Creepy Crafting: Summerween Jack-o-melons (real & plastic!)

What's Summerween without a few Jack-o-melons around to decorate the place! So this year I was more organised than usual and had a watermelon ready and waiting plus a plastic pumpkin bucket ready to re-paint.

The fruit watermelon was so easy to do and I will definitely be doing one each summer now as it was so much easier to carve than a pumpkin! 

Jack-o-melon carving steps: 

1. I cut a lid into the top.
2. Scooped out the insides with a spoon. I kept the insides to make a delicious summer watermelon, cucumber, feta & balsamic salad.
3. Cut in a little Jack-o-lantern style face.
4. Then popped in a little tea light, so simple!

I had it out in the garden for the evening while we had some drinks and it looked great.

The plastic watermelon decoration was a bit more time consuming and took a few hours as the paint needed to dry between each coat. 

Jack-o-melon bucket steps: 

1. Find a suitable halloween trick or treat bucket, as I had 3 of the same modern ones I decided to give 1 a makeover.
2. Get some paint and brushes and mix up 2 different shades of green. I used basic acrylic paints as that's what I had at home. It worked fine but to get the paint to really hold you'd probably need to sand down the plastic surface first but I wasn't that bothered.
3. The paint needed about 3 coats to cover everything so there was a lot of waiting in between coats and in the end I got out my hairdryer and dried it on a low setting to speed things up.
4. Once I was happy with the green I added a red face.
5. Then once I was sure the whole thing was fully dry I coated it all in Mod Podge glue. That took a while to dry clear as I did a thick coat of glue to seal it all but hopefully it'll stop the paint peeling or scratching off. 

I was really happy with the end result, I'll need to be careful with it as the paint could scratch off if I am too rough with it but as it's just a fun display piece and photo prop it's great and looks just how I’d hoped.

Happy Summerween everyone and if you need more fun ideas on how to celebrate a spooky summer checkout my ideas here.

Sarah Xx