The Teal Pumpkin Project

So before I delve into entertaining you with the story behind my nickname, I wanted to use this opportunity to bring attention to the #TealPumpkinProject. I stumbled upon the hashtag after I had already finished this series of Teal Pumpkin Watercolor paintings, but I found it so timely, and a worthy cause..So I encourage all my readers and customers to look into it further. It’s a grass roots movement to signify your household with a Teal Pumpkin on your stoop as a home with non-food treats/goodies/stickers/balls/glowsticks/etc…available for the 1 in 13 children who suffers from food allergies or intolerances (ie: celiac disease or nut allergies). As a mom who took a friend’s kindergartner to a church harvest festival one year with my own boys, only to find out he had tree nut allergies as HE WAS LEANING DOWN TO PICK UP A PEANUT IN ITS SHELL TO THROW INTO AN ELEPHANT’S TUSK!!!) I nearly went into anaphylaxis diving towards the poor boy to pull him away from the carnival game. It’s a real challenge for parents out there, and what a neat way to include these kids in the fun of trick-or-treating. So if you’re able, give it a whirl!

So back to Pumpkinhead…Ummm, yeah..I’ve always considered myself a pretty smart chic, like summa cum laude, bookworm, so awkward as a child, that the only trophy I ever won, was for getting good grades, nerdy-type chic. (And let me tell you, that little golden tribute to nerdom was set on a shelf of honor in every home I moved to…Yeah, in reality I just wanted to be a softball star like all my other friends with their dozens of trophys.) Finally in high school they started giving out ribbons for art shows and my life got a little shinier.. But I digress…in my highly trained science-y observations, if you are really smart, then more often than not, you are going to have a larger brain, and if you possess a larger brain, you’re gonna need a larger noggin to house all that cerebral matter. Makes sense right? Because Science. Okay, maybe not, but it’s what I told myself when I couldn’t wear my guyfriends’ puny little hats all through high school.. So I blame science for the fact that my nickname as a child was Pumpkin-Head and various other monikers from the Cucurbitaceae (gourd…I know, check your nerdom Sarah) family…(Picture my childhood friends and sisters sing-songing “Sarah-Ellen-Watermelon”…that’s one I still haven’t lived down at family reunions). It took my mom 19hours of labor to push this horse-head of mine out into the world, and when I finally arrived I was a little squished for a few days, and it was my fun loving daddy that first blessed me with the vine-ripened bobbly-but-brilliant-head aliases. Ok, enough explanation on why “Pumpkin-head” is going to be your painting instructor today!

This is the time of year that I go into design overdrive developing harvest collections for my manufacturers for the following year’s seasons. I’ve been a painting machine working on special projects for some of your favorite retailers’ 2017 Fall collections (Pier 1, Wegmans, TJ Maxx, Hobby Lobby etc…) Almost everything we develop is on spec, so if I am not getting paid ahead of time, painting is so much easier when I am inspired. I walked into my local market last week and found these amazing heirloom ghost pumpkins..Who knew that Pink Pumpkins were even a thing???? I’d already fallen in love with white, green, and aqua colored ones from prior year discoveries from farm stands, but these??? Instant. Inspiration. That gorgeous peacock teal color is such a hot trend right now as the next evolution in blue colorways, and these pumpkins that I picked out were streaked with the richness of a preening peacock. So I thought I’d shoot some amateur video for you of one of my watercolors as these unique beauties bashfully modeled for me in the background.

Here’s a sneak peak of the Watercolor Teal Pumpkin collection:

Finger’s crossed you’ll see it in a major retailer’s dinnerware department next Fall 2017!

I never knew that pumpkins came in any color other than orange until I was a grown woman, and my equally brilliant (and big-headed) history scholar of a sister and I decided to take a road trip through the back roads of Virginia as she schooled me on Civil War battle fields and trivia…We got desperately lost and stumbled into a farm stand that had the most amazing green and ghost white pumpkins..They were enchanting, like something right out of Cinderella..I bought one and threw it in the back of the rental car and didn’t give much thought to how on earth I was going to fit it in my suitcase for the return home…But boy, oh boy did I enjoy it that Autumnal week in gorgeous Virginia. And then as the clock struck 12 (errr, I mean check out time), I turned and left that magical pumpkin for the maids..

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