31+ Pumpkin Painting Ideas That Are Creative Alternatives To Conventional Carving (2024)

FAQs

Is painting pumpkins better than carving? ›

Carving pumpkins may be a traditional Halloween activity, but trading your X-Acto knife for a paintbrush has its benefits: Painting pumpkins is easier and safer for young kids, presents more design freedom for adults, and leaves you with an autumnal decoration that lasts until you trade your fall décor for holiday ...

Consider one these adorable ideas like pastel faces, pretty rainbows and glitter pumpkins or a creepy creation like spider webs, floating ghosts and flying bats. Draw inspiration from your favorite characters, keep it simple with painted stripes or go for a vibrant, solid shade.

So, what can you use to decorate a pumpkin? Pom poms, paint, glitter, fake spiders, cobwebs, twinkle lights, rickrack — you can use pretty much anything to decorate your gourds this fall. The sky's the limit when it comes to this classic Halloween craft.

Step 2: Prepare Pumpkin

It's not necessary, but might preserve the pumpkin for longer and help the paint to stick to the surface better. Make sure you let it dry completely if you choose to do this step. If you choose to do a hybrid carved-painted pumpkin, carve before you paint.

Acrylic paints also adhere well to a pumpkin's uneven and textured surface with a smooth and even finish. It's non-toxic and allows for easy cleanup with soap and water, making it a great kid-friendly choice.

Pumpkins shrivel up because they run out of moisture. Spraying it every day with water mixed with a few drops of bleach will keep it moist and ward off bacteria. As an even easier solution, spray it with a DIY pumpkin preserve spray daily to fight off mold.

Before you jump right into painting your pumpkin, you should prepare the surface by washing it. Wipe it down with a sanitizing wipe or a soft cloth and some mild soap. This removes dirt and grime to give you a clean surface to paint on, and it also eliminates bacteria that might speed up the pumpkin-rotting process.

One of the easiest (and prettiest) ways to decorate your pumpkins carving is painting them with a chalky finish paint. The matte coverage that a chalky finish paint provides is an attractive and versatile option. There are three useful painting methods for this project: patterns, dipped lines, or abstract splatters.

Give your pumpkin two coats of brown paint. Bring the paint slightly up the base of your dowel rod to represent the extra caramel on the stick of an Affy Tapple Caramel Apple. After the paint is dry, use your glue stick to apply glue to one side of the pumpkin, about 3/4 up from the top.

Cook uncarved pumpkins – they also look great in your home!

There are so many delicious recipes you can make with your pumpkin, from soup and risotto to pie and even cake. Uncarved pumpkins are also great seasonal decorations for your home, and come in a range of shapes, sizes, and colours!

What to do with all the pumpkins after Halloween? ›

Wondering what to do with your pumpkins after Halloween has come and gone? While you can't do much with the ones you carved, any solid pumpkins can be used for all sorts of things like fairy gardens, feeding farm animals, and even making pumpkin bread.

“Goats, chickens, pigs, and even the farm dogs enjoy munching on pumpkins, and they are filled with nutrients,” says Chriss Hall of Triple H Farm in Swansea, South Carolina. “The eggs laid by the hens after eating pumpkin have deep rich, orange yolks that pass the extra nutrