Last year I saw some pretty "bejeweled" pumpkins in a high-end home decor magazine. I thought the decorative pumpkins were really beautiful, until I took a look the price... $200 for three pumpkins!! In other words almost $70.00 per pumpkin! They were pretty, but not quite that pretty! Now by all means, if you have $200 to spend on decorative pumpkins, go for it! But when I have $200 on hand I prefer to use it for much more glamorous things...like gas and groceries!
This year when I saw the same company selling the pumpkins again (they must have been a hit last year!), I just couldn't deny their beauty... so I made my own! 
My first thought was to use sticky-backed jewels (designed as scrapbooking embellishments), and I went to the store and bought a few packages of pretty black jewels and dressed up one pumpkin (not shown in this post). When I went back to the craft store for more jewels, they were out of stock. The scrapbooking jewels did work well, so if you can find enough of them (you'll need several packages per pumpkin), they are a good option for this craft.
It took me a few moments to think of another way to get the same look (and for even less money than the sticky jewels)... glitter! I found some gorgeous Martha Stewart brand glitter (in onyx), then grabbed a bottled of Martha Stewart craft glue, and headed home to get crafty!
Want to make some pretty pumpkins?
Let's get started!
You'll need some nice looking faux pumpkins. There is certainly no reason you couldn't use real pumpkins, but then they would obviously only last one season. I chose orange pumpkins (simply because I wanted to duplicate the original photo I saw as closely as possible), but I think this craft would be gorgeous on white pumpkins as well! I bought the pumpkins below from Michael's ($9 for the large, $6 for the small).
1. You'll need some black glitter, and some craft glue. I used Martha Stewart glitter in onyx and Martha Stewart craft glue, both available at Michael's.
2. Drop small dots of glue in a swirl patter of your choice.
3. While the glue is still wet, generously sprinkle the glitter over the glue. Tap off excess glitter onto a sheet of newspaper or a craft tray of some kind. There will still be some excess glitter, but don't worry about that for now.
4. Once the glue if fully dry (about an hour), use a soft, dry paint brush to remove the remaining excess glitter.
A few notes...
You'll want to adjust the size and style of the swirls as you work around the pumpkin. Also, I found that I could only decorate about half of the pumpkin at a time, and then had to wait for the glue to dry, or I had no where to hold the pumpkin (without messing up my work).
Here are two of my newly bejeweled pumpkins (and two pretty glassybaby candle holders). The cost of the pumpkins I used was $9.00, $7.00 and $6.00. The glitter was about $5.00 and the glue was under $3.00. Total cost for three decorated pumpkins (with lots of glitter and glue left over!) was $30.00. The original set of three pumpkins that inspired this craft are sold for $200.00. I assure you I'll have no problem finding ways to spend my $170.00 savings! =)
Happy Crafting!
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