Dryer Duct Pumpkin- Country Style

I'm sure you've seen the dryer duct pumpkins all over blog-dom this month.  As a matter of fact, I introduced them to you when I saw them originally on House of Hepworths.  You can catch up on them here.  I couldn't wait to make some of my very own!

I bought a small package of 4" dryer duct at my local Lowe's.  I got it for about $4.  It was only enough to make a couple of pumkins, but that was enough for me.  I also picked up a can of Krylon Pumpkin Orange spray paint.  What a gorgeous color!!  My dearest hubby didn't want me to get the paint everywhere (I can't imagine what would give him that idea), so he offered to paint them for me.  He did a great job and it only took a couple of coats each.

Allison at House of Heworths used cinnamon sticks for her pumpkin stem.  They look lovely, and I'm sure they make her house smell delicious, but yours truly is allergic to cinnamon, so I had to go a different route.  I shuffled my way out to the wood pile in our backyard.  I call it the boneyard of my beautiful curly willow trees that were cut down last summer.  There weren't any branches that were the right size to use as stems, but there were several cool pieces of the bark laying around.

I picked out the best shaped pieces of bark and brought them inside.  I was able to glue the pieces together with hot glue to make the stems.  Then, I used silk leaves, craft wire curly-ques, and acorns picked up at the park to fill in the gaps between the bark stems and the pumpkin.

This one is on my dining table.  I love how it looks with my table runner and little pilgrim people.

This one is on my bar.  I didn't want it to scratch the top, so I put some crumpled tissue paper under it.  This one might be my favorite.  After making the one in the dining room first, I didn't have enough bark left in the right shape to use by themselves.  So, I cut one of the cardboard toilet paper rolls from my stash and hot glued smaller pieces of bark onto it both inside and out.  I know that sounds like overkill, but I didn't want someone looking down on it and seeing the cardboard.

Thanks for this awesome project, Allison! I will use these year after year.

Don't forget that the Sunday Art Therapy link party is open through the end of the day on Tuesday and the Flickr group is always open!

I'm linking to these parties: