Pepper Design Blog

Gold ‘Dipped’ Pumpkins & Our Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

It feels a little funny to leave home in the middle of a hot summer and come back right in the thick of fall, Halloween, cool weather and changing leaves (well, that last one is almost true. We have only two trees on our street here in San Diego that go from green to red but I marvel at them all season long…) This past weekend we made our annual trip to our favorite pumpkin patch (complete with pumpkin spice lattes before hand and a delicious chili potluck after) and the reality of the season has finally hit! More on that below…

While at the pumpkin patch I picked up a handful of pumpkins to decorate the house with too, and thought I’d share my faux ‘dipped’ versions today.

I’m not sure where the idea came from but while brainstorming fall & Halloween decorations I thought it might be fun to bring a few organic, neutral details into our house (that I wouldn’t mind leaving up for a few months) while also filling it with plenty of oranges and reds and traditional colors.

Gold has been a favorite accent color of mine, from shiny knob handles to burnished vintage vases to classic jewelry – and that became a starting point. Creating some sort of dipped decor out of white and green pumpkins seemed like a neat way to try it out.

I’ll have to mix some spooky Halloween decor in there soon, too.

These pumpkins really don’t looked as if they were ‘dipped’ in paint in the traditional sense, but I actually love the contrast of the lines and attempted to give it a slightly crooked, mis-aligned feel on purpose. A little more organic.

My original thought was that maybe I’d actually try to dip the pumpkins and considered buying a quart of gold paint, filling a round bowl large enough for my pumpkins and literally ‘dipping’ them, but then realized that spray paint might be a bit more efficient in application, cheaper and less wasteful.

I love the result!

Just a little bling for the room, and a fun alternative to decorating pumpkins in the usual way. Soon Liv will be old enough to really help!

The process was simple. I first wrapped the pumpkins with painters tape (choosing the wider version since spray paint can get a little crazy and I wanted to avoid paint getting on the top half of my pumpkins. The alternative would be to tape on some type of barrier like cellophane or paper to cover the top completely), pressing down on just the lower half of the tape (since the edges are round to prevent creases in the tape) and aligning it at a bit of an angle.

Then spray away! Be sure to keep your can of spray paint at least 10-12″ from the actual pumpkin to avoid dripping.

And here they are again in the dining room:

Looks great with the turquoise buffet!

Decorating the pumpkins has been a lot of fun, but visiting the pumpkin patch to find them is a great family tradition, too! Years back a friend found the perfect pumpkin patch for our annual trip just about 25 minutes east of us here in San Diego.

Summer’s Past offers huge, crawling gardens to roam, a snap pea ‘maze’, animals for petting, a coffee bar for warm beverages (although the weather in October is always about 75), a cute little shop full of lavender soaps and such, little ‘vignettes’ around the property that are perfect for holiday photos, jump houses for the kids and a great big open pumpkin patch. We’ve even aligned our visit with their little harvest festival in the past for even more goodies.

Liv romantically walking the gardens with her potential future hubby, Gavin.

Why won’t it move!?

Here’s our group shot this year!

And a sneak back on previous years… the quantity of children continues to climb!

2010

2011

2012

Liv picked out a few pumpkins, enjoyed a little cart ride and played in the jump house for most of the morning. We managed a family photo as well.

Sort of. Liv’s not paying attention, but what can you do…

I look forward to this event with amazing anticipation every fall! This one sort of snuck up on me but I already can’t wait to go back. And now it’s time to really get decorating for Halloween! We’re also throwing a little dinner and trick or treating around the neighborhood party again this year. Yay for fall!

Office Wall Collage: An Embroidery Project for Kev

While we were away we celebrated Kevin’s birthday! I actually haven’t gotten around to finishing his present, but I do have his Father’s Day present to share (four months later…). I originally hadn’t planned on posting about this project (part of my effort to show Kevin that I hadn’t made the piece for the blog – but for him! But I think it’s kind of cool and four months of not posting about it is enough time for me.)

It’s an embroidered bicycle that I then framed and had on display on our mantel for a while. Kevin and his family are big bikers, and I was hoping to hand make something that was special to him personally. He and Olivia LOVE to bike (she is thrilled every time she sees one go by, and constantly asks to go for a ride in her iBert) and I thought that something with bicycles might be fitting for Father’s Day. (I also traced her little hand on a card – something that I think will be neat to do every year just to watch how she grows!)

Kevin is really terrible to buy gifts for. I mean, really terrible. He doesn’t need anything, doesn’t really get excited  about anything and in general is hard to impress. I worked on this project during the evenings when he was in class for a few weeks in the spring, when he opened it he thought it was cool and thoughtful and that was enough for me.

Now the embroidered bike sits at the top of the wall collage in the office/guestroom. This is a nice spot for it, perhaps a permanent one.

Sadly, I don’t have photos documenting the progress (goes along with the whole I-made-this-just-for-you part of the gift), but this is an excellent tutorial on how to embroider just about anything. I actually found a generic picture of a bicycle online and printed it out to the proper size, lined it up with an off white fabric scrap I had on hand and reminded myself on how to make a basic embroidery stitch. I didn’t use an embroidery hoop but I will next time. Lesson learned.

It’s a little folksy, a little artsy, and by no means perfect. But that’s what I kind of what I like about it!

Maybe a quick ironing pre-framing would have helped with a few of those wrinkles…

More office/guestroom posts found here.

