10/16/2026
It's scarecrow time! Our wonderful little town has an annual scarecrow contest. Individuals, boy scout troops, businesses or organizations rent a light pole in the center of town and put a scarecrow in place that they made. There are prizes from the chamber and prizes for the public vote. This year I came up with an idea of this pumpkin as a pet for the witch. I worked at it on and off for about a month. And the last week... probably every hour of 3 days.
My favorite part is the pumpkin. I had to figure out how to create all of this and it was step by step. I would stand back and look at it and think how can I do this?
The pumpkin is made from a beach ball that usually floats in my pool. I used spray foam and created vertical lines all the way around the ball. First you spray the foam and then you spray water on it which helps it expand and heal quicker.
I had to add the legs to the ball first with duct tape. Creating arms just wasn't something I could figure out how to do. So this pumpkin is armless.
Carving out the mouth and the eyes was a little tricky. I wanted it to be deep but I didn't want to puncture the ball inside in case the structure would collapse.
I painted it with acrylic exterior orange paint and of course hand painted the mouth and the eyes. It has a real pumpkin stem provided by one of our local farms. They gave me a whole box a couple a years ago of stems that had fallen off pumpkins they were selling.
Since we're not allowed to have anything commercial showing in the Scarecrow contest, I wrapped the skeleton legs and feet in yarn. I put fringe around the tops of the legs to hide where they connected to the ball.
Now, here's all about the witch!
Her base is created from an IKEA floor lamp. I had a plastic movable skeleton and took it apart. Of course I used the legs and feet for the pumpkin. I used her torso and arms for the witch. Everything got duct taped in place onto the lamp base in the pose that I wanted it to be. I had to add some foam padding in places so she didn't look too bony.
The witch's head is a dried gourd provided by friends, Diane and Wayne, from the garden club. I cut the top off of it and fit it over the neck of the skeleton and screwed it into place.
Gosh when I think about it, this took a lot of work. LOL
She's wearing a simple black dress found on clearance for $9.99 at Walmart. I put black garden webbing underneath of her to give her skirting some shape.
My friend, Diane, contacted me a couple weeks ago and offered up her okra pods for the scarecrow. We had used some last year when we made our sloth. This was a perfect idea. So, okra pods became the fingers for the witch. Her hands originally had a thumb and four fingers. I cut off every other one so it left her with three fingers for the pods to go in place. They will be drying over the next few days. I have to keep checking to make sure they stay on.
For the witches head, I needed a black covering and used an old winter coat hood. I turned it inside out and put it on her head, hot glueing it to the neck of the dress. The fur on the hood made it look like she has hair. That was unplanned and came out pretty cool.
On top of the hood is a black crow with wings and there are spiders that crawl from the hem of her dress all the way up to the crow.
Next up was creating her face. That was the most difficult for me. I had a brain block on how to do it. Finally I used okra pods for her mouth and dried squash seeds as the teeth. Her nose is the top section of the gourd that I cut off. And her eyes are little round tree branch discs that my brother, Bob, cut a few years ago and gave me for another project. Her eyeballs are flat stones. To give her eyelids, I took a black plastic cap from a jar and sliced it in half and fit it over top of the wooden discs. She needed eyebrows! I took tiny hemlock pine cones and glued them together for those.
So, the pieces were ready and three Garden Club members, Diane and Wayne and Linda joined me at the Ligonier Diamond to put her together. She's mounted on a wooden pallet provided by my son Dave. We used brackets and screwed her to the palette. The pumpkin legs were wired in place by drilling holes in the pallet and threading wire around its ankles.
We covered the base with stretchy green spider webbing and glued dried leaves onto it. Then we drilled holes in the pallet and inserted stems of Okra and Ironweed and Cup Plant to give a wooded garden feeling overall.
If you read through all of this, I commend you. It's kind of a diary for me so I can remember how the heck I made this thing. She's on display for 2 weeks in town. It was fun to see people stopping and looking at the display and laughing and pointing and taking pictures yesterday when we put it in place. Hopefully we'll get lots of votes.
Any questions?
