A Little Glitter With Your Thanksgiving Dinner!

It's not enough that I made a pretty Thanksgiving table cloth, I wanted to make a pretty centerpiece too!

I got the idea from this picture that Jen from Tatertots & Jello used to display her Halloween ribbon table runner. As pretty as her table runner was, I have to admit that I was much more interested in the glitter pumpkins she was using as decoration. 

Wanna see how I did it? 

Supplies: 
3 foam pumpkins
glitter
mod podge
ribbon
glue gun
paper plate 
foam sponges, brush or paint brush




First I got my supplies all ready. I got my paper plates out to catch the glitter I was going to pour over the pumpkin. I got my mod podge and foam sponges ready. I decided to start by glittering the bottom of the pumpkin. I applied the mod podge in sections, than sprinkled the mod podge with the glitter, until the entire bottom of the pumpkin was covered.

Once the bottom of the pumpkins were dry, I began to repeat the process by glittering the top of the pumpkin. 

Now, here's where this almost turned into a craft fail...

craft FAIL!!!

I sprayed these pumpkins with a clear coat. Now, I'm not sure if I sprayed too close or what exactly went wrong, but I wasn't going to give up, so I just started over. I'm getting pretty good at starting over, these days. 

When I was finished re-glittering, I coated with a layer of mod podge to seal the glitter and keep it from flaking off. (Sorry, I didn't get a picture of that. Oops!) 


(Just pretend there is a picture here of a pumpkin coated in mod podge. And remember, that mod podge does go on white, but it dries CLEAR.) 


When the final coat of mod podge dried, it's time to apply the ribbon detail. I heated up my glue gun, Debra and got to work. I took my ribbon and wrapped it around the pumpkin, than made sure I had enough length to make a bow, and cut it. Than I found the half length of the ribbon. 

Than put a bit of glue on the middle of the pumpkin and stick the middle of the ribbon to it. 

Now, the pumpkins that I used had seams around the middle, so I just followed the seams and glued and covered them with ribbon, but not all foam pumpkins have that, so just make sure that you're ribbon is going around your pumpkin in a straight path. I also made sure that each side of my ribbon was glued on in equal parts so that my left over ribbon wasn't lopsided. 

Than you just have to make a bow. I did add a little hot glue to the back of the loops near the knot to make sure that my bow didn't end up really crooked. Finally I snipped off the tails of my bow at an angle and used a lighter to singe the ends just a little do they don't fray. 

I found some similar candlesticks at Goodwill and placed my glittered pumpkins on them. Than I arranged them, and wrapped a leaf garland I picked up on clearance at Michael's around the bottom.

You could do other things with your glitter pumpkins than put them on candlesticks, like put them on a large serving platter and wrap leaf garland around them or maybe find tiered candlesticks instead of all the same height. 

Just get creative! 


Now we have a beautiful centerpiece to put on the Thanksgiving table! Which, as my 2 year old niece exclaimed as I was putting it on the table, "Pretty!" I'm glad she approves.