Floral Pumpkin Centerpiece Tutorial

Today's project completely wasn't planned. I had just put my youngest down for her morning nap when I walked past an olive bucket which I had put two brown craft paper pumpkins in with some greenery. I thought to myself "those really would look pretty with some flowers in them!" I have a whole Pinterest board of pretty floral fall pumpkins and have always wanted to make one for myself, but of course, never got around to it... well, unexpectedly, today was the day and done completely with what I had around the house! Score. If you don't just happen to have things around your home like my craft hoarding self, this project still wont cost you much at all and is so worth it when its done! Plus, its all fake so you can keep it, store it and enjoy it year after year! No rotting pumpkins or flowers here. Okay, so here is what you will need from start to finish to complete the project;

SUPPLY LIST:

- Paper Craft Pumpkin

- Faux Eucalyptus Bunch

- Floral Greenery Stems/ Bunches (I used 3 different ones)

- Brown Moss

- Bamboo Faux Flowers

- Floral Foam

- Green Floral Wire

- Scissors

- Knife

[All supplies used were purchased at Hobby Lobby]

STEP BY STEP:

1. Start by cutting the top stem of the pumpkin off to give you a flat surface.

2. Next, take your floral foam block and cut it into a square

about the size of the center of the pumpkin.

3. You will then want to cut off the corners of the square to make it into an octagon.

4. Once your shape is cut, take a sharpie and trace around the shape onto the pumpkin.

5. Take your knife and cut into the pumpkin INSIDE of the sharpie line. You will want the hole to be slightly smaller than the foam itself so it will fit in snugly.

6. Once your hole is cut, place the floral foam inside. It should be a tight fit, which is what you want, to hold the foam in place. Apply light pressure when fitting it into the opening, leaving approx 3 inches of foam sticking out of the top of the pumpkin.

7. For my greenery, I decided to use pieces that I cut off of a larger garland, because of that, the stems themselves did not have wire in them and were just plastic. The stems were not strong enough to place in the foam itself. To fix this problem, I wrapped each stem in green floral wire, making them easier to place into the foam and bend in the direction that I wanted them to. If you end up working with greenery that has no wire in it's stems, you can easily cut approx 3 inches of floral wire and wrap it around each stem.

8. For the faux eucalyptus leaves, I wrapped wire around them as well. I took each individual leaf off of the larger stem. I wanted the leaves to stick out slightly further to add a variety in height and dimension. I used about 6 inches of wire for these, and I chose to bend the wire in half first, making a stronger stem to stick into the foam.

8. Now for the fun part! Putting it all together! 

You will want to start with your long flow-y base floral first.

9. Next, Add in more of the shorter base greenery completely around the bottom of the floral foam.

10. Start filling in with the rest of your greenery and flowers, alternating where you place them. You want to have a variety throughout the arrangement.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT:

After finishing the arrangement, I still felt like it needed something extra...

So, I went ahead and finished off the base of the greenery with some brown moss.

It would have been much more beneficial to do this step first and actually hot glue it into place, but I never seem to know exactly what I want from the beginning. Plus, as I mentioned, this was kind of an on the whim project! For mine, I just shoved the clumps of moss up underneath the base greenery and it works! I've moved the arrangement a few times and it has yet to come lose.

Thank you friends for stopping by and reading! I'm hoping this tutorial inspired you to create your own pumpkin arrangement! It really was a breeze to make and took a little less than an hour and a half total. A nice little soothing craft time while the kiddos nap...