Make your own Crate & Barrel Jack-O’-Lantern lantern dupe. I saw these Ficonstone Jack-O-Laterns on Crate and Barrels website and absolutley loved them. I did NOT love the price however. I’m sorry who is paying upwards of $100 for one pumpkin? No thank you. I am going to show you how I took my old painted DIY painted pumpkins from a few years ago and gave them a refresh.
Supplies
Carveable pumpkin – These come in several sizes
Stone texture spray pain – There are several colors, I used Obsidian
Clear coat spray – To seal off your pumpkin
A kitchen knife – Any sharp kitchen knife that you aren’t too precious about works
Rechargeable tea lights – I tend to like a rechargeable tea light
Real tea lights – If you are a purist
DIY Stone Jack-O-Lantern
This is really a quick and easy project that you can get done in under and hour. If you are reusing old fake pumpkins I would suggest giving them a quick clean so that your spray paint sticks easily. In my case I took of the old stickers and washed them with soap and water since they had been outside.
After your pumpkins are clean, just like a normal pumpkin cut the top off. I would suggest putting a notch in the top so you can easily replace the “lid” of the pumpkin when you are putting the light in.
Once the top is done on to the fun part! I used the faces from the Crate & Barrel Jack-O’-Lantern lanterns as my inspiration because I thought they were cute. You can obviously choose to carve the faces however you would like. When carving my pumpkin I free hand cut the faces out. If you want to draw on the face don’t worry about what you use to draw with as you will be painting over it.
When you are happy with your pumpkin faces it’s time to paint. My pumpkins were already painted a solid dark blue and one was white. I would suggest if your pumpkins are bright orange painting them dark. Do this with an acrylic paint first otherwise you will have to use a lot of spray paint to cover all of orange. With a dark base it is more forgiving, and since the spray paint is much more expensive than the acrylic paint I think it’s worth the extra step.
Make sure when you are spray painting you are outside or in a very well ventilated area. When using the stone texture spray paint I have found that it is very important to use small bursts of paint. It helps the texture look more stone like. Also make sure you are about 6 inches away when spraying. For the best effect I did several thin layers letting the paint dry in between coats. I found that if I was trying to do a thicker coat the stone texture would get kind of gloppy.
Jack-O-Lanterns Longevity
So you might think fake pumpkin will last forever…yes, but only if you follow some steps. If you don’t seal the spray paint there is a chance depending on where you choose to display the pumpkins that the spray paint will wash off. Weird I know, but I learned this by accidentally leaving my pumpkins out to dry for many days and letting them get rained on. So if you plan to display your new diy jack-o-lanterns outside don’t skip this step.
That’s it! A quick and easy fall project. Insert tea lights and enjoy!
