After seeing adorable paper pumpkins all over the internet, I finally gave in and made a little crop of my own. They were easy, fun, inexpensive, and turned out great, so here's a little tutorial for you.
You will need:
Scissors (duh)
Pen-like object (just to curl things around)
Brads (2 per pumpkin)
Hole punch (I used a 1/8" punch but 1/4" should work as long as your brad heads are larger than that)
12x12 scrapbooking paper in green and/or brown (for stems and leaves)
12x12 scrapbooking paper in coordinating pairs (2 sheets will make 4 medium pumpkins)
Hot glue gun (I have nothing additional to say but everything else has a parenthetical)
You will do:
Cut two coordinating sheets of scrapbooking paper in half, then cut each half into about 16 strips. You can get all fancy and precise with that if you want, but I just sloppily cut mine with scissors. My photo only shows two half-sheets.
Now punch a hole in both ends of each strip.
Next you will need to make some leaves and vines from your green or brown paper. I found a pumpkin leaf template at this cake website, printed it at half size, and used the two smallest leaves as rough stencils for my own pumpkin leaves. You can just cut leafy shapes if you'd like. I won't judge you. Punch a hole in the base of each leaf. Cut tapered triangles from the same paper- maybe about 6" long and wide enough at the base to comfortably punch a hole. Comfortably punch that hole. Thread the leaf onto a brad, followed by a vine or two and then 16-ish strips of paper, alternating between your two patterns or colors. Fasten another brad through the other end of the strips.
Carefully spread apart the strips of paper to form a pumpkin shape. Yes, I know the vine disappeared.
Cute, but it still needs a stem! Cut a strip of green or brown paper around 3 inches long and 3/4 inch wide and coil it tightly around a pen. Pull the center "out" a little. Now that the vine has mysteriously reappeared, coil that around your pen as well.
Apply hot glue all the way around the outermost coil. Make sure the leaf is turned so that it covers the awkward ends of the paper strips, and stick the stem down onto the leaf with the brad in the center.
Ta-da!
Some notes:
To make large and small pumpkins instead of medium, cut each paper into a 5" piece and a 7" piece rather than in half, then cut each into 16-ish strips just as before. A small pumpkin takes about 10 strips and a large pumpkin takes about 24, so 2 sheets of scrapbooking paper will yield 3 small pumpkins and 1 1/2 large pumpkins. That means that if you want 3 large pumpkins, you'll need to start with 4 sheets of paper. I hope all that made sense!
