I needed one more item to complete my Fall mantle and this Diy was the winner chicken dinner. I love anything plank style and when I saw these unfinished pumpkin plank hangers at Dollar Tree I made sure I grabbbed a few. I definitely wanted to give it that rustic worn look and order to achieve that look I used a combination of stain and paint. To start the process I first stained the entire pumpkin in a Provincial finish from Minwax. I left it outside for a good few hours to dry. Once completely dry my next step was distressing the pumpkin in two colors. I chose Patina chalk paint from FolkArt and Pumpkin Spice acrylic paint from DecoArt. Using a foam brush I lightly stroked the two paint colors on the plank sections. Three sections in orange and two sections in blue. As soon as the paint dried I went over each plank and distressed it with sandpaper. My next step is what I was most excited for. I came up with a idea to use a recycled piece from a previous diy to this project. It was a insert from the Dollar Tree Fall frames that I scored last week. It has a cute fall saying that I thought would be perfect to add to my pumpkin. To attach the piece I used Elmer's glue. It is important to let the glue dry for at least a hour. To give the Fall piece more character I added four brass thumb tacks to each corner. I tapped them in carefully with a hammer. You will have the sharp ends slightly sticking out on the back part of the pumpkin. I decided to cover them up because knowing me I would forget about them and cut the crap out of myself. This was a pretty nifty idea I came up with to cover the tack ends. I sliced a glue stick in four small pieces with a razor. I then inserted them into the thumbtack ends. I will have a picture of this step included at the end of this blog with the photo materials. My last step was getting rid of the original boring jute hanger and adding a new one with small natural wood beads. I really really love how this turned out. It definitely was the missing piece to my Fall wall mantle.
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