Hello, dear guest readers! Today on the blog there is a post about what a pumpkin can be for Halloween and an unusual event - a guest post from Anastasia Kalashnikova, author of the blog rat-felt.ru.
We met on her creative resource during the “I am a Creator!” competition. It turned out that we were similar in many ways, which allowed us to become closer in the future. But we’ll start with the classic options for treating the main symbol of Halloween, which is also called the head or Jack’s lantern.
According to legend, Jack was a heavy drinker and, as a result of his risky disputes with Satan, was forced to wander the world. He was not allowed into heaven and he did not fit in in hell. Therefore, he carries a jack-o-lantern with a smoldering coal with him. Since then, such a composition has become a symbol of a lighthouse helping lost souls to rest.
Every year on October 31, many parts of the world celebrate (sometimes on a grand scale) the wonderful Night of Floating Apples. Of course, such a celebration is more typical for countries like Mexico, but in Russia and the CIS countries the tradition of carving pumpkins at the end of October is gaining momentum. And that's great! Agree, there is nothing even remotely similar in our traditions.
Let's start with the most classic way to create a holiday accessory - carving a pumpkin.
What you can do with your own Halloween pumpkin
In general, pumpkin is such a pretty vegetable that, in extreme cases, you don’t even need to decorate it additionally. If you don’t have time to decorate some rooms, you can simply put the pumpkin in a prominent place and surround it with candles and autumn bouquets. But with at least one composition, it’s worth thinking about how to make a Halloween pumpkin more interesting? And leave enough free time for this.
In European countries, this day is considered the most magical of the year.
Halloween Traditions
The celebration of Halloween is a fun mixture of pagan and Christian traditions. Pagan festivals manifest themselves in our time in the tradition of dressing up in costumes and transforming into a variety of evil spirits, witches, sorcerers, dead people, ghosts. There is a huge scope for creativity - you need to work hard on the costume in advance. In addition, adults and children come up with ways to scare each other more and develop interesting attractions.
Even on this day, adults and children, dressed in costumes, go from house to house begging for sweets. This custom is called “Treat or it will be worse.” This holiday is also famous for its various fortune telling.
Halloween gives you the opportunity to use your creativity by creating Halloween crafts with your kids. And to make the holiday unforgettably interesting, you can organize a party with friends. To do this, you need to decorate your home by purchasing or making various Halloween accessories yourself.
How to make a pumpkin for Halloween
Traditionally, the vegetable itself was used for holiday crafts. Armed with imagination and a knife, they carved funny and scary people, animals, and fairy-tale characters from pumpkins. Now other variants of the Halloween symbol are also common: made from paper, cardboard and textiles. But first things first. First, let's learn how to make a Halloween pumpkin from a pumpkin.
On the eve of All Hallows' Day, the border between the world of people and spirits becomes thinner, and the latter can break free.
From pumpkin
Before you start carving the fruit thoroughly, cover the table with old newspapers or oilcloth, because there will be a lot of dirt in the process.
To avoid becoming victims, people dressed themselves as monsters, and to scare away evil spirits from their homes, they made huge jack-o'-lanterns.
Follow several universal tips when working on a pumpkin:
- Prepare knives of different sizes and sharpen them well. If you want to make small patterns, you can use metal cookie cutters and a hammer.
- Use a permanent marker to mark the desired pattern on the surface. If you are not good at drawing, print a ready-made template from the Internet on thin paper, glue it to the pumpkin and pierce it along the outline with an awl
- Remove the pulp from the pumpkin with a large spoon and only after breaking through the skin, otherwise the pumpkin may break. Try to leave the walls as thin as possible - then the finished product will be stored longer.
- You can dry the inner surface much faster if you put crumpled newspapers in the pumpkin: they absorb the juice well. Just periodically replace the already wet paper with dry one, and also turn the pumpkin over on different sides.
- At the very end, wipe the pumpkin peel with sunflower oil, and then it will shine beautifully.
In order to decorate the house for Halloween, we do not neglect this decoration and choose the largest and heaviest pumpkin on the market.
If you have not started the craft on the last day, it is better to wash and dry the pumpkin, and also degrease it with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol.
To extend its life, we treat it with hairspray.
Important! Decorative pumpkins are more suitable for drying than standard ones.
