Beaded and Wired Pumpkin Tutorial

October 22, 2010

I wanted to make some small wired pumpkins and this time I decided to add a bit of colorful beads to give it some magic.

It’s easy to make these pumpkins fit anyone’s style and decor.

Gather your supplies.

You will need:
18 gauge wire

Floral wire or a thinner wire than the 18 gauge

Beads (be sure they will slide onto your wire) in any color you desire

Super glue

Wire cutters (oops! I didn’t toss them in the picture)

Begin by pulling off about 10 feet of wire and coil it in your hands to form a wire tunnel of sorts. You could probably wrap the wire around a cylindrical object, but I like to just wrap around my fingers because I find it easier to hold. You want to wrap it about 15 to 20 times to have enough to make the pumpkin. The more you wrap, the thicker the pumpkin will look. This one ended up with 14. Leave about 5 inches at the end to make the stem.

Begin stringing on the beads.

Once all the beads are on the wire, evenly disperse them. You can also do like me and haphazardly spread them throughout the loops with a different amount on each loop. Just be sure to have some on each one. At the end I noticed I had 5 on one loop and none on the one next to it. Oh well, good thing I’m okay with random.

Turn the coiled wire so that the beginning of the wire is facing up and the beads fall together. Gather the loops together and wrap with floral wire and then cover with some of the 18 gauge wire. If I had the same color floral wire, I would have just left it uncovered, but since mine was green and I didn’t have a thinner steel wire, I covered it. If you want to cover it in the thicker wire, the floral wire will help hold it in place while you wrap. Catch the beginning of the wire from the coil when wrapping the center.

Wrap further across than I have in this picture. Going further to the top and bottom will help secure the pumpkin for this next step. Be sure to wrap tight enough to hold the wire, but loose enough the loops will spread out and stay formed. Spread the loops out to join the ends together and form the pumpkin.

Put a small dot of super glue along the loops where you want the bead to stay and slide the bead into place. Hold the bead in place for a few seconds and then move onto the next bead. I completed all beads on each loop before moving to the next one. I forgot to take a picture of this step, but you can see an idea of placement from the way the pumpkin looks when it is finished.

Thread the beads onto the threaded piece sticking out the top. This will form the stem.

Turn the end of the stem so it points back toward the center of the pumpkin and glue the beads into place.

To make a pumpkin without the beads, follow the same instructions, but leave them off.

For this pumpkin I used a 16 gauge wire for the pumpkin and the 18 gauge wire to tie the center. I still formed the loops in my hands and there are about 40 loops to get this fullness. I didn’t measure how much I used to make the pumpkin, I just kept coiling it until it looked thick enough when I fanned it out while holding the center area.

After I finished the pumpkin, I coated it with some brown spray paint. I love how it turned out!

Posted in Crafts, Tutorials