Friends of Unity September Blog Hop

 Wow… approaching my fav season! Just love autumn decorations, traditional foods, the seasonal color palette and holidays! Couldn’t wait to start delving into fall crafting efforts, so this month’s Friends of Unity theme served as a perfect jumpstart. It was definitely time to get out all my fall supplies!

I love making my own decorations when I get a chance. A few times I’ve tried using 3 dimensional wood pieces I’ve picked up from local stores. With those pieces I ended up using a bunch of vendor products to achieve my aim. There’s pics and videos in my blog from a couple years ago of Christmas and Winter decor I made for friends and family. 

Well… just so happened, when thinking about our theme for this month, I remembered I bought a 6” x 6.5” x 1” standing wooden pumpkin a year ago that I could decorate. This was a real challenge for me as I had to find in my Unity stash, items I could use to create both a Halloween side and a Fall side of the pumpkin. 

So, after finding a leftover checked napkin with sunflowers, I started looking for Unity sunflower images I own, that I could pair with it. (For some reason, sunflowers remind me of fall.) I needed a sunflower stamped image that would pair with the napkin’s sunflowers and fit the size of the pumpkin. I finally found it in Unity’s All Kinds of Holiday Kit. 

To make sure the napkin image showed up well, I first painted one side of the pumpkin with white acrylic paint and let it dry. I then used collage medium to decoupage the napkin on, after first removing all but the top layer of the napkin.

Then I decoupaged another sunflower from the napkin onto a heavyweight cardstock I could fussy cut up once dried and use as ephemera. I used watercolors, acrylics and pens to color in the sunflower image I had stamped onto watercolor paper. I ended up also adding glossy accents on top of the petals. I fussy cut it out and added cardboard pieces behind it to make it sturdy.

Then, I went searching through my stash and found Prima chipboard pieces, a Love puffy piece, 3 somewhat matching white flowers, leaf images I could fussy cut out, and a felt leaf. I tried to stick to a yellow gold and black/white theme here. After figuring out a design that would work, I glued and hot gun glued all the pieces to the decoupaged napkin. I finally decided on a black ribbon and found a cute BoBunny chipboard button I could top it with. I had to acrylic paint the bright yellow heart on it to gold to match the color theme. The challenge is all this was finding the appropriate sized pieces, colors and theming that blend somewhat harmoniously. Hopefully, I achieved that with this side of the pumpkin.

Overall, I think it turned out pretty cute. I love the addition of the Unity sunflower image. I can’t wait to pair it with a sunflower in a vase and perhaps a candle.

Now on to the “dark side”… 🤣    ….👻🎃🏚️! This was more of a challenge for me. I couldn’t find, in my stash, a Halloween kit that perfectly suited the size of the pumpkin. Instead, from Unity, I found these papers, Hocus Pocus Palette, and this set of ephemera, White - Chronicles of a Ghost, I had picked up awhile ago. I just loved the haunted house image on the papers and I started by fussy cutting that out and then playing around with ideas, adding other fussy cut out images. Before I did anything else, I painted the outside edge of the pumpkin black. Then, I knew I had to find a suitable grungy, color matching, background and finally found an orange sheet (maybe Tim Holtz) paper that matched. I traced around the pumpkin, cut it out and adhered it to the pumpkin.

Here’s the work in process… with a few options… some deselected!

So, with some fussy cut pumpkins and branches from the paper pack, and a ghostly image and sentiment from the ephemera pack, I started my design layout. I also searched through my stash and found a little scroll piece from another vendor I could use to “frame” the sentiment at the top. I embossed it with cream colored powder and added shadows with pen. Not knowing how I’d treat the bottom part, I used a background stamp from another Unity kit to “ground” the house. I also found a black mesh I could also use to cover that part.

With both sides of the pumpkin, I had to create my own sturdy “chipboard like” pieces of the Unity stamped or printed images. As with the sunflower before, I cut down to size some cardboard recycled material to back the paper images and glued them to the back, like this…

I ended up cutting more foliage images out of the paper to use as filler. After creating the final design, I then started adhering and or hot glue gunning the pieces on. I used the gun on the mesh as well.

For more filler, I had a little leaf die I used on all sorts of coordinating paper scraps. I also found some chipboard gravestones in my stash that I could add. (Must admit, I love Disney’s Haunted House ride and may have been a little inspired by it!). To complete this side. I added shiny orangish dots, and a muted gold ribbon backed with a mesh copper ribbon. I also embossed black bats that I fussy cut out using Unity’s Thanks in All the Things Kit. Here’s the finished very busy Halloween side… maybe a little too busy, but I like it. 

I have a lot of Halloween decor (some homemade of course) that I can match this side to! Can’t wait to start decorating! To finish off the standing pumpkin, I used my hot glue gun again to add matching copper mesh and cream colored ribbons to the connecting side!

With both sides of the standing pumpkin decorated, I can easily change the decor now between Halloween and Fall at a whim by turning it around. 

Here’s a couple decorating ideas… quickly put together (just with what I remembered I had on hand) …

Well… this was a lot of work and challenging … but also a lot of fun. Let me know if you’ve made any decor yourself. I’d be interested in hearing about it. Hope you got some ideas from this.

Remember to comment along on the hop for a chance at winning some Unity goodies. I will be doing a giveaway package this month, so be sure to leave your name with your comment and check back next month to see if you won it. 

I also want to congratulate:

Meg Crawford

as my randomly picked winner from last month’s hop!

Now, on to the rest of the hop. You may have come here from:

Jane’s blog

Continue on with:

Doreen’s blog

Or, you can start from the beginning with:

Crystal’s blog