Craft: Making my own Minion Pumpkin

August 17, 2013

I have been wanting to do this project for so long but in order to do it, you need a pumpkin  or a group of pumpkins and those are not really around yet. I did see those foam pumpkins that you can carve yourself in the Michaels stores and they are sooo expensive I hesitated to buy one for a few weeks now.  I thought if I do this project, I can paint on real pumpkins and when they rot I can toss them.  Or I can wait for a sale on the foam and have it always...and maybe make Santa caps for them for Christmas.



Last week, Michaels sale on the pumpkins was only 25% off and with this size I used being regularly priced at $29.99...that wasn't enough.

Should there be any of these pumpkins leftover at the end of fall, they may clearance them down but that will take weeks to get to a decent price.  So this week I gave in and I used a 40% off coupon and bought just one to see how hard or easy this project would be.

There are no instructions anywhere online that I know of and really I didn't need any. This is my figuring it out how I want my Minion to look and painting my style and my design and it all started with a Bath and Body Works candle jar lid.



Your reading that thinking...what?  But that is what happened.  I was looking at a candle jar lid upside down and it hit me... it looked like the goggle the minions wore in the movie.  And that got me thinking.  If I wanted to have minions out for Halloween decorations, I would need to figure out a way to make their goggles because that is the part of the costume that you need to be pretty nice.




I remembered I had a photo of some minion marketing I took at the store when the new movie launched so I can print that out and cut out the eyes and attach them to the candle jar lids.  Because there is a rubber gasket inside the lid it would give the eyes a bit of dimension.  I know, we are talking about a foam pumpkin here... ha, ha... but I did want it to be cute.




So I printed the eyes, cut it out and rolled a piece of sticky masking tape inside the lid and laid out my eye cutting.



Next thing was to paint the pumpkin yellow.  All of my paints were purchased at Michaels and there are so many great colors you can pretty easily pick out a yellow that looks like a minion.  Because the pumpkin is meant to be outdoors, the paint coating the company used on it was a bit slick and in some spots, occasionally it repelled the paint strokes.  I made sure I let it dry enough and added a second coat.  It was perfect.

I painted the entire pumpkin yellow.  It makes it easier later to judge where to put the blue color for clothes if you don't need to worry you have to fill in yellow somewhere. 



After the yellow. I moved onto the  blue color.  I was not planning on adding arms anywhere....I want this to be pumpkin like yet minion like too.  So I added the straps horizontal around the entire pumpkin as shown and then went to the bottom and worked my way up in a circular pattern to make the bottoms.


When I determined what side would be the front for the face, that is where I added the patch for the clothes front.



I found a few buttons in the button jar to add to give it dimension.  On the next few I am going to add a denim pocket from an old pair of jeans for the front outfit pocket.  I didn't take the time today to go searching for a pair or I would have... on this guy.  I can still add things to him to give him some more dimension at a later time.



After the blue I worked my way up to the face part and made a black outline of a mouth in a smile as I think they are cute when they smile.

I filled in the black outline with a plum color and then mixed plum with a touch of white and a touch of pink to make the tongue.




I then went back in with white to make his teeth.  There is no right or wrong way to do things when you craft. 

• You just need to keep in mind...light colors first...it is easier to paint blue over yellow but not so much fun trying to paint yellow over blue......

• work your way up from the bottom to the top to not smear wet paint and to take the time to let each layer of color dry....

• and finally....Be yourself.....and let you come out.

The next thing was to paint the black strap as the goggle holder.  I did look out in the stores today when I took a break in painting to eat to see if I could find a cheap clearance purse or something to make the strap.  Painting the strap on is fine...and I will do it with the real pumpkins I use, but I wanted to see if I could make this 3 dimensional.  Unable to find something cheap I saw black duct on an end cap and it being shiny and sticky was the thing I needed.



This stuff is sticky.... no doubt about it.  And when I pulled a long strip to make a strap I sort of fuzzed it up by sticking it to my sweat pants a bit to lessen the sticky...as I needed to figure out how to make this go around a round head with lots of grooves.

I decided to add a hem to the edge of the tape by laying it flat and slowly.... slowly....holding it with my left hand and rolling up the edge with my right hand.  Taking my time doing one side then the other.



I didn't want to use hot glue directly on the foam pumpkin because... he would melt. Having a sticky middle gave me enough tack to hold it on, yet let it look dimensional like a loose strap on his head.

I also didn't spray clear seal the paint on the pumpkin for outdoors because again.... the foam will melt.  This guy will remain out of the weather.  I can spray seal the real pumpkins before adding the goggles to make them waterproof if needed.

Adding the strap pieces was tricky and all I can say is take your time....hold him on your lap and slowly turn... stick... reposition and make your way around the piece.  You may need to cut a piece here and there and lay it atop another to get the tape to lay better.  Patience and time and don't be hard on yourself if it doesn't look like it came out of a factory in China.  It's not suppose to .... It comes from your heart.... and those things your mother taught you if your lucky enough.  I was.

Okay so I got the strap on and its time for the eye/goggle.  You can put the lids side by side or a bit askew....and if your doing the one eyed guy you can place it in the center of the strap.  I squeezed out a bit of hot glue to the center of the lid and counted a few seconds before attaching it to the black strap.  It didn't let it get glued to the pumpkin....again so I wouldn't melt the foam....and in case I get sick of it being a minion, I can always pull off the tape and the eyes come off automatically.



The next step was to take a white nail I had here with a thick enough shaft to poke a hole at the top to stick in some black chenille pipe cleaners from my craft box for his hair.  Poke enough holes to put the hair style you want on him.  I did not glue them in because honestly they fit in there nice and tight and glue....even tacky glue  or white glue....would show up as glue and ruin the rooted hair look.

And the last thing I did was paint out the stem black.  I did it last because I needed it to hold onto to do all of the other work.  So while it sat on the counter I painted it out.

The hair needs to be styled down a bit.... it looks like a spider climbed up on him.... ha ha ... I just couldn't stop smiling seeing him and had to take a picture.

I hope you find this project as fun as I did.  There will be a lot more minions around my house for the Halloween season....