How to Corpse a Pumpkin

I came across this link of how to corpse a pumpkin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyKjm6ry-VY 

Now what is "corpsing"? It is taking a pumpkin or skeleton and making it look rotted and scary! In the case of a skeleton, it can make it look like there is flesh still on the bones! 

This is using a craft pumpkin, one of those you can get from Michael's hobby store that is made of the hard foam. As you can see, they look ok, all bright and orange but they do not have that creepy, scary look that I was wanting. I happened upon that link then of how to change my pumpkin to one that looked more sinister.

 After watching the vid, I began to collect the necessary items. I at first thought it was just using the regular liquid latex and as such, I picked up a bottle of it from the Spirit Halloween stores. I also picked up the cotton balls and lucked out in that I had managed to get the ones that you can unroll tho', that is not without a bit of patience to do so.

When I first attempted this with the liquid latex pictured here:

 It wasn't coming out as well as the video. This liquid latex is too thin and although it was sticking fairly well to the craft pumpkin, it just seemed to make the cotton balls appear thinned out over the orange pumpkin. It seemed to be a more bubbled effect. This is also not easy to apply the liquid latex and I found I had to dab at the cotton which also did not make the texture to be what I was going for.

Looking at the video closer, I realized that I was not using the same type of liquid latex and that what he uses is a type more used for mold building. So I went back to the hobby store and found the exact same stuff he was using.

 So how you do it:
I unrolled a lot of the cotton balls and opened them up a bit. Then I spread some of the latex over a section of the pumpkin and then pressed the flattened and unrolled cotton onto that area and then applied another layer of the latex over the cotton.

WOW! What a difference this stuff made! It went on thicker and tho' I still had to be careful in applying it, it gave me the desired effect.

Maneuvering around the cut out letters was not easy either and took a bit of patience. I tore smaller pieces of cotton for those areas and some places, I had to dab on the latex instead of painting it up and down.

Let it dry and then paint.

I also took the lids and added more cotton to the stems and swirled them up and over in curlique shapes. 

I let everything dry overnight and then spray painted them all black first. This dried very quickly and then I used a bit of brown paint and dry brushed it over the black very lightly.
After that dried, I took some brighter orange paint and dry brushed that over the pumpkins. 
Green was applied to the stems.

If too much of the color was put on, I just sprayed it very lightly with the black again to darken it and tone it down.


I thought they came out rather well! :) I used them just inside the entrance of the Haunted Cave.

I plan on corpsing another pumpkin that I have some of the Halloween Teeth in it that glows in the dark. It has a bit of a scary face on it and I think it would look even better if I corpsed it.
I will probably do a few more of these over the winter and into the spring/summer. After completing 4 of them, I feel very confident in making these.

One jar of that mold building latex completed almost 4 of these pumpkins. 

This was a fun project and the liquid latex that I got on my fingers easily rolled off, no problem!

Thank you Hauntcast for the great idea!