It’s true! I’ve been at it again..creating home decor with book pages.
Today, I’m going to show you how to make pumpkins made from paperback books and create realistic pumpkin stems, too.
Right now, pumpkins and gourds are overflowing at every farm stand along the road.
They’re beautiful and colorful and expensive.
So…what’a gal to do when her pocketbook isn’t filled with extra pennies for a plethora of pumpkins?
Create them from book pages, of course!
A nice tall book page pumpkin is easy to make. Crafting skills not required!
And those amazing pumpkin stems? You’ll see!
Create a Cylindrical Book Page Pumpkin
Materials:
- Paperback book
- Glue gun and glue (optional)
Steps:
- A larger paperback book will give you a larger pumpkin. This one is from a book that was about 7 inches wide by 10 inches tall.
- Rip the covers off the book and spine to begin.
- You’ll need about 250 or more pages to make the pumpkin. If your book is a thick one, rip off the extra pages at the spine.
- If the spine is tough, you might want to score it a little with something sharp.
- To make the process easier, start folding the pages back in sections to loosen the spine a little…which will make your pumpkin’s shape nicely round on all sides.
- Start at one end and page by page, start folding the outer edge of the page into the spine.
- This will seem like it takes forever, and then you’re almost done. [wink]
- Once all the pages have been folded, shape the cylinder you’ve created. If necessary, you can run a bead of hot glue down the edge of one side of the spine and push the two sides of the spine together. Sometimes it’s helpful to glue the two outer pages together. Often it’s not necessary.
There you have it….a Book Page Pumpkin!`
Um yeah. Right.
I know, it still looks like a cylinder.
No worries. Just give your cylinder a stem and she’ll be looking seasonally perfect in a matter of minutes.
You don’t have a stem? That might be a problem for some, but not for me…or you.
Let me show you how to create realistic pumpkin stems.
And they are so easy too!
Create Realistic Pumpkin Stems
Materials:
- a stick from your yard cut to the length you’d like for your pumpkin
- low temp (hot) glue gun and extra glue**
- scrap paper
- craft paint/brushes or spray paint
** Disclaimer:: Use caution when using a hot glue gun. Be sure to protect your surface with cardboard or something similar to prevent any damage to your work surface. Use extreme caution. Do not touch the hot glue with your fingers as you are applying it.
Steps:
- To create an realistic stem, cut the ends of your stick on an angle.
- Take a small piece of paper and hot glue the bottom of your stick to the paper.
- With the paper side down, carefully hold your stick and begin hot gluing ridges to your stick starting at the bottom and leaving a tiny “puddle” of hot glue at the base before drawing a ridge of glue up the side of the stick.
- Repeat the process of adding hot glue ridges vertically around your stick, puddling the bottom on the paper to make it look like a real stem.
- Carefully draw some ridges and points of glue on the top of the stem with your hot glue.
- Let it rest to cool and set up
- Once it’s cool, you can cut and tear the paper from the base of your stem.
- Paint with acrylic paints or spray paint.
- Glue your stem to the top of your pumpkin.
Steps 1 – 2
Steps 3 – 7
Steps 8 – 9
Now you have a truly authentic pumpkin stem to add to your cylinder….um pumpkin.
A beautiful Book Page Pumpkin….fun and easy to create.
If you want to dress it up for Halloween….
just add facial features with some heavy black paper, or cardstock, or posterboard as I did here.
Please “pin” and share this image.
If you missed it….I made several styles of paperback book pumpkins here. One might look a little familiar. [wink]
You might have so much fun making Book Page Pumpkins and Realistic Pumpkin Stems that you’ll want to make Book Page Christmas Trees. Click here for more book page crafts.
Thanks for stopping by today.
I appreciate you and your sweet comments make my day.
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Wishing YOU an extraordinary day!
Diane
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That is SO clever and cute Diane!!! I love it! Thank you for yet another delightful book page project!!!
Hi friend!!
Good to ‘see’ you! Thanks for stopping by and for the kind words. 😉
Miss you and your creative bliss on the blog, but trusting your new endeavor is all you need it to be and more!
[hugs]
I could never destroy a book. No matter what the project. Especially for a silly holiday..it is just wrong. To me a destroyed book is very sad and not something I would allow in my home.
Thanks for stopping by Alexis! We are a family of readers and LOVE books which is I why I love book page crafts. It’s a great way to keep enjoying a book that has out served its usefulness and has been cast-off.
Best wishes for an extraordinary weekend!
Just saw this at Nancherrow’s party! What a great idea for making a realistic-looking stem. Pinned it!
Diane, this is a wonderful tutorial for an awesome project! I love your book page pumpkins – always do love your book page creativity. 🙂 I see pumpkins with realistic stems in my future, thanks to you, the genius!
I love this idea! I’m definitely going to try it out with the books around the house I haven’t used in years…Thanks so much for the idea! Lovin it! 🙂
I always enjoy your book page projects. It’s a great way to reuse books you no longer have a use for. Love your stem idea too!
Oh, Diane!! I just LOVE the pumpkins! Thanks for the tutorial!
Diane, the stems are wonderful! I found a scrap of velvety fabric in my stash and succumbed to the velvet pumpkin and acorn fashion. Without stems, I cut up cinnamon sticks. I do like your creativity!
I will not tell you how very long ago it was that I folded Reader’s Digest magazines into angels, cut the covers into wing shapes, added Styrofoam balls for heads and sprayed the creations gold to decorate my parent’s home. 🙂
Your pumpkins and gourds make me smile.
I love your book page pumpkin and the stem is fantastic! I’m going to make some of these for Halloween!
This is amazing! And you could do so much with this!
This is so cool!! I love this tutorial come link up to Centerpiece Wednesday and share this post with us.
Karin
I love your book page pumpkin and that awesome stem! Great tutorial!
I would love for you to share this post at my Show Me Saturday party! We go live each Saturday at 7:00 am EST. My readers would love this!
~ Ashley
This is amazing! I love it! Thank you for sharing on Show Me Saturdays!
It’s cute Diane and I love the stem! I recently made a witch hat out of a book. Love those book projects! Thanks for sharing with SYC.
hugs,
Jann
Love it! I do appreciate you sharing with Home and Garden Thursday,
Kathy
Another successful book project. Incidentally, that raven, is that a cutout from my free raven stencil? It looks great together! You rock!
Isn’t it amazing what you can do with an out-of-date book?!! The raven belongs to my friend… I did the photo shoot at her house… wasn’t the setting perfect? I’m off to find your raven stencil… I missed it. Will be pinning!