If you've spent any time in Home Decor world, you are probably familiar with Mackenzie Childs signature style. I love it, not only because she uses tons of black and white but because it's whimsical, pretty, and not rigidly perfect. It's also expensive and while I'd love to have a bunch of pieces, I don't. But hey, we're Makers so what do we do? We use our faves for inspiration and DIY that stuff!
Here's an example of the real ones:
Supplies:
- Plain Ceramic Pumpkins ( $1 each from Target)
- Paint Pens ( I used Craftsmart from Michaels)
- Acrylic Paint
Step 1:
Gather your supplies. I found these ceramic pumpkins for $1 each at Target in the section that none of us can get past. They know us! I also grabbed two paint pens: gold and black.
Step 2:
For the signature Mackenzie Childs check, I went down the lines of the pumpkin with the black pen.
Since the style here is to look handpainted, you don't have to be perfect.
Step 3:
I went horizontally around the pumpkin with the paint pen to create the squares.
Step 4:
Tip: When I've done checkerboard before, I've gotten the order messed up so I've taken to putting a pencil dot in the squares to be filled in before I start filling!
Step 5
When all of the squares were filled in, I went back down the pumpkin spines with a gold paint pen and colored the stem. (I went back over that gold spot w/ black)
Et voila!
The process for the Striped Pumpkin was similar but I used acrylic paints instead of paint pens.
I did a couple of coats for opacity.
To finish, I also used paint and just went down each side w/ antique gold.
Et voila!
