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Cinderella used hers for stylish transport to the ball, but ordinary folks who want to create magical table settings can also begin with a big, fat pumpkin.

Kit Golson, a Redwood City-based interior and event designer, created 36 pumpkins "with bling" for the annual Hidden Villa awards banquet in September.

"The idea grew because budgets didn't allow us to purchase flowers," she said. "Pumpkin is about as basic as you're going to get."

But Golson's pumpkins were no ordinary gourds.

First she built a rustic backdrop, a layer of plain brown wrapping paper, with a sheet of creamy pearlized art-craft paper. Golson suggested folding the craft paper in quarters, then cutting (or tearing) a wavy edge, creating a circle. "The idea is to look hand cut, not like it was stamped out by machine," she said.

"This made a visual base to anchor" the centerpiece, she said.

Next came a clear-plastic platter, but Golson suggests using a gold charger plate at home (or nothing, if you don't intend to move the piece off the table when dinner is served).

Sage-green Spanish moss, or decorative excelsior, was then added to the paper base.

To create a "nest," she chose a floral wrapper, a metallic material that looks like netting. A fan of the wrapper, Golson says it offers three key things: It's inexpensive ($7 for a large roll), gives a lot of bling and gives textural detail.

A 2-yard piece can be scrunched, folded, wrapped and twisted to make a nest. The bent shape can be taped or pinned down, before dropping the pumpkin in the core.

(Golson says the leftover floral wrapper can be used to make bows -- or centerpieces for the next few years.)
More moss can be tucked into the folds of the nest.

Next comes cutting apart a garland of autumn leaves and dropping four or five around the base. The rest of the leaves could be scattered across the mantel or buffet, Golson said.

To glamorize the pumpkin, Golson lightly sprayed gold paint, making sure plenty of orange shows through. When the pumpkin was dry, she added designs made from gold leaf.

"This stuff goes a long way," she said, adding that she used her leftovers to gild a mirror frame, turning a $12 item from a second-hand store into a design centerpiece.

The gold foil can be torn (or cut) into different shapes, then stuck on with spray adhesive.

"It adds a lot. It could be omitted, but wouldn't have the same effect," she said.

Then comes either thin gold ribbon with a metallic woven edge that can be curled around your finger, or wider wire-edge gold ribbon (available at Michael's or Jo-Ann). These are tied to the pumpkin's stem asymmetrically, so one side has short curls and the other longer tendrils.

Remember that circle cut from the art paper? Now's the time to take the leftover four corners and cut them into spirals, to be used for extra tendrils.

For the Hidden Villa event, Golson added a little raffia.

"It was meant to look like it came off the farm," she said.

Constructing these centerpieces isn't an exact science, Golson advised, and these materials are very forgiving.

"The leaves are infinitely useful. They'll hide if there's a gap," she said, suggesting that one cut a few extras for tucking around.

For the large 72-inch round tables at the banquet, Golson chose 14-inch pumpkins, but for a more standard, rectangular dining-room table, she suggested using a 10- to 12-inch version. Or one 8-inch in the center, surrounded by two 4-inch mini-pumpkins.

Or choose white pumpkins.

The variations are endless -- and there really isn't any wrong way to design the centerpiece, as long as one keeps proportions of the table in mind, she said.

Golson didn't start out as an interior designer. Her early career was in health care marketing, followed by graphic design, then antiques and interiors. After completing the design program at Canada College, she started Kit Golson Design and specializes in using what people already have. She also does event planning.

"I let them see what they can do with space planning, color, editing out certain things, to get to the essence to have a functional living room," she said. After paring down their belongings, she helps figure out where to store those extras.

"Color accomplishes a great deal, creates a sense of spaciousness, sets the mood. It can be a strong design element for very little money," she added.

And the event planning she finds very gratifying as a way to create a temporary design project.

Glitzy pumpkin centerpiece
One centerpiece can be pricey -- about $50 -- but many of the "ingredients" in the centerpiece recipe can be reused again and again.

The brown paper can be used for mailing packages, the floral wrapper for package bows and the spray paint for tons of future projects, Kit Golson said.

Most of the materials can be purchased at Michael's, Jo-Ann or University Art in Palo Alto.

Shopping list:
1 roll plain brown parcel paper; or folded out paper bag (about $5)
1 sheet art paper ($1)
1 10-12" platter, charger or clear plastic tray
1 package floral wrapper ($10)
1 can spray gold paint ($7)
Spanish moss (decorative excelsior) ($3)
1 garland of autumn leaves ($3)
Spray adhesive ($7)
1 10-12" pumpkin
1 packet of gold foil ($10)
1.5 yards wire-edge gold ribbon (about $4)
Raffia (about $2)