Dryer Vent Pumpkins

My godmother made these dryer vent pumpkins years ago and I had a couple of them and wanted to make some more for our house and for a gift for a friend. Back when she made the pumpkins, plastic dryer vent was used but now I believe that is some sort of fire hazzard so now it is aluminum. These were hers. And now I'll tell you how to make them.

I bought some 3 inch and 4 inch dryer vent duct for the project and I already owned paint, brushes, wire cutters, and a glue gun. I just experimented to see how long I needed to cut the dryer vent. When I made it into the pumpkin shape I would overlap some of the "wire" parts and make them fit inside each other because I did not want a really wide pumpkin and I liked them more round like my godmother's. This was not as successful with the 4 inch duct because it was much harder to overlap and get it to glue gun shut. If you click on the picture you can see what I mean by overlapping. I did get a tad frustrated trying to hold them and glue so a helper would be a good idea.

Some of my 4 inch ones popped apart and in the end only 1 of those survived. I added a few staples using a very small stapler just in case any others decided to pop apart.

I painted them all with dark green craft paint first so they would have some underlying color and look more like real pumpkins look. Then I painted over them with orange, white, and yellow craft paint for the top coat. Painted did take some time since I had to do a few coats and make sure no aluminum was showing through.

Then I hot glued some sticks that Eric found in the backyard and cut for me. I added a couple of leaves from the dollar store to each pumpkin with hot glue as well. I didn't end up tying rafia around them but you could.

You can see the green undertones well here.

Here they all are after I finished gluing! I sent the 3 on the left to one of my best friends as a gift.

I decided to put mine by the fireplace in a grouping. I think the yellow one is my favorite!

Mine aren't quite as nice as my godmother's because I think plastic would be much easier to work with but still not too shabby. This was a fairly easy (once you get a hang of the overlapping and gluing part) craft and definitely not many materials needed. The duct comes pretty long so you could make a lot of these (I still have plenty left). Let me know what you think!


Linking up here:
(M) Making the World Cuter Mondays, Making Monday Marvelous, Just Something I Whipped Up, The DIY Showoff, (T) Today's Creative Blog, Mad Skills, All Thingz Related, (W) Whatever Goes Wednesday, Power of Paint, Spotlight Yourself @ It's So Very Cheri, Creations by Kara, Blue Cricket Design, (Th) Hooking up w/HoH, Somewhat Simple, Get Your Craft On  Thursday, (F) Remodelaholics Anonymous, JAG Show and Share Day, Frugalicious Friday,  FrouFrouDecor, Fingerprints on the Fridge, (S) Weekend Wrap Up Party, (Su) Sunday Showcase Party, Sundae Scoop