Interested in pumpkin carving? There are alternatives to give it a festive look. For example, you can treat small fruits with glue and sprinkle them with glitter. This layer will dry for about 15 minutes, no more, and after that you will have pumpkin decorations ready for your home. You can attach some word-message written with beads to the shiny layer using hot glue.
You can create many interesting decorations using pumpkins of different sizes.
From paper
Using a set of colored paper, scissors and glue, you can easily make a paper pumpkin. Step by step it looks like this:
- Take orange A-4 sheets and cut them into thin strips no more than two centimeters wide. In total you will need 18-20 pieces.
- Fold the resulting strips on top of each other and, stepping back half a centimeter from the top edge, sew the entire stack with thread. Secure the knot. Now connect one end of all the strips to the other. If you did everything correctly, you will get an arc.
- Gently straighten it, arrange the strips in a circle. Now the round orange pumpkin itself is ready.
- Take green paper and cut out a leaf with wavy edges. Glue it on top to cover the place where the thread was attached.
- Cut out three triangles from black paper: these will be the eyes and mouth. And also make the mouth in the form of a strip with teeth. Glue the resulting facial features onto the pumpkin. Ready!
A DIY paper pumpkin is suitable for decoration.
The craft can be hung anywhere on the wall or on a chandelier. In general, a paper pumpkin is suitable not only for home decoration, but also as a gift for guests.
From scrap materials you will get a real work of art.
Another interesting themed craft is paper masks. The easiest way is to select a template on the computer, then print it out on orange cardstock and cut it out so that you can apply it to the pumpkin. Monochromatic masks will look unclear, so arm yourself with a black marker and go over the contours of the design.
Children and even adults will appreciate such a gift.
From cardboard
Such a small craft can be made together with small children. They will draw a pumpkin on a piece of orange A-4 cardstock and you will cut it out. And then - the facial features on the pumpkin. You can decorate a window or mirror with crafts.
A paper pumpkin is made simply and quickly, and does not require any material costs.
You can make voluminous crafts from cardboard that are not quite standard in shape. If you fold orange cardboard like gift wrapping and draw a design on the surface with a black marker, you will get a cute and useful cardboard pumpkin.
As a Halloween craft, you can make beautiful pumpkins from paper with your own hands.
For ease of production, you can fold a sheet of cardboard in the same way as for cutting out New Year's snowflakes, i.e. in half with right side facing in. The drawing of the face will be done at the fold line. After this, all that remains is to cut everything out and straighten the fold line.
This pumpkin variation is quick and easy to make for a fall holiday.
From textiles
The main advantage of textile pumpkins, unlike natural ones, is that they can be stored indefinitely. Once you sew these once, you can use them for Halloween every year.
Why not sew pumpkins as pillows for interior decoration.
The second advantage is that you are practically unlimited in materials. Any fabric is suitable for the base, and for decoration - beads, rhinestones, feathers, buttons and whatever your heart desires. You can even stuff pumpkins with cotton wool or faux fluff and turn them into round pillows.
With ready-made improvised pumpkins you can decorate the interior of your home in an autumn style or decorate for Halloween.
And with all this, you don’t need any special sewing skills.
Here is the easiest way to make a fabric pumpkin with your own hands:
- Prepare a piece of orange fabric measuring 40 by 80 cm or larger. Less is not worth it, because this craft will be tied with a rope, which will make it visually smaller.
- Fold the rectangle of fabric right sides inward and sew the edges together.
- Now step back from the edge a couple of centimeters and sew with a running stitch. Pull the ends of the thread together to create a bundle of fabric. Secure the knot.
- Turn the workpiece inside out. If you did everything correctly, you will end up with a bag.
- Fill it more tightly with padding polyester. Some people recommend placing a plastic bottle in the center to help the finished product hold its shape, but this is not a practical solution.
- Use a running stitch again, then pull the ends of the thread together and sew the edge closed.
- Now arm yourself with a canvas rope and use it to form divisions on the pumpkin. Twist the long ends into a ponytail and secure with glue. That's it, the pumpkin is ready!
You can make these decorative Halloween pumpkins in a variety of sizes.
