Boo! | DIY STRING ART PUMPKINS

It's the Halloween weekend and I’ve already spent a good ten minutes this morning practicing my horror grimace in anticipation of the trick-or-treaters. I’m getting pretty good at the undead-but-not-yet-starved Zombie face. Though on second thought, that could just come down to the cold I caught weighing down my facial features; and the smell of baked apples in the oven giving me the rumbly-tumblies!

In any case, Halloween can come, I am prepared!

I’m just messing with you. Kids don’t do Halloween around here! The neighborhood is much too nice; and traditional for that matter to welcome Celtic ghost stories into their homes. Though I do have reason to believe the old lady next door is in fact a witch. I can hear her wicked chuckles through the walls even late at night and I’m pretty sure she hides a broomstick in that weird fabric shopping trolley of hers!

So no, this place is nowhere near ready for All Hallows’ Eve – no skeletons have been put into place and those pumpkins have not been touched with anything close to a carving tool just yet. The cobwebs however have been there all year round.

This year, I will be celebrating those ghouls and wolves, vampires, monsters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice elsewhere.

But since I didn’t want this place to miss out on the spooky goodness altogether, I figured at least a small reference to Halloween would be nice.

And these adorable string art pumpkins turned out to be the perfect re-imagination of the classic BOO! jack-o-lanterns you’ve seen so often on peoples’ doorsteps. You know, people who live in trick-or-treater-friendly places.

So not me.

The good news is, these are done with a lot less mess than a classic carved pumpkin, they last longer, and – although it might not look it – it hardly takes any time at all to get them done!

So let’s dive right into it.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
- mini pumpkins
- nails
- hammer (optional)
- embroidery floss
- paper
- pen
- scissors
- masking tape

Step 1: Start by drawing out your letters B-O-O onto a sheet of paper. As you’re sketching, keep your overall design in mind. Keep it simple and use as many straight lines as possible. You want the letters to fit onto your pumpkin nicely, but you also don’t want the letters to end up being too small, as the nails (once you’ve added them) shouldn’t touch each other.

Step 2: Cut out the letters individually leaving a small border. Place the first letter onto one of the pumpkins as desired and fixate with some masking tape.

Step 3: Using one of the nails, poke holes into the pumpkin following your design leaving about ¼ to
½ inch between each hole. Make sure to punch a hole at each of the corners. You won’t need to poke deep holes, you just want the design to be visible once the paper is removed. If the pumpkin skin is soft enough, you will not need to use a hammer.

Step 4: Remove the paper template and use a hammer to pound the nails into the prepared holes.

Step 5: Tie the embroidery thread in the color of your choice in a tight knot around one of the nails.

Step 6: Start stringing the thread around the nails in whatever fashion you like. I didn’t think about it much, just be sure to follow around the entire letter at least once to make it clearly visible. Finish off where you started, tie the two ends together and trim off the ends.

Repeat for the other two pumpkins.