This is always a transition time between Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating especially in bloggerland.  I know some bloggers have moved onto Christmas already but I wanted to share one last fall craft with you!  Even though I am up to my ears in Christmas decor.  Literally!  There are decorations laying all over the house just waiting to be hung with glee.  😉

Back to fall though…I had a great idea to make a book page rose pumpkin diy this year to go with my book page acorn turkey napkin rings.  However after I made it, it was too big to fit on my Thanksgiving tablescape!  So after spending quite a bit of time on it, it got left out.  🙁  No worries though!  I will definitely be using it to decorate with for years to come.

Before you start, I feel like I have give you a couple tips about this project:  

1. It took more time than I realized it would.  I had previously made a wreath like this but I didn’t remember it taking this long!  It must be like childbirth, after awhile you forget how bad it was.  Ha!  However, it is a great mindless project to do sitting in front of the TV watching your favorite guilty pleasure show.  I worked on it on and off for about a week, mostly in the evenings.  And just like childbirth, it is worth the pain.  I promise!  😉
2. This pumpkin was an ugly yellowish green color so I didn’t use it often in my decorating.  If you use a color of pumpkin other than white, I advise you to spray paint the pumpkin to match your book pages first.  I REALLY wish I would have done that.  It bugs me a little that I can see the yellow pumpkin through the roses in places.  Another option would be to mod podge some book pages on the pumpkin first.
3. Add your stem before you start adding the roses.  It will be so much easier than trying to glue it into place after you have all the roses on.  Learn from my mistakes!  🙂

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For this project you will need:

• A faux pumpkin
• An old book
• 3 different sized cups ( my cup diameters were 2 ¾”, 3 ⅛”, & 3 ⅝”)
• A pencil
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Scissors
• Rope (I used leftover rope from my DIY rope chargers)

I wanted the pumpkin to have dimension so you could actually tell it was a pumpkin and not just a big ball.  So I made 3 different sizes of roses to conform to the shape of the pumpkin.  Rummaging through our cupboards, I found 3 plastic kids cups of slightly increasing sizes that I used for circle templates to make the roses.

Tear out a bunch of book pages ahead of time as you will go through them really quickly.  Each rose uses three pages stacked together so it looks like there are more petals on the rose.  To make the roses, trace the cups onto the top layer of three book pages.  Try to fit as many circles on a page as you can.  I could fit three circles of my smallest cup on a page and two of the other cups.  Cut out the circles.

You can draw a spiral onto the circle as a template to cut the first couple.  After you get some practice you will not need to draw the spiral anymore, you can just cut them as you go.

At the beginning of the spiral you will be left with a pointed edge.  Round this off so it does not stick up in the rose.

Start rolling the book page spiral starting on the outside edge.  

Continue rolling until you get to the center of the rose.  Add some hot glue to the center point and glue it to the rose.  You may have to glue between the layers of the center point as well.

Here is a gif of the process to help you get a better idea of how to make the roses.

I started by gluing the small size of roses around the stem at the top of the pumpkin.  For the second row, I glued the small roses on the recessed area (the lines of the pumpkin) and one medium size rose in the middle of each section.

The third row sections were comprised of a small rose on each line and two medium sized roses in between.

On the remaining rows covering the middle of the pumpkin, I again glued the small roses on the lines, then a medium rose next to those and finally a big rose in the center.  

Nearing the bottom of the pumpkin, I did the same as the top just in reverse order.  On the bottom of the pumpkin, I used all small roses.  I thought about leaving the bottom not covered with roses, but it looked like it was cut off that way so decided it needed to be done.

The stem was way too short the way it was, so I looked into different ways to make pumpkin stem.  I came across an awesome tutorial from Anderson & Grant on how to make a realistic pumpkin stem.  I thought they looked amazing so I tried it.  

After making the stem, I decided to leave my stem the natural rope color because I liked how it looked with the book pages.

What do you think?  I really like how it came out.  Of course, like I said above, I wish I would have painted the pumpkin first but it is really not too noticeable.  Oh well, we live and learn.  🙂

It was a fun and easy project to do.  It did take some time but it was worth it.  I am looking forward to using it in my fall decorating next year since I have already packed up all my fall decor for the year!  I will be back soon with my first Christmas post!  Yay!!

Have a wonderful day!