A pumkpin a day, a study in negative space

Aside from the candy embezzling that I sneakily, and obsessively, do from my children's Halloween bags, my favorite part of Halloween is the pumpkin design. While I enjoy the traditional carved pumpkin designs, my favorites are the off-beat themed pumpkins. I like to get out the glue, paints or odd bric-a-brac and see what I can create.

One sort of pumpkin design I have used over the years involves leaves (real or silk), a hot glue gun, and a thin bladed knife. For the pumpkin I have shown in the accompanying picture I harvested some green oak leaves and then uses some fall colored silk leaves I had lying around from a previous craft. The whole process took less than an hour and produced a fun, whimsical pumpkin that can be displayed on the front porch or used a centerpiece. The process is as follows:

1. Thoroughly wash the pumpkin surface, you will be gluing lots of leaves on to it and any dirt will cause them to fall off.
2. Cut off the top and clean out the innards.
3. Sort your leaves to get a good feeling for color variety.
4. Begin gluing them in a williy nilly lay out. I like to start with the green leaves and use them as a sort of background for the brighter leaves, this allows the reds and yellows to show up nicely against the orange pumpkin skin.
   
5. Be aware of the space in between the leaves. It is the negative space you will be cutting out so is the leaves touch you will easily have interesting cuttable regions.
6. Once you have the leaves glued in a pleasing arrangement, it is time to start gluing.
7. I like to use a hot glue gun but rubber cement also works nicely with leaves. Another good idea is to use the leaves fresh off the trees, if they are too dry they tend to crumble went bent or glued.
8. After the leaves are glued you can choose the negative spaces where the pumpkin skin shows through and begin to cut. I like to use a sharp kitchen knife but the pumpkin carving kits also work well. Be sure to begin cutting from the base of the pumpkin and head towards the top, this ensures that you are not putting too much pressure on the top of the pumpkin and causing any breakage.
9. Cut as much as you like until you have some interesting shapes for light to show through. The result is a sort of free floating arrangement of leaves with abstract spaces entwined through them.

This is an easy pumpkin that can be enjoyed by young and old alike. Due to its structure it does not last long and should be carved the afternoon of the day before it is to be used. Happy cutting!