How To Make A Dollar Tree Splatter Screen Pumpkin

Supplies:

3 flat splatter screens. I got mine from dollar tree.

Spray paint of your choice. I chose a rose gold.

Greenery of your choice. This is the greenery I used from Hobby Lobby if you want to use the same.

Sola wood flowers or other flowers of your choosing. I used a total of 6 sola wood flowers, but you could use more or less depending on the look you want. Here are the specific flowers I used for my splatter screen pumpkin. They were all purchased from ohyourelovely.com

2 – 1 inch Ken Ken

1 – 1.5 inch Latte

2 – 2.5 inch spellbound

1 –2.5 inch vanilla chai

Twine

Hot glue gun and hot glue

Thin wire to secure greenery and other items together.

I started out by taking my splatter screens outside and spray painting them. I spray painted everything, front, back, and the handles. I just do not like to leave a section uncovered even if it will not be seen. I also only had a little bit of my rose gold spray paint left, so I figured I might as well use it all up. There were a few spots on the back of my splatter screens that did not get covered, but they do not show. I then allowed this to dry for about a day to be safe and to help air out the fumes from the spray paint.

Next, I arranged my splatter screens to my liking. One handle should be at the top and two at the bottom. The two at the bottom will be bent back to form a stand to hold your pumpkin up. The one handle at the top will be the stem of your pumpkin. I decided to slightly angle my stem.

To attach the three splatter screens, I first tired Gorilla glue. The gorilla glue did not stick well and the splatter screens came apart as soon as I picked them up. I did not want to use hot glue because I did not want chunks of the glue to show, but since the gorilla glue did not work, I decided to try the hot glue. The hot glue held a little better than the gorilla glue, but it was very fragile and would not be a long-term solution. After a bit of pondering on what else I could try I decided to try and wire the splatter screens together. I had some thin gold wire that I used. I was worried the gold wire would show up against the rose gold color, but since the wire was thin enough it does not show. I also made sure to twist the wire in the back so less of the wire showed. I also placed my wire in spots that would mostly be covered up by my greenery. I was a bit surprised how just a few wire ties was all this pumpkin needed.

Now it is time to work on the handles of the splatter screens. I used my hands to bend the two bottom handles about 90 degrees. This was surprisingly easy to do. If you add a lot of decorations to your pumpkin, then you may want to bend them a bit more than 90 degrees or possibly add a small weight to the feet/handles to help prevent it from falling over.

For the top handle I wrapped mine in twine. I applied some hot glue as I twisted my twine around the handle, about every other twist around. I recommend applying the glue to the back of the handle so it does not show. Sometimes hot glue can be stringy. Once I made it to the top of the stem I continued wrapping my twine, but getting smaller and smaller wraps each time to close off the top. So, I wrapped a bit of the top with just the twine glued to itself to form a nice rounded top.

With my gold thin wire I attached some greenery. I took apart a thing of greenery I had. I think medium size leaves look nice, but you will just need to play with it and find what you like. I placed two pieces of the greenery across the top and attached them to the splatter screens with the gold wire. You can use the wire to make your greenery lay how you want or just let it lay naturally. I then added a third piece of greenery across the top in the middle to make it look fuller. I did not like having the wire, edges, and other things show at the bottom so I decided to add a piece of greenery down there as well. With the greenery and flowers just move them around and add or take away pieces until you like it, then tie it in place with your wire. If you decide to change it up later on it will be easy to do, since everything is just tied on.

For my flowers I decided to go with undyed sola wood flowers with some bark showing. See my supplies list for the names of the flowers I chose. I attached my flowers by hot gluing them directly to my greenery. You could also hot glue a piece of wire to the back of the flower (stem it) and then wrap the wire around the splatter screens or greenery if you want to remove them from the greenery later on. I chose not to do the second method because I was afraid the flowers would not stay nicely in place with just the wire. As I was testing which flower I liked where I lended my splatter pumpkin against a cabnit so I could lay the flowers down and see what I liked first before gluing them down.

I also applied hot glue to all of my wires once everything was in place and to my liking to insure they staied in place and for extra security.

Feel free to add more decoration to suit your style. You can really change the look by adding different décor items or changing the color of the splatter screens/pumpkin itself. I am not good at making bows, but that is another item you could add. I went with a simple design for mine. You could also dye your sola wood flowers as well.