running list! Thanks so much!

Photo Credit: nep on flickr

I was originally going to follow the Lowe’s tombstone tutorial to create my very own scary tombstones, but after starting I found that there were much easier ways to make an awesome tombstone setup without a ton of foamboard and extra time. So – here is the Halloween Tombstone Tutorial – RedThread style!

I made these AWESOME light-up ghost figures in a previous tutorial. They are SUPER easy and fun to make!

Check out my collection of links for other fun outdoor Halloween decoration ideas!

Materials Needed:

• Foamboard (I used a 1″ pink insulation foamboard sheet from Home Depot, which only cost me around $12. I made all 7 of my tombstones from that one sheet, with leftovers!)
• Serrated Knife (for cutting out the tombstone shapes.)
• X-Acto Knife (for carving the tombstone names and/or designs in the foamboard.)
• Spray Paint Primer (I used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Ultra Cover 2X Coverage Primer – Gray, which cost around $3. We bought 2 and used 2. Don’t go too cheap on your primer! Cheap primers take a ton more time, and a lot of coats to cover the pink foamboard. It would actually cost you more using the cheap stuff, since you’d have to go through so many more cans to get the coverage you want)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Hand Saw
• Something to cut cheap wood with
• Hammer
• Wooden Paint Stirring Sticks (Home Depot offers these for free). Grab 2 for each tombstone to be safe.
• Spray Paint (Any color you want your tombstones to be! If you’re happy with how the primer looks, just leave it as is. I did this on a couple of the tombstones! You can get an array of cheap spray paint colors for $1 each at Home Depot or Wal-Mart)

Most of these materials I already had, so I only needed to buy the foamboard and the primer. Pretty awesome result for $20 and my time, right? Onto the instructions!

Step 1: With a pen or pencil, lightly draw your tombstone shapes onto the foamboard. I made straight lines with a T-Square (You can use a ruler and eye it!), and made rounded top shapes with a dinner plate.

You can also print out Lowe’s cutting diagrams for examples here. I printed these out really small and used them as a guide only. I avoided the bases and most 3-D effects. If this link stops working, feel free to contact me, as I’ve saved the PDF file and can send it to you.

There are also tombstone templates available here, which gives you wider variety.

Step 2: Once you’re satisfied with the shapes made, take a serrated knife, and start cutting! It’s easiest if you cut in a back and forth motion, rather than just trying to slice the foamboard. I tried a box cutter, but it made things very difficult. I don’t recommend a box cutter!

If you do have a jigsaw, it would probably be the easiest to use that. Since I don’t have one, the knife worked out just fine.

Below are the outcomes of cutting with a serrated knife:

Step 3: I experimented with a 3-D tombstone. To make a 3-D looking tombstone, cut out a normal tombstone (straight edges would be easiest) and then cut out 3 inch wide, long strips of foamboard. Match them up the best you can, and hot glue them to the tombstone once you feel that they are cut properly to fit the tombstone shape. I then waterproof caulked the seams for an even sturdier result.

Step 4: For a professional look, use a computer to print the desired name you want. I used different sizes of Palatino font, depending on the size of my tombstones. My sizes varied from 150 pt. to 300 pt font. I printed out several copies until I could decide which size font was best for each tombstone. There are so many different humorous tombstone names. I’ll include as many as I can find and list them at the bottom of this tutorial!

Step 5: Using tape, attach paper with desired name to the foamboard.

Step 6: Using a ballpoint pen, trace over the letters with enough pressure to cause an impression in the foam.

Photo Credit: Lowe's Creative Ideas

Step 7: Remove the paper. Using an X-acto knife, cut the foamboard inside the letters at 45 degree angles. Then, carve out the excess foam.

Photo Credit: Lowe's Creative Ideas

Step 8: If wanting to make cracks in your tombstones, score the foam with your X-acto knife. If wanting to cut out a shape in your tombstones, simply trace the shape that you want in pencil and cut directly through the foamboard. Examples of the finished look of these are below:

Step 9: Spray paint your tombstones with the primer! Be sure to have scrap cardboard or newspaper underneath your tombstones when using primer and spray painting in order to save your grass or cement! Use a back and forth, steady motion when priming and spray painting. Be sure to check out the video below if you don’t have a lot of experience. Let it dry, and then flip it over to prime the other side. Amazingly, this went pretty fast and the primer dried within 5 minutes. After the primer is on, you can choose to use spray paint for different effects, but the gray primer will also look fine by itself.

• Use the primer FIRST! Don’t only use spray paint. It will take a ton of cans to cover the foamboard color. Also, the spray paint without primer burns through the foamboard, creating an icky effect.
• Make sure that you are spraying at least 10 inches away from the tombstone. If you spray too close or for too long in the same place with the primer or spray paint, it will also burn through the foamboard.

Foamboard Burning

Before

During

After

Optional: Add different effects with different colors of spray paint  to your primed tombstones by lightly spraying on the color.

Step 10: Make stakes for your tombstones. These will be hot glued into your tombstones to make them stick into the ground! Take one paint stick and cut it in half with a saw. Then take a pair of wire cutters to cut off some of the wood to turn them into stakes. You can really use anything to cut them, as long as you can cut them at an angle. Make at least two stakes for each tombstone. If you have a huge tombstone, I recommend making three stakes for it. The picture below should explain it all:

Step 11: In this step – you need to make slots in your tombstones to be able to hold the stakes that you have made. I tried cutting out the holes, but found it very difficult. So, I used a butter knife that didn’t match any of our other silverware and sacrificed it. Over an open fire, I heated up the knife and stuck it right through the foamboard, as deep as I needed the stakes to go into. The picture and the video do a better job of explaining this below:

Step 12: Using a hot glue gun, secure the stakes into the holes you just made.

Step 13: When the glue dries, usually within 10 minutes, arrange your tombstones in your front yard. I live in Michigan, so the ground was pretty hard. When I tried to push them into the ground, I made the stakes go further into the tombstones. You do NOT want this! To fix the problem, I laid out the tombstones where I wanted them, and took an unused stake to hammer into the ground, and then lifted it out. When doing this, I could push the tombstones into my pre-made holes in the ground easily without cracking them.  To further make sure that the tombstones don’t fly away, you may want to surround them with a few heavy rocks, skulls, or in my case, a worthless chair hidden behind the largest tombstone sandwiched with the skeleton that we secured to the ground!

Step 14: Finished! Enjoy your awesome new tombstones. They RULE!

Click here to view my entire picture set on flickr.

Questions? Comments? More fun tombstone names? Other ideas? Make a set of your own? Let me know!

Some Tombstone Name Options: