welcome to country sampler on video there are many different ways you can decorate your pumpkins or the fall that don't involve carving today we're going to show you a cute technique to create a gingham pattern you can use real or artificial pumpkins for this project I used a small artificial pumpkin if you can't find a white pumpkin just go ahead and paint an orange pumpkin white now today we're going to use black and gray to create this black pumpkin but you can experiment with other colors like we did with this tan one you'll just need to choose two colors of paint one lighter in one darker from the same color family the only other things you'll need are some paintbrushes and something to put your paint on first you're going to paint the vertical stripes of your pumpkin because my pumpkin had very uniform stripes I didn't need to use any kind of tape as a guide I just used the shape of the ribs as a guide so if your pumpkin doesn't have that you may want to use some tape to get a more uniform look but again this is a project that can be very casual and it doesn't have to be precise it just has to have the general look of gingham so let's get started with the painting I chose a small flat brush to do the painting you're just going to want to start at the top of your pumpkin then follow along with a steady hand applying the gray paint the lighter shade is what you'll start with you won't be using the black paint until you are doing the gingham effect and you may need to use more than one coat of paint depending on the type of coverage that you would like for your gingham if you're gonna go with a lighter coverage and you want some of the texture and the color of your pumpkin to show through that's fine or you can do a more complete coating so you don't see through to the underlying color of the pumpkin after your vertical stripes are dry you're going to paint the horizontal stripes and again no taping is required just kind of eyeball it to make sure that the stripes line up I also recommend painting around the entire pumpkin as you go so you can have each stripe be more uniform just gather a little paint on your brush and just go across you don't have to paint an entire stripe you're really just painting a square in between and again not measuring I just painted until it looked like a square and you can overlap a little bit on to those vertical stripes and as you can see it's a little bit light so you may need a second coat just continue on around your pumpkin and tell you have completed it and be sure that you let those dry thoroughly before moving on to the next step once you have both the vertical and horizontal stripes complete you're going to go back with your darker paint and paint the intersections to complete the gingham effect just follow along and try to match up the lines with the horizontal stripes that you painted the nice thing about working with acrylic paint and on a plastic surface or even an organic real pumpkin is you can just take a damp paper towel and use that to clean up any mistakes if you feel like you overlapped an edge and didn't get it exactly the way you wanted it you do have a little bit of leeway to clean that up and definitely this one's gonna need a couple coats really want to let it dry between coats though for the best coverage and then just continue around your pumpkin painting these Center squares and when you're finished you'll have a gingham pattern and there you have it an EZ Pay technique for creating gingham pumpkins they'll look great anywhere in your home indoors and out you can leave your pumpkins plain or you could embellish them like we did with this tan one where we added a burlap bow and a little tag made using scrapbooking materials for the dark pumpkin you could add a little tag that says something like boo and a fun bow made of a spidery black material you could tie it right in place or you could glue it on we hope you enjoyed this project we'll see you next time on country sampler on video look for the newest issue of country sampler on newsstands now for more great decorating ideas