Welcome Michigan Scrapbookers!

Hey Michigan Scrapbookers! Welcome to my little corner of the web! I'm happy to be joining the staff of Michigan Scrapbooker Magazine and look forward to sharing my love of crafting with you!

With fall in the air and Halloween around the corner these cute little pumpkins are a perfect project for your little pumpkin or to line up on a windowsill (or as a table favor for a Halloween party or even Thanksgiving dinner :)

You will need:

Supplies:

1-4" x 6" piece of patterned paper (I used some from Fancy Pants)

1-thin little strip 12" long and about 1/16" thick (seriously just a thin little piece) of Green cardstock

1-1/4" x 1" piece of brown yardstick

Glue Dots

2 mini brads

Tools:

Trimmer

A piece of foam (I used one of those foam door hangers but a piece of fun foam works great too)

A flat edge (bone folder or something similar. I'm shown using my pampered chef pan scraper :)

Needle or paper piercer

Optional Supplies:

Ink Pad

glue stick

Start by slicing your 4 x 6 piece into 6- 1" x 4" strips.

After you have your strips, ink them if desired and lay them out so your pattern is "reassembled" (you can skip this part if you want a more random look)

Stack your pieces in order

Using the needle or piercer make one hole in the middle of each end of the stack of strips (about 1/8 of an inch in or so)

Insert your mini brad in the holes, you can open one brad fully, leave the other one closed and set this aside for a moment.

Take your green strip and lay it on your piece of foam. With firm even pressure run your straight edge along the strip. This will curl up the paper giving it the look of a "vine"…for an even more natural look, vary the direction you are pulling, even start and stop. It' fun to see how the paper curls up (and you can always redo it if it's not to your liking.)

Take your strip of green and make a loop in the middle. Wrap your loop around that brad you left closed. The green should be on the top of your strips. Open the back of the brad.

Starting with the back strip, start fanning out your strips. You will see the pumpkin shape starting to form.

To make the stem, roll the strip of brown into a coil and insert a glue dot into one end. Place the glue dotted end on top of the brad holding your vine in place. )You might need to secure the tail of the stem with a touch of a glue stick.

There you have it. A cute little pumpkin. It honestly takes longer to explain than to make! And kids LOVE making them! You can vary the colors, and the sizes of the strips for the pumpkin. (With larger sizes you may want to add a few strips to fill out the shape as well as secure the bottom in place (cause they can flop over when they get larger.)