Use this method or come up with your own.
history of the holiday
The holiday is very unusual in terms of its appearance. This holiday is now a mixture of cultural traditions and beliefs of the Celts and Romans, and Christianity has added its own specifics. The Celts left behind the date of the holiday - October 31st. The ancient Celtic people worshiped the forces of nature. The Celtic priests, the Druids, divided the year into two halves - winter and summer. The night from October 31 to November 1 was considered the transition from summer to winter, and it was on this day that the gates of the other world opened. In honor of this, the Samhain festival was held, an obligatory part of which was making sacrifices to the spirits of dark forces.
When the warlike Romans conquered the Celtic lands and brought their traditions, it turned out that they themselves had a holiday, which was also celebrated on the night of October 31 to November 1. This holiday was in honor of the goddess of plants - Pomona. Thus, thanks to a fortunate coincidence, the Celtic and Roman holidays came together. It should be noted here that this was facilitated by the fact that both of them celebrated the day of the dead that night.
The arrival of Christianity brought its own additions. In order not to destroy established traditions and firmly consolidate the Christian faith, Pope Gregory III decided to celebrate All Saints' Day not on May 13, but on November 1. This is a brief history of Halloween, which, having undergone several metamorphoses in different eras, became known as the holiday Halloween - All Saints' Day, when all kinds of evil spirits come out of the other world, and restless souls can come to any home.
How to make a pumpkin scary or beautiful
Surely you are familiar with the legend of Jack the Lantern, whose soul still wanders the world in search of peace. It is to this character that we owe the origin of the holiday. And if you like spooky stories, you can make a pumpkin Jack. To do this, cut out triangular eyes and a nose, and make the mouth frozen in an ominous smile - in the shape of a crescent with two fangs.
We transfer the design onto the vegetable and cut it out with a sharp knife. This will make it faster and easier.
If the legend of Jack scares you and you just want to celebrate, take a look at these beautiful pumpkin decorations.
If the lid does not hold and falls off, secure it with toothpicks. This way the craft will last longer and will not dry out too quickly.
Pumpkin casserole in the oven
Pumpkin casserole / photo ua.depositphotos.com
- Pumpkin - 450 g.
- Sugar - 1 glass.
- Sour cream - 1 glass.
- Eggs - 2 pcs.
- Flour - 1.5 cups.
- Soda - 1 tsp.
- Cinnamon - 1 tsp.
- Orange juice - 4-5 tbsp. l.
- Butter - 20 g.
Peel the pumpkin and grate on a coarse grater. Beat eggs with sugar with a mixer. Add eggs with sugar, sour cream, soda, orange juice, cinnamon to the grated pumpkin. Mix. Add flour to the mixture and mix again.
Grease a baking dish with butter, pour the dough into it and place in the oven. Bake for 1 hour at 180-190 degrees.
How to make DIY pumpkin decorations
A pumpkin can be made into an original light source. To make a carved lantern, you need to cut a neat design into the peel. The light from within will shine through it. If this is your first time trying something like this, use a larger pumpkin as a base: it will be easier to carve something on it. Arm yourself with a special carving knife or a stationery knife. As a last resort, use an ordinary nail file.
You just need to choose the most interesting ideas and allocate some free time.
Note! To prevent the pumpkin from cracking, it is better to first cut out the pattern and then remove the pulp.
Tea candles or a neatly laid electric garland are usually used as a light source that will be inside.
According to legend, such lanterns help souls find their way to purgatory and scare Jack and other evil, otherworldly forces away from home.
Small pumpkins can easily be turned into candles by pouring melted wax or paraffin into them and inserting a wick. And you can make a vase out of a large pumpkin by simply cutting off the top and scooping out the pulp. You can put any autumn flowers like marigolds inside. Wheat, thistle and other plants that have survived the cold streets will also work.
The pumpkin from which you will make your own Halloween lantern must be free of damage and rotten areas.
If you choose fresh flowers, it makes sense to line the inner walls of the pumpkin with film and place a moist oasis inside.
Important! One pumpkin is not enough for a festive decoration. You need a composition of several pieces and additional decor: cobwebs, skeletons, bats.
Paint your pumpkin white and attach paper bats to it.
Garlands suspended from the ceiling can be combined with banners on the walls, and the table setting will be in harmony with the characteristics of the selected textiles.
There are a lot of options on how to decorate your house for Halloween with your own hands.
Very little kids can also do themed crafts if they have plasticine. The pumpkin is made from an orange block, and black is used to make the facial features and cape.
Children can make their own pumpkins from orange plasticine.
