Dragon With Glowing Eyes Pumpkin

I usually don't do crafty things! But this pumpkin turned out great!

First we found a pumpkin that was elongated (tall skinny) and could easily rest on its side. The front of the dragon is actually the bottom and the stem comes out of the back of his head as pictured below.

 We washed him up and let him dry.

I made the shape of his snout nostrils and eye brows by simply taking long pieces of wide masking tape and rolling one edge while sticking the other edge to the pumpkin. It stuck better than I thought it would. 

To clarify by the picture below I ended up doing paper teeth after and painted over these tape teeth. 

I also used tape to make the lips, horns coming off the back of the head and some scales that stick out. 

I then took tape and cut it down into little strips and placed them diagonal on the snout, nostrils and brows to give the lines a ridged look. You can see it in the picture below.

I used Elmers glue to create a scaley ridged look on the skin. Lines on the front of the snout in a v shape and scales on the side. 

I let the glue dry for a couple of hours. I later painted over these but they looked cool under the paint. The pumpkin has natural ridges as well that added character. 

We then painted the tape ridges along the face a grey black with a paint brush. The paint color was called "pavement". Since I wanted the black holes in the nostrils mouth to stand out I made this color lighter so there would be a contrast. 

For the main color we mixed a vibrant green with black without mixing them completely. Only a couple of combining strokes so that the colors still remained separated. Then we took a plastic grocery bag and tore off a hand full of plastic waded it up and used that as a sponge for the color on the face. We dabbed on the paint on the most of the dragon. It gave it a scaly look. 

We painted the nostrils a glossy deep black with a paint brush as well as the mouth.

After letting it dry and adding a few more coats we added a light coat of a golden sparkle spray. This made it look more like a dragon instead of a dinosaur. 

The eyes were fun. We took a ping pong ball and cut it in half. We first used marker for the pupils but it wasn't as bold as we wanted so we taped off the pupil and painted it also with the glossy black. 

Quickly remove the tape and make sure the eyes are cat like with elongated pupils. 

We then taped a little tea light under the ping pong ball eye. We just added tape to the back of it so it can be placed and removed easily so the light can be changed if needed. 

Now place the eyes on! 

For finishing touches I used a paint brush with black and lightly added a faded line to the glue ridges to accentuate them slightly on top of the gold spray. 

Add a row of paper teeth and glue them under the top mouth ridge. 

And...

Wa-la! 

A fierce dragon with glowing eyes!

And a kid that feels pretty cool about his pumpkin... and maybe even slightly scared!