DIY Fall Tablescape with Painted Pumpkins

Dusty Blue and Cranberry Fall Tablescape

Dusty blue and cranberry has quickly become one of my favorite fall color palettes! This color palette inspired today’s DIY project I designed with Lesley of LB Floral and Lisa Price Photography.  Today I will teach you how to recreate this tablescape with both a painted pumpkin tutorial and a pumpkin vase tutorial. Enjoy and comment below with any questions!

*Updated September 12, 2017*

*This is a general resource project for brides and when you use our links to purchase materials, we may receive a small comission that helps us continue to produce awesome resources for brides just like you! 

How to Paint Dusty Blue Pumpkins

For this dusty blue tablescape, I painted a variety of sized pumpkins in three shades of dusty blue. If you can't find the right shade of dusty blue, you can mix your own, To create dusty blue, combine white, black, and blue paint. Essentially, dusty blue is gray mixed with blue.

Below is a chart to help you know how much of each color to add for each shade of dusty blue. I had to cover each pumpkin with at least two coats of paint, sometimes three, depending on how light the paint color was.

We now use Dixie Belle Chalk paint for painting pumpkins. It's the best that we have found ! The best place we found for purchase was Amazon.

You can find it here:

Pumpkin Vase Tutorial

To create a pumpkin vase, simply carve an opening in the top of your pumpkin and clean out the inside with a spoon.

There are three options for how to use a pumpkin as a vase: 

• Use the pumpkin as a container for a real vase. The large blue pumpkins seen above were the perfect fit for this technique. They were large enough to hold a vase of water for the flowers to sit down in.
•  Line the inside of the pumpkin with a plastic bag. For the smaller pumpkins like the white one seen below, you would have to have a very small vase for option one to work. A grocery bag or sandwich bag full of water works much better for the smaller pumpkins. Simply line the pumpkin with a grocery bag, clip the ends to fit the size of the pumpkin, and add a little bit of water to the bag.
• Simply pour water straight into the pumpkin. This option is only good if you are planning to use the pumpkin vases for a very short period of time. Otherwise, the pumpkin will rot from the water.

Participating Vendors

Design: The Bride Link and LB Floral | Concept and Coordination: The Bride Link | Photography: Lisa Price Photography | Floral Design: LB Floral | Location: Crescent Bend House and Gardens