Smooshing pumpkins – an exercise with paint, texture and colour mixing

I can’t believe October is coming to an end already! We still have so much Hallowe’en crafting to do! We were smooshing pumpkins today, using the same paint smooshing technique that we used for our Fall Collages.

How to smoosh:

To start, I used an oval platter to trace a pumpkin shape onto cardboard. Then we drizzled orange/rust/peach and green paint onto the oval, and covered it with waxed paper.

When we made our fall collages, we used Plastic Wrap, but I wanted to try waxed paper this time. Honestly, I had dollar store waxed paper, and it started ripping soon after we got started, so we peeled it off and went with plastic wrap again. Much better.

Once the pumpkin was good and smooshed, we used some paper towel to blot up the excess paint. img_2520.jpg

I just love this smooshing technique! It produces really beautiful results!

The Hooligans had a play in the yard with Andrew, who had a P.A. Day today, while the paint dried.

He was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin; wherever he went, they followed.

When they were dry, I cut out the pumpkin shape I’d traced, and we got to work on the faces. You could use construction paper for this, but I had some scraps of skate-board grip tape that I wanted to use. It’s like a coarse sandpaper, so the texture is neat, and bonus: it has a sticky back, so the Hooligans peeled off the paper backing and just stuck the eyes, noses and mouths on their pumpkins.