Sam & Hailey Designs: Project Wednesday: Button Pumpkins

Seems like all I can talk about lately is pumpkins! Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! Have you heard enough? No? Oh, good, because I'm going to talk about them again. Actually, maybe I've only been thinking about pumpkins a lot and not talking about them. Anything is possible in this jumbled brain of mine.

What's so great about pumpkins anyway? Well, they are very tasty, for one. Pumpkin Pie is probably my hubby's all time favorite dessert. Next birthday, I'm going to make him a Pumpkin Pie instead of cake. He's not much of a cake-eater. And pumpkin cookies? Yum Yum! The other day I made the most delicious Pumpkin & Apple Muffins. Mmmmmm! My house smelled amazing. I even used homemade pumpkin puree I had frozen last year and instead of the oil I used homemade applesauce I canned a year or two ago. Pure heaven and I felt so frugal using all that homemade goodness!

Aside from pumpkin's tastiness, which no one can argue, what else is so great about them? I think that it is their place in {at least American} society as a true icon of Autumn. The fit in just about any autumn theme. Perfect for Halloween as jack-o-lanterns, but also perfect in any Thanksgiving arrangement, too. Maybe that's why I don't like carving them. I don't want their useful lives to be over once the thrill of Halloween Night has passed. They are the all-purpose, go-to, decorating essential for the Autumn season. Don't you agree?

We are heading to the Pumpkin Patch this Saturday with our girls, two of our grown boys, a daughter-in-law, and our darling granddaughter. I'm so excited! We first went to Apple Annies in Willcox, AZ last year and became hooked. Who wouldn't love to spend the afternoon with your family on a farm, picking pumpkins, riding in wagons, eating kettle corn and lost in a corn maze? It was awesome and I'm sure this year will be even better with some of our non-residential family along. Last year I snapped some adorable pictures of the girls. I can't believe I didn't blog the event last year. {Hanging head in shame}. The girls were so cute in the corn maze. The walked a lot of the way holding hands. Now, THAT doesn't happen every day around here!

Okay, so the title of this post promised you a project! I'm sure you are wondering where the heck the project is, already! What's with the discourse on the virtues of pumpkins and the meandering down memory lane? Sorry! You know how I am.

Today's project is: Button Pumpkins

This is a fun and easy project you can do with kids. My girls were a huge help in sorting and re-sorting the buttons many times over. They had a ball and a project got made!

For this project, I used my Itty Bitty Pumpkin Patch file to cut a stencil. You can use any kind of stencil you'd like, or hey, even free-hand it. I'm not going to judge you.

We discussed the resurgence in the popularity of buttons a couple of weeks back on Trendwatch Tuesday. I think you'll agree that this new trend has many applications. We've been seeing Button Monograms for a while and this technique would be an easy way to make those, too. Maybe closer to Christmas I'll have to make some monogram ones up for a Christmas project article.

For my Button Pumpkin, I used a 6" square piece of masonite-type fiberboard as the base. I have a bunch of these pieces left over from a project I did last year. Gotta use what you have, right? You could use cardboard, chipboard, a frame, a piece of wood, or just about anything you have laying around. The size doesn't matter, just as long as you have enough paper to cover your board, you are good. Notice I used the black and white paper for the background. If you didn't read yesterday's Trendwatch you might want to! I think this project would be fine if you just wanted to do the outline of the pumpkin instead of leaving this eyes and mouth clear.

Here are the instructions. Click the image to open it larger on your screen.