Painted Pumpkins

I'm a Halloween Grinch.  I don't generally get much into the Halloween spirit.  I'm a total wimp about scary movies.  I have no interest in going out to a bar dressed as a slutty bumble bee.  I don't have children to go trick-or-treating with, and there's virtually no trick-or-treating in my building.  FYI: In Manhattan when you trick-or-treat at a building, you go to the front desk to get a list of apartments accepting trick-or-treaters and then you ride the elevator going to those apartments.  We live in an area of Manhattan that doesn't have a lot of kids, so even if we put ourselves on the list, we won't get more than 3 or 4 doorbell rings.  So, most of the time I say "Bah, humbug" and ignore Halloween.

However, perhaps because of the costumed wedding, I'm feeling a bit more Halloween-y.  So I decided to paint up some pumpkins.

But these pretty patterned pumpkins all have a surprise.

Hint:

And here they all are turned around:

I call this one "Party Hat":

This next pumpkin was the first one I made and I was experimenting with how paint and pumpkin interacted.

For some reason, the paint is a lot more transparent on the pumpkin than I would have thought.

The final pumpkin was covered with black gesso and then I went to town with a white Sharpie and a Sakura Moonlight pen.

I had a lot of fun with these.  The pumpkin stem is a great handle and allows you to keep your fingers out of the wet paint.  The most frustrating thing about the process was that I couldn't use my heat gun to dry any of the paint because it's a pumpkin.  And it seemed like a bad idea to cook the pumpkin if I wanted it to hang around for a while.  So, I had to wait. Not my strong suit.  :)

Are you a fan of Halloween?  What do you do to decorate for the holiday?

Thanks for stopping by!