Pumpkins
If you have not seen Stolloween‘s pumpkins…all I can say is “Where have you been?” He is truly an amazing and awe-inspiring artist. He is to Halloween what Mozart is to music, what Pollock is to painting. He has taken paper mache from from grade school to showroom quality. You will both love and hate his talent at the same time. I was so inspired by his work, I could not wait to start making my own pumpkins this past fall (my Winter Project).
The pumpkins are created from plastic trash bags, newspaper, cardboard (cereal boxes) and two different paper mache techniques, both of which I learned from Stolloween. For detailed instructions on how to make these pumpkins go Here.
Below you will see my 3 pumpkins in the drying phases (after paper mache and paper clay has been applied).
After everything had dried and the inner paper guts removed (newspaper). I began cutting out the facial features and gluing strips of card board (cereal boxes) around the eyes, nose and mouth using my hot glue gun. I mixed up my paper clay (per Stolloween’s instructions) and started to build out the features. I must say, if you have never worked with paper clay (you need to) it’s very easy to work with and holds it shape much more than you may expect.
I did try and pulp my own paper, however, once mixed with the flour/water mixture it was lumpy and once it had dried it did not look as smooth as I wanted. After contacting Scott (Stolloween) for advice, I made my second pumpkin using cellulose insulation for my clay mixture. Huge difference! Consistency was more like modeling clay and easier to work with and form around the facial features than my homemade paper pulp.
