If you love making pumpkin decorations to adorn your home during the fall, you’ll love this faux bois pumpkin craft. Applying the faux bois effect on paper mache pumpkins is easier than you may realize and produces stunning results
Faux Bois Pumpkin (Paint Wood Grain On Paper Mache Pumpkin)
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If you love making pumpkin decorations to adorn your home during the fall, you’ll love this faux bois pumpkin craft. Applying the faux bois effect on paper mache pumpkins is easier than you may realize and produces stunning results! Follow this tutorial to learn how to paint faux bois.
If there’s one thing I love making this time of year, it’s pumpkin decorations! And I’m always trying new pumpkin decor-making methods because you never know what you’ll discover that you love.
Over the years, I’ve experimented with all sorts of fun rustic ways to create pumpkin decorations. For example, I’ve made marbled pumpkins, burlap fabric pumpkins, and even wood pallet pumpkins.
Today, I am back with ANOTHER pumpkin…surprise, surprise, huh? I have been in love with the faux bois effect for a long time. There’s something about that wood grain appearance that makes my heart pitter-patter. So, naturally, I had to put it on a pumpkin!
Walk through the process with me so you can do it too!
Table of Contents
What is faux bois?
The term “faux bois” is a French term that means “false wood,” and it refers to the practice of creating artistic imitation wood grain on various materials.
So far, I’ve made a faux bois Christmas ornament and a faux bois painted plate. I am so excited to share my faux bois paper mache pumpkin with you!
The process is super simple and won’t take long to complete. Just follow these step-by-step instructions.
Step 1: Paint Your Paper Mache Pumpkin
I started with a paper mache pumpkin from Consumer Crafts.
NOTE: I get products from them for my participation in their design team, and that’s how I can confidently highly recommend them for quality and price.
I painted a gray base on my pumpkin to give it a sophisticated look.
Step 2: Create A Faux Bois Pattern
Next, I took my white Elmer’s Painters paint marker and free-hand drew the faux bois effect all over the pumpkin.
TIP: Just draw roughly parallel lines of various widths with areas where they come together to look like elongated knots. Don’t worry about making the lines perfect because when you’re finished, it’ll look terrific!
Doesn’t it look amazing? This faux bois pumpkin project is simple, quick, and CUTE! And it fits right in with these other pumpkins that I’ve made as part of my Halloween quick crafts.
If you love the great items pictured here, check out my tutorials for making Baker’s Twine Pumpkins, Sweater Pumpkins, and my rustic Fall Button Sign.
How to Make A Wooden Pumpkin
Creating wooden pumpkins for fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving is easy, fun, and super budget-friendly.
I used scrap wood from building our garden trellis, paint on hand, and sticks off a tree in my yard.
This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you purchase from one of these links, I will make a small commission, but rest assured, you will not pay more for any products.
The adorable gather sign in the photo above I made in an earlier post.
The first place to look for “free” wood is in your wood scrap pile. You can use 2×4 or 4×4 for this project. Your local hardware store also has a scrap pile, so be sure to ask them about it.
For your convenience, I have gathered my favorite fall crafting must-haves in my Amazon store.
Wood
To create my pumpkins, I used 4×4; however, you could use a 2×4 as well. The heights I liked the best are 3″, 6″ and 9″. You can cut your piece of wood to your desired height.
The pumpkins in the trio look so pretty for your dining room or mantle for fall. If your woodcuts have any rough spots, use sandpaper to smooth your wood.
These whimsical pumpkins have a non-traditional pumpkin shape that will be a great addition to your fall decor. You do not need to use high-quality wood for this DIY craft project, so use whatever you have on hand.
Paint
My favorite craft paint is chalk paint! I always it on hand since it requires no prep before painting (you can read more about it in this earlier post). However, you can use any craft paint or spray paint to paint your wooden pumpkins. You can find chalk paint at most craft stores.
Stems
For the pumpkin’s I used sticks I cut from a tree. However, you can make a stem from airdrying clay, use cinnamon sticks, or purchase some.
Leaves
I made a pattern to make some of my leaves (leaf pattern) and cut them out of old book pages. However, you can use burlap, craft paper, or fabric for your DIY leaves. For a few of my pumpkins, I used silk leaves.
Raffia and Ribbon
I added a ribbon, lace, or raffia to add a little fun to my finished pumpkins. However, you could use a cord, twine, rope, yarn, etc., for your bow. Also, you could add bling if you like or sand off some of the paint and them more rustic.
Glue and Scissors
You will need glue to attach the stem to the pumpkin. I choose hot glue since it dries instantly, so I could quickly finish decorating my pumpkins. However, other types of glue will work, such as wood glue, craft glue, or school glue. Also, I used “paper” scissors for cutting the leaves and my “ribbon” scissors to cut everything else.
How Do I Make a Wooden Pumpkin?
This is one of the easiest and most inexpensive crafts I have ever made. You are ready to begin as soon as you decided what paint, stem, leaves, and bow you will be using.
1. Sanding and Painting the Wood
I like to give my unfinished wooden pieces a quick sanding before painting.
It is fun to make your pumpkins in non-traditional colors, and you could add polka dots, stripes for a unique look.
Painting the wood pieces
2. Cut Out Pumpkins Leaves
When making these DIY wood pumpkins, I wanted to make a neutral tiro; therefore, the orange, yellow and green silk leaves would not work. I had to make the leaves from something I had on hand that was in the same colorway.
For this reason, I made some of my leaves using my leaf pattern and the book pages.
Book page leaves
3. Pumpkin Stems
Choosing a stem for my pumpkins was as easy as stepping out of the backdoor. I decided to use stems from a tree since it gave my pumpkins a fun rustic wood style for the stem. Choosing a purchased or handmade stem are also a great choice.
4. Assembling the Wooden Pumpkin
The best part of the project is assembling the pumpkin since you can get creative and make your own unique pumpkins.
Leaves
Attaching the leaves coupled with the DIY tendril (vine) adds a “real” element to your wooden pumpkins. There are many choices for DIY leaves, such as book pages, burlap, craft paper, fabric, ribbon, etc. on the other hand, if you would rather use purchased leaves, there is a wide variety of them to choose from well. You can use this downloadable leaf pattern for your DIY leaves.
Stem Glued in Place
Apply a generous dot of hot glue to the center of the top of your painted wood pumpkins and attach your stem.
Next, attach your leaves. Note: Before I attach paper leaves, I like to fold them to make creases where the vines would be in a real leaf.
Book page leaves attached
Raffia, Lace, Twine, Rope, or Ribbon
I chose the tendril or curly vine to coordinate with the other elements I used for each trio of pumpkins. Such as I used raffia for the white, for the orange ones, I used raffia and lace, and the teal pumpkins got a buffalo check ribbon.
I found that adding the wide ribbon first was the easiest method to add them. Then I nestled a few leaves under the ribbon.