Living Room Refresh: Semi-DIY Colorful Canvas Art

Happy start to the week! Getting those cake posts together last week wore me out… but I have several new home projects to share with you this week and I’m really excited about this first one.

I have been looking for a large piece of art for the living room for some time, but everything I come across is either out of my price range or the wrong size/look. But I’ve found a solution. Using a one yard piece of fabric from Spoonflower + a couple of tubes of oil paint/acrylics, I channeled my inner artist and created a piece of art for the living room.

The fabric did 90% of the work, but maybe that’s why I’m so thrilled with how it came out .

Here’s a reminder of how the space looks when coming in through that above door:

The color palette in this room includes plenty of neutrals plus the occasional bright pop of green and raspberry red.

And this new painting ties in perfectly with the scheme.

The inspiration behind this piece of art came from when my family traveled to Australia two years back to visit my younger brother who was studying abroad in Perth. The aboriginal art was absolutely stunning, full of brilliant colors and beautiful abstract patterns and I badly wanted to bring a giant canvas home. That wasn’t quite possible, mostly due to luggage and price reasons, but it did cause me to begin a search for a potential DIY solution.

What’s kept me from trying this out? The thought of hanging art in the house where I am the artist. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m very critical of my own work and art is very much ‘on display’ – as opposed to maybe a repainted chair or even a room that we’ve completed. Fast forward to this spring, and my finding Ish & Chi’s and MadeByGirl’s absolutely stunning aboriginal pieces of art by artist Jeannie Mills. What a fantastic pop of color for the space! How beautiful!

I know, I know, mine does nothing to contend with the originals. But if your’e not familiar with where my inspiration came from, it’s a fun, extra large piece to have in the house and to bring in that bright coral color.

Original oil paintings (unless awesome thrift store finds – I’ve picked up a few small ones) can be pretty expensive, but when I came across thisfabric on Spoonflower while searching for other random project fabric, a semi-DIY art idea was born. Here’s that exact fabric, plus a few other designs that I loved by the same artist. (Maybe I’ll move the painting to Liv’s future big girl room and use these as the accent fabrics… that watercolor version is amazing.)

That fabric sparked the idea of creating my own canvas art to hang, and the best news yet? Spoonflower gives you the option of ordering on a canvas cloth! It’s not really as thick and sturdy as a gallery canvas, but it is hardier than your average cotton and gives a similar look to the pattern printed on it.

I really love art that is edged out in a simple wooden molding. It’s usually attached to the canvas post-production and sits maybe 1/8″ from the edge of the art (Ish & Chi actually had hers framed just like this but in white). I have a friend who’s aunt makes her own and I was inspired by her birch versions to use this Ikea frame, which worked just perfectly! and for a great price.

The third component to this project was a set of oil paints or acrylics. I have been collecting these little tubes for years and years and was so excited to finally pull my ‘painting’ box off of the bookshelf.

This box holds all kinds of trinkets that I’ve been saving for my future art days. {sigh}

But back to getting that frame all ready to go. First up was ironing out my fabric (Spoonflower ships with fabric folded rather than rolled so there are always a few decent creases) and then flipping it over and cutting to size.

I pulled the fabric nice and tight and added to the frame (with glass and mat removed).

A little super glue along the inside helped to reinforce the position of the fabric. (Photo below shows clamps which were helpful in lining up the fabric on the front side of the frame before securing in place.)

Now we’re ready to paint! Though this particular fabric would have looked great just framed and on its own. (No, I have not kid-proofed my bench seat in seran wrap , that’s just the plastic from the Ikea frame above that I eventually used to protect my table from paint smudges).

See what I mean about little creases? I used the steam option on my iron to get out the last of em before applying paint.

I chose a selection of reds, corals, crimsons, yellows and whites from my paints and began mixing up various shades that could be found in the fabric.

Then I tested my paints out an an extra piece of fabric and gingerly began applying small accent pieces of color throughout the canvas.

But soon enough I realized that the texture of paint brush strokes is really the look I was going for, and before long I had huge globs of paint on my square brush!

(My paint tray has plenty of dried paint in greens and blues and what not, but I used just reds and oranges and yellows for this project).

I slowly began to fill the canvas until nearly all of the squares in the pattern had an accent of real brush strokes (I like the look of highlighting or shadowing one corner).

The project took me an hour, maybe two. Which, in the art world, is like running a marathon at a sprinter’s time (you just can’t beat that!).

I really really love to paint. I don’t have the time (or maybe I should admit that I have had the same half finished canvases in my garage for years – one that’s maybe 15 years old?) but I do have the passion. Maybe a hobby for when I retire .

Liv helped me hang the piece. If you look closely you can see a tiny little hammer in her hand.

In case you’re curious about the door, here’s a shot that shows that the stopper halts the swinging front door just in time. The door couldn’t physically swing that far but it does make me a little less nervous knowing that there’s no glass involved with this art, either.

You can also see here how the weight of the paint on the fabric has caused it to sag a bit. I should probably go back and restretch it – or should have made that a final step before hanging. And to those of you familiar with Spanish-style homes, that’s the original solid door and hardware! It was produced in the 1930′s and while I don’t necessarily love it, it’s probably a crime here in San Diego to replace it.

Total cost for semi-handmade art? (Sandra Lee, anyone?) $25 for that great birch Ikea poster frame and $18 for a yard of canvas fabric from Spoonflower. I already owned the various paints and brushes (yard sales are a great place to pick up extras) so my grand total came to $43, which for such a huge piece is an awesome steal.

More living room posts can be found right here.