DIY Monogram Pumpkin

I'm back with another pumpkin post.  If there are two things I love, it's fall and monograms.  So today I'm combing those two loves and creating a monogrammed pumpkin.  This is so easy to do and you probably already have most of these items already.  

Start out by downloading the Monogram KK font from Dafont.com, it's free!  You can use any font you want, I just like this one.

Once you download your font, open up Word or Pages depending on what type of computer you have.  I have a MAC so I did this in pages.  I made my middle letter size 600 and the two other letters are size 475.

Then, flip it.  I just chose "flip horizontally" from the arrange menu.  Everything should be backwards.  Print it out.

Then you'll need:

*a pumpkin

*water

*a foam paint brush

*tape

*a sharpie

*puffy paint

*glitter

Take the piece of paper with your monogram on it and tape it to the pumpkin with the ink side facing the pumpkin.  It should be facing the right way now.

Lightly go over the portions where the lettering is with a paint brush and water.

  While the paper is still damp, quickly use the cap of the Sharpie to transfer the ink to the pumpkin.  You want to be careful not to tear the paper.  I tore it in a few spots so it's ok if you do.  You can also rewet it if you need to.

If I had been a little more tedious with the above step, I probably would have gotten a little bit better of a transfer.  No worries though, I just filled in the missing areas with a pen to give me an outline to follow.  I printed out an extra monogram template to use as a guide and then just eyeballed it.

Now, you can trace over everything with a paint pen, sharpie, regular paint, etc.  I chose to use some puffy paint, I mean dimensional fabric paint. :)    

I needed a major hand massage when I was done tediously filling in the design, but it was worth it.  I tried smoothing out some of the areas with a toothpick, but that really didn't help.  So I had an idea... 

Add glitter!  I was a little nervous that I might mess something up, but it made everything look so much better.  Glitter does that.

I shook most of it off and let it full dry before I brushed off the rest of the excess glitter.

I wish I could have found a white, or even gray, pumpkin to do this with.  How pretty would that be with the gold?  I guess I could always do another one...