Fall Party: Pick Your Own Pumpkin Patch

The fall is such a great time for celebration, holiday or otherwise. While planning a fall festival celebration with my friend, I came up with this simple idea for a small, easy to make, take home decoration/gift. I made a small pumpkin patch in which all of the pumpkins are connected by a "vine." Guests can "pick" a pumpkin by cutting the vine and take it home for a fall holiday decoration.

Step 1: Materials

This is a very easy project and only really requires a few items to make. In order to try a variety of different pumpkins, I used different colors and different sizes of construction paper, as well as some thicker card stock paper with grades of color.

Step 2: Cutting the Paper

The first step is to take the paper for and cut it into strips. For my first couple of "Pumpkins" I only used one single colors, cut the strips in approximately equal widths, and used one stamped sized piece of paper per pumpkin. I cut the strips until there was only about 3 to 3.5 inches of paper left uncut to the end of the paper.

Step 3: Roll the Core

Once you cut the strips all the way along the width of the paper, roll the sheet into a tube as demonstrated in the pictures above. Don't roll it too tight as you will need room later to tape the end into the bottom of the tube hole. Once it is a good diameter, put a piece of tape along the paper edge to hold the tube closed. Then circle the tube with another strip of tape at the end of the cuts in the paper.

Step 4: Making the Pumpkins

Next, go along the exterior of the tub and pull each strip of paper down, put a small piece of tape on it, and circle it back into the bottom of the tube. Press the tape with one finger, to attached to the inside of the tube. Once the first strip is attached, move to the along, pulling down the strips on the outer edge of the tube, all around the outside of the tube. Continue to circle the tube pulling down the outermost slits until they are all pulled down, making the outside of the pumpkins.

Step 5: Vine Twists for the Top of the Pumpkins

Take a piece of green construction paper and cut it into thin strips of paper about 7 inches in length. Run each strip along the outside edge of your scissors to curl the paper.

Step 6: Stem

Roll a piece of brown construction paper about 4 inches long and slip it up the bottom of the pumpkin and out through the top. This will create a stem out of the top of the pumpkin, as well as hold the taped slits down by putting pressure on it. The slip the curled green vine between the stem and pumpkin and fasten with a small piece of tape.

Step 7: First Pumpkin: Standard

This is the first pumpkin.

Step 8: Variation, Multicolored "Unripe" Pumpkin

I wanted to include some variations in the pumpkin patch to incorporate some pumpkins at different stages of ripeness and maturity. So I thought I would make a few that were a mixture of green and yellow. I took two partial pieces of construction paper, one yellow, and a smaller piece of green, and made another pumpkin.

Step 9: Variation: Card Stock

really like the different shades in the paper stock. It is also a big heavier and stronger. Thus I made a few pumpkins using paper stock. The only thing I didn't like was that inside was not colored, so the core of the pumpkins with paper stock are white, which, of course means that you must sure that when role the cut sheet into a tub, you keep the white side out. Then when you curve the slits down, the color is on the exterior.

Step 10: Variation: Nonuniform Width Strips of Paper

I also tried to make few by cutting the slits in the paper with different widths. I liked this effect overall. It looks a little more full.

Step 11: Variation: Large Pumpkin

Lastly, I tried to make different sized pumpkin. The smaller ones were simple, as I only cut down a single sheet of construction paper into a smaller sheet of paper.

To make the larger pumpkin, I glued four pieces of construction paper together to make one big sheet of paper. However when I finished the pumpkin it was a little too heavy for itself. I had to put it against a wall to stop it from rolling on its side. However, I liked the way it looked in the pumpkin patch as a variation.

Step 12: Spacing If Necessary

On a few of the pumpkins many of the paper slits overlapped considerably when I was folding them down. This gave the pumpkins a sparse look. to keep the slits of paper spaced out I made small cuts in the side of each slit and the connected them in the cuts so that they held each other spaced out.

Step 13: Vine and Leaves

Once I had created enough pumpkins, I made leaves and a vines to connect them all.

Step 14:

In order to make the vine, I cut numerous thin slits of green paper. I then ran the top third of each on the back side of a pair of scissors to curl one end.

Step 15:

I then taped the bottom end of each one to the back of the curl of another one, until I had made two vines about 7 feet long. I taped them so that the curl would alternate from one side of the vine to the other.

Step 16:

Making the leaves was pretty simple. I took pieces of paper with different shades of green and cut a leaves of different sizes. I then folded the leaves in half to give them strength and taped them to different point along the vine.

Step 17:

I then put all of the pumpkins in the "patch" and ran the vine from one to the next. I used a small piece of tape to connect the vine to each pumpkin either at the ends or by taping a curl to the stem of the pumpkin.

Step 18: Pumpkin Patch Sign (Optional)

As a final touch, I wanted a small sign labeling the patch. I found some left over cuts of 2 by 4 and some packing/pallet wood. I cut the two by four into a piece about 2 inches wide, and four inches long. I then ran the middle of one side over a table saw a few times to make an opening about a third inch wide, and a half inch deep.

I took the longer pieces of packing wood and cut them into thin strips of wood, about 1.5 inches wide and a third inch thick. I then took those and cut them into four pieces about 8 inches long, and one pieces about 12 inches long.

Step 19:

I screwed each pieces of 8" length to the 12 inch piece as seen in the picture about. I had to use small screws so that they did not come out the front. I also put a little wood glue each place where the pieces of wood crossed with the longer piece to give it strength.

Step 20:

Lastly I used back acrylic paints to paint a "rough" sign for the pumpkin patch.

Step 21: Final Result

I put it all together in for a homemade "pick your own pumpkin" patch for our fall party. It was a simple and inexpensive touch, and gave our guests a take home gift.

Happy fall every one!