For this year’s Great Pumpkin Adventure, I’m excited to play around with what I’m calling “Freaky Florals”. I wanted to take the traditional pumpkin floral centerpiece, and give it a creepy spin. I’m also super inspired by the whole #freakebana movement and wanted to incorporate that somehow.
I started by heading down to my local dollar store, and got a bunch of cheapy fake flowers. (You could easily do this with real flowers and real pumpkins if you wanted to.) I also picked up some fun creepy bits, like ping pong eyes, rubbery bugs, and then some silly string, fluffy putty, and canned spray insulation.
I then stopped by my craft/floral supply store and picked up a few fancier and more realistic looking artificial tropical flowers to mix in and… elevate? the arrangements. Oh, and of course got a couple fake pumpkins (which are on sale everywhere right now!) and a few styrofoam blocks.
Next, I cut off the tops of the pumpkins. Some of the pumpkins were hollow, so I hot-glued a few styrofoam blocks inside in order to have something to stick the flowers into. A few pumpkins turned out to be made of solid styrofoam, so I just needed to carve out a little from the top.
I drilled a few holes into a plastic skull. I kept the top on two of the pumpkins and instead, also drilled some random holes in the top and side. Spray paint was next!
My main idea was that I wanted each pumpkin to have a different creepy substance dripping out from the top. For one, I put two of the rubbery bug/worm things crawling down the sides.
Another, I put some “fluffy putty” (slime mixed with styrofoam balls), and then another one I thought about using some of that spray insulation that comes in a can. I thought it could look like slime or slime mold.
I then started playing around with the arrangements. I basically just tried to play with height and proportions, making sure to have things spill over the side and keeping things slightly asymmetrical but still trying to be visually balanced.
On the largest piece, I hot glued some of the ping pong ball eyeballs into a couple flowers for added creepy-ness.
Finally on the last pumpkin, I just sprayed some silly string off to the side of where I stuck in the flowers. It kind of reminded me of that weird orange parasitic plant that sometimes cover trees and plants, or even some crazy cobweb action.
Overall I’m quite pleased with these! It’s a “pretty” scary way to add a little festive floral flair to your tabletop! What do you think? Hope you have a fun Halloween!
For more of my pumpkin adventures in the past, click here.
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All photos and styling by Jonathan Lo / J3 Productions