Pumpkins and roses

Several years ago my middle one decided she wanted to do some needle felting. Her craze lasted an intense few weeks and then vanished as quickly as it had arrived. I was happy to use the fleece I’d bought for her but I was also left with a large lump of orange felt she had partly formed into the shape of a sitting animal. I couldn’t bear to throw it away but also couldn’t think of what to do with it – until this week when I realised it was the perfect colour for pumpkins. Lots of rolling and wet felting later, I was left with five potential pumpkins.

I stitched through each one with coton a broder to pull it flatter and give it pumpkin-style ridges.

Then I turned them into earrings. First a pair of charm earrings. The dark coloured chain and leaf sections with the bead caps at the top were deconstructed from an over the top charm necklace. It had about six strands of chain and featured so many random pendants and dangles that I’m amazed anyone could have worn it and been able to lift their head. Possibly that was why it came to me in an unloved job lot of jewellery!

The snake chain sections looked unfinished, like they had originally had something on the ends, so I added two hand made polymer clay beads to match the orange of the pumpkins.

After using plastic leaves from a damaged bracelet to finish off the pumpkins I threaded each one onto a headpin and added them to the bottom of the longest chain where they finish the whole thing off very nicely.

The second pair of pumpkins were slightly larger, so I decided to make them into a simpler, shorter pair with a couple of metallic leaves.

Finally, with the addition of some vintage glass leaves, I turned the last and largest pumpkin into not a coach, but a bag charm/key chain.

Continuing with the Autumn/Hallowe’en theme, I’ve made a darker, more Gothic version of my ribbon roses. This was once a vintage brooch. I love the dark silver colour and High Victorian style of the setting and once I had cleaned it and removed the remains of the clasp, it was ready for a suitably dark upcycle.

I used dyed black pelmet vilene for the base and gave my stems thorns before I added the tiny roses.

The ribbon leaves are in ribbon stitch which is useful as you can control the size and shape of the leaf depending on how tightly you work the stitch.

Cut carefully to size and glued into the mount.

The pumpkin pieces are destined for Arttopia in Cleethorpes this month – that is if I can stop my little one from claiming the earrings for herself. Might be time to see if I have any of that pumpkin orange fleece left over…!