DIY Tobacco Leaf Pumpkin Tutorial

I LOVE tobacco leaf china and decor, especially if it is vintage/antique. I’ve acquired a few pieces via estate sales and eBay, but I will hold on that topic for Friday’s post. Now, if you’re not familiar with tobacco leaf china, go feast your eyes on the gorgeous Mottahedeh tobacco leaf china pattern. Go on, I’ll wait.  It’s so stunning, and I wanted to bring that same vibe to a pumpkin. That’s what today’s DIY tobacco leaf pumpkin tutorial is all about.

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If you’re familiar with the tobacco leaf china pattern, you know it has a lot of colors, which is part of its allure, right? Well, for fall crafting with my Silhouette Portrait and vinyl, I had to pare it down to three colors, so I opted for green, pink and dark blue. I also added in some gold dots to add in some flair, like you see on the pattern.

In addition to the simplifying the colors, I had to simplify the pattern. The flower at the center of all the tobacco leaves is quite unique, so I went more for a lotus flower for a modern/contemporary take on the tobacco leaf pumpkin. 

Overall, I love the striking simplicity of the piece, plus the vinyl is removable so if I decide I hate this pattern next year, I simply pull off the vinyl and have a blank slate again.

Let’s get crafty!

DIY Tobacco Leaf Pumpkin Tutorial

Supplies:

• Craft Pumpkin (Mine is a large creamy white one)
• Silhouette or Cricut (or other die cutting machine)
• Hot Pink Vinyl
• Dark Blue Vinyl
• Kelly Green Vinyl
• Transfer Paper (or clear contact paper from Dollar Tree)
• Scraper Tool (or gift card)
• Weeding Tool
• Gold Leafing Pen (optional)
• Lotus Flower SVG* (or if you want a free option, see below**)
• Leaf Vector Files (see below*)

**If you’d like access to the free SVG file to complete this project (minus the lotus flower, because it’s copyrighted) click here. The SVG file includes an alternative tobacco leaf flower AND the leaves and phoenix bird used in the project.

*If you’re like me and are too cheap to upgrade to the designer edition of Silhouette Studio, you can go to this website to convert your SVG file to a DXF file for free. You can then import as usual and carry on.

Before we start, some basic knowledge of using your craft cutter is needed, especially the modify panel for you Silhouette users. Also terms such as weeding and transferring are used in this tutorial.

Step 1:

In your craft cutter software, color code and lay out your cut files to the size needed for your pumpkin starting with the center flower. I measured the width of the area I wanted to cover on my pumpkin, and my lotus flower ended up being 6″ wide. You’ll notice I made the lotus flower very wide compared to the original file. This is to mimic the tobacco leaf vibe.

Step 2:

From there, layer your leaves behind your flower as shown below- I did mine flanking the lotus flower and slightly angled to left and to the right. 

You can also merge/combine each cluster of leaves (which is what I did below) BUT you don’t have to if you want a more layered look. I then erased the part of the leaf clusters that were behind the flower to make piecing the whole design easier once cut. Simple is best when dealing with ridged pumpkin.

Step 3:

Cut! You’re going to end up cutting three times- pink vinyl for the flower and phoenix bird, green vinyl for the larger leaves and blue vinyl for the smaller leaves. You can fit multiples of each part on a page, so if you want to do double-sided pumpkins, make sure you duplicate your graphics.

Step 4:

Once you have your pieces cut, weed out the parts that are not part of the design using a weeding tool or tweezers. Then apply transfer paper over the vinyl design using a scraper or gift card to lift off the design and prep it for transferring/adhering to the pumpkin.

Step 5:

Transfer the center flower first- make sure you position it exactly where you want because it will be nearly impossible to reposition later. 

Once the flower is in place, gently peel off the transfer paper, smooth out any bubbled areas, and repeat with the green and blue leaves.

Step 6:

Add some gold dots to the blue leaves and paint the pumpkin stem gold, too. Continue to smooth out any rough areas and use an x-acto knife to remove any unwanted vinyl overlap, if desired.

And that’s it! Seems like a lot of work, but truly the most time consuming part is laying out your files to size in the craft cutting software. The rest is easy.

There are some imperfections since pumpkins aren’t perfectly smooth and flat, but overall, it’s a preppy and chic punch of color for your fall decor.

I love how it looks as a centerpiece with tobacco leaf china and chinoiserie accents.

And it looks especially great with my foo dogs and tobacco leaf teapot on my butler stand.

I love, love, love it. And I hope you do, too! Remember you can download a free SVG file via this link to complete your own tobacco leaf inspired pumpkin. 🙂

The next $100 Room Challenge starts Wednesday, and my thrifty self couldn’t stay away from the challenge…you’ll get to see which space I am revamping for $100 this Wednesday. You don’t want to miss it. Happy crafting!