DIY Mod-Roc PUMPKIN ! | How to Make a Large Halloween Prop

Halloween is a-coming and I always like to have at least 1 new pumpkin to display each year...and this time it's a Mod-Roc Jack o'Lantern. It's big and hollow, and actually pretty easy to make.

I found it a fun (& quite messy!) project to do, and I hope you enjoy it :)

Supplies

- Mod-roc: this is a Plaster of Paris bandage used for modelling, and you'll need at least 2 or 3 rolls. Really, it depends how big you make the pumpkin and how many layers you use.

- Container of Water

- Bin Bag & Stuffing: You'll need some kind of plastic bag filled with stuffing/newspaper/bubble wrap/fabric scraps or anything else you have lying around!

- Sellotape

- Scissors

- Craft/Utility Knife

- PVA Glue

- Pencil

- Plastic Cup: to mix PVA in.

- Vacuum; for cleaning up the plaster dust!

- Dust Mask

- Cheap Paintbrushes

- A Bowl to rest the pumpkin onto.

- Paper for decoupage: I used book pages because I wanted some of the text to show through, but you can use tissue paper/newspaper or other thin paper.

- Paint: I used orange, yellow, brown & black acrylic paints. You may also want some primer if you are decoupaging with newspaper and don't want the text to show through.

- Brown Paper: for the stalk/stem. I used a brown paper bag.

- Wipe-Clean Sheets to protect your floor or work surface.

- Battery-Powered Candle (optional)

- Twine & a Knitting Needle (optional): this is if you would like to make spirals for decoration.

Step 1: Bin Bag Shape

The first thing you need to do is make the pumpkin shape. To do this, you need to insert stuffing into a bin bag until it's as big as you want your pumpkin to be. Then tie a knot at the top.

Make sure you put in enough stuffing so that it'll keep its shape.

You want stuffing that will conform to the shape you want, so fabric and toy stuffing are good choices. I used bubble wrap in the centre, then toy stuffing around the outside where I needed to do the shaping.

Then wrap a few strands of tape around the bin bag to form the segmented shape of a pumpkin.

Step 2: Add the Mod-Roc

This is the messy step, so make sure you are protecting your floor or work surface.

First, cut off the excess bin bag above the knot to give you a short stalk shape.

Then take one roll of Mod-Roc and cut off a strip - not using your favourite scissors (!) - that is long enough to go from the stalk and down the side of the pumpkin.

Dip the strip into your container of water, then use your fingers to remove the excess water from the strip. To do this, I just run the strip through 2 fingers whilst squeezing them together. You want this water to go back into your bowl.

Then just lay the strip onto the pumpkin. Repeat this all over the top and sides of the pumpkin, and then wrap the stalk too. Make sure you guide the strips into the valleys of the pumpkin to sculpt the segments. Smooth the Mod-Roc as much as you can.

Note that you'll want at least2 layers on this pumpkin otherwise it will be too fragile. Also make sure to overlap the strips rather than place them side-by-side.

Then leave this to dry.

Once dry, turn it over and rest it on a large bowl so you can protect the stalk whilst you cover the underside in the exact same way.

Then leave to dry once again.

Use a damp cloth to clean up any plaster, and/or use a vacuum to clean up the plaster dust.

Step 3: Decoupage

My aim was to have a little bit of text visible through the paint in the final pumpkin, hence I used book pages for this step. If you don't want that effect, feel free to use any thin paper.

You'll need to mix PVA glue and a little water (just to dilute the glue a bit) in a plastic container. Then rip up your paper into small pieces.

Use a cheap paintbrush to paint the glue mixture onto the pumpkin, then lay a piece of the paper on top, and then cover the paper piece with more glue. This is decoupage.

You simply repeat this all over one side of the pumpkin, leave it to dry, and then repeat the same thing on the rest of the pumpkin (except the stalk since I'm going to cover this later).

Step 4: Add the Details

Once the decoupage is dry, use a craft knife to cut a circle into the underside of the pumpkin. Note that you can re-attach this circle later if you don't want a hole in the base.

You should wear a dust mask when cutting the plaster, as you don't want to breathe in the dust.

Remove the bin bag and stuffing via this hole. You won't be needing this any more.

Then use a pencil to draw the design you want onto the pumpkin surface. Bear in mind that the Mod-Roc will be fragile in thin sections so I wouldn't recommend doing a design with fine details.

The carefully use a craft knife to cut out your design. I used a sawing motion to do this, trying to be gentle so as not to deform the shape.

Step 5: Painting Time

After you removed the bin bag, you'll see there is plaster debris and dust on the inside, so use a vacuum now to clean the pumpkin inside and out.

You may notice that I also decoupaged around the edge where I cut the circle in the base, just to neaten that up. You can do the same to neaten any cut edges too.

Then paint the inside black using acrylic paint.

Next, you will need to paint the outside of the pumpkin, and to begin you will just need to paint the entire surface orange.

The painting took me quite a while because a) I needed to paint the top and the base separately, and b) I used cheap acrylic paints which needed a few layers to get the effect I wanted - and the paint needed to dry between each layer. So have patience!

Tip: If you don't want any pattern on the paper to show through, it would be best to use a primer as the first layer.

Once the first orange layer had dried, I then painted brown lines into the valleys between the segments and left them to dry. Then I added a little more brown into these valleys, and straight away painted the rest of the pumpkin orange again. This time, though, I tried to blend the orange with the brown as I went into the valleys. I left this to dry and repeated the same again to work on making that brown-orange gradient in the valleys. I also added a little yellow to the centre of the segments just to try and make it lighter. This is just about adding a bit of depth so it's not just all a flat orange colour.

If you want to have the stalk visible, you'll also need to paint this.

And once you're happy, just leave it to dry once more.

Note that when painting the base, I rested the pumpkin on a large bowl, and when I painted the top, I balanced the pumpkin on a pringles can instead so I could get as far under the pumpkin as possible.

Step 6: Sculpt the Stalk

To make the paper stalk, I dismantled a brown paper bag and cut it down to a more manageable sise.

Then I slightly diluted some PVA glue with water and brushed it all over the piece of paper.

From there, it's just a matter of sculpting it into shape around the plaster stalk. You can do this as you see fit, but I first scrunched up the paper horizontally into a kind of concertina. Then I wrapped this around the plaster stalk, twisted it into a point, then shaped the point into a hook.

Once you have manipulated the paper into a shape you like, you can add 'neat' PVA glue to the paper to help the shape stay in place more strongly.

Then leave this to dry.

Note that if you want to add some twine spirals to the pumpkin (which in the end I didn't include), you can just soak a length of twine in the leftover PVA-and-water mix from making the stalk, and then wrap it around some kind of stick like a knitting needle. Once dry, you'll have a cool springy spiral!