Who loves heirloom pumpkins? I do! I am so excited to share this new fall project with you- whether you like pastel, dark, or white pumpkins in your fall decor, this method using chalk paint and dark wax makes faux look fabulous & real.

I’ve had a pretty crazy last two weeks, and now that everything has calmed down a bit, I am ready to hunker down and prepare for Baby Hathaway to make his appearance soon. I thought today would be the perfect time to share my “cinderella transformation” process for making fake pumpkins look real using chalk paint and dark wax.

First off, I haven’t had much luck with fresh pumpkins here in the south. They just rot. So we opted for plastic ones from Michaels. They have a pretty good selection of shapes and sizes that look realistic. So I went ahead and spent our life savings there on pumpkins. Haha. But seriously, they are a little pricy if you don’t get them on sale (for my husband: I got them for 40% off baby…lol!) And I now have a permanent stash of fall decor.

For this tutorial I used paint & products Amy Howard sent me to craft with. Her chalk and milk paint are seriously my favorite.

I wanted different shades of white pumpkins for my fall decor in my home this year. So even though some of the fake pumpkins had nice shades to them, I gave them a light coat of white chalk paint.

The more muted plastic colors are the best to use for this project, as you won’t need to do as many coats of chalk paint to cover bold colors like orange.

I gave my plastic pumpkins a good coat of chalk paint and let them dry a bit. Don’t worry about super even coverage because it’s fun to have different shades peek through.

One technique I used was to dry them with a hair blow dryer.

The combination of a plastic & chalk paint being exposed to heat creates a beautiful, cracked finish. It almost looks like milk paint chipping off.

Seriously so cool, right?

Repeat the painting process on your little pumpkin patch of plastic decorations.

Once fully dry, grab a round hog hair wax brush and put some dark wax on it. Only use a little bit. Trust me. This stuff goes on super strong.

After adding wax to my brush, I always offload the first stroke onto a piece of paper or cardboard before applying it to the surface I am distressing.

Add a little bit of wax here & there in the natural places dirt and color would appear on a natural pumpkin.

We are creating a realistic imperfections and shading to the pure white pumpkins. You can see the before and after comparison of wax vs no wax above.

Play around with different shades, shapes & sizes and you will have a fun assorted collection of pumpkins like these ones I used in my Master Bedroom Tour.

Pretty cute, huh?

That’s it for now. I’ll be posting more fall room tours & autumn DIY’s from our little farmhouse soon!