The Checkered Pump

Ok, here's the tutorial on the checkered pumpkin. They are cell phone pics and not great cause its hard to take an action shot of your own hands. But you get the idea.

Conveniently, I had a roll of one inch blue painters tape. So to start I folded a post it not to approximately one inch wide to use as my guide and marked off one inch squares all the way around the roll of tape. I know that doesn't make perfect sense yet, just hang in there...

Once I had marked all the way around the outside once, I unrolled the tape and cut at the last mark. I stuck it to the tv tray that acts as my crafting space when I am doing something and want to be in the den with the ummm TV. I got about 12 1 inch squares each time I marked around the tape. This part is kind of tedious, but I was totally done in less than 1/2 hour.

Then I just cut one square off at a time to stick on the pumpkin...

Now this part wont be perfect. Its a pumpkin people... its round-ish, and wobbly and particularly as you get to the top its diameter starts to change and complicate things... just eye ball it. I had to adjust a few squares as I went, but it generally turned out fine.

As I got to the top it was getting more complicated so I decided to just tape off the whole top to preserve more orange color.

Then I just took it outside and did one heavy coat of gold spray paint. I actually didn't checker down to the bottom either. I just went to where I could kind of see. So ultimately the bottom of this guy ended up gold.

I left it outside for a good hour to dry then peeled all the tape off, added a ribbon and voila! Fancy Checkered Pumpkin!!