Piano Wire Pumpkin

I can’t wait to show you my newest creation – a piano wire pumpkin!

I made it with all the usual suspects: piano wire, a saw blade, a damper poker, copper wire, and leather.

This project was like those cooking shows where you are given a random assortment of ingredients and you have to come up with an amazing dish to wow the judges’ taste buds.

In my case, I found this unrelated group of items in my house and garage and knew they could be combined to make something festive for fall like a piano wire pumpkin!

Because why not?

We have piano wire because we took apart an old upright piano and saved most of the piano components to be repurposed.

The saw blade is an old one that was left in the garage by the seller when we bought the Colonial Farmhouse.

The damper poker was hanging on our fireplace. We aren’t using that fireplace at the moment, but won’t throw this tool away because we may need it someday and they cost fifty bucks to replace. Oiy!

I stripped the copper wire out of some old electrical wire that we had on hand from tidying up around here.

The leather was gifted to me and I’ve been using the scrap piece I was given for all sorts of different craft projects.

Piano wire is made from copper wrapped around tempered high-carbon steel wire. It has a super high tensile strength, which makes it perfect for pianos, but a little more difficult to work with when it comes to craft projects.

Our piano wire got a little wet this winter and that’s why it has that lovely patina.

I decided my pumpkin was going to be made from four lengths of piano wire and I chose wire that had a similar diameter. Piano wire comes in different thicknesses. The larger the diameter of the wire, the lower the piano’s pitch becomes.

Now I just needed to figure out how to secure the wire into a pumpkin shape. I tried so many different solutions because I needed the wires on the base of the pumpkin to be able to pivot slightly to achieve that pumpkin shape.

That’s when I ended up threading them through the damper poker tool. I secured the wires at the top using black hockey tape. Electrical tape would have worked too.

While this solution achieved the pumpkin shape I was looking for, it created another problem. The damper poker didn’t have a flat base, so now my pumpkin had balance issues.

It looked like a drunken pumpkin.

That’s where the saw blade came in! It became the flat base I needed to hold the pumpkin upright. I secured the pumpkin to the saw blade in four places using the copper wire I stripped out of the electrical wire.

I hid the areas where I taped the wire ends together with pumpkin “leaves” I cut from leather and then used leftover copper wire to create curly Qs.

Tada! I finally had a piano wire pumpkin!

It only took me 3 hours of trial and error to get to that point. I wish I was exaggerating.

I can think of more efficient ways of completing a project like this one, especially if I had soldering tools and skills.

When I started this project, I knew I wanted to create a piano wire pumpkin.

I just had no idea it would take 3 hours and an extra junky turn with the up-cycled use of the saw blade, copper wire, and damper poker tool.

I didn’t see that solution coming at all!

The not knowing is the best part of a creative project!

I care less about the outcome and more about the creative problem solving that it took to get to the final outcome.

For me, the creative problem solving process is a meandering journey that engages my brain in a way that is so fulfilling.

This project checks all the boxes for me.

Unexpected? Check.

Creative and Resourceful? Check.

Unique? Check.

Used up junk we had laying around? Check.

Makes me happy? Checkity. Check. Check!

I challenge you to create something that checks all the boxes (whatever they may be) for you this week!

P.S. Here’s how we’ve so far repurposed the piano that we took apart. 

The piano harp became art for our music room. The piano back became a work bench. The keys were donated to a middle school art class. The hammers and felt punchings became Christmas ornaments. The pedals became a Christmas tree topper.

If you’d like to make a pumpkin for your fall decor, here are some other ideas for you! 

Horseshoe Pumpkin

Leather Pumpkin

Denim Pumpkin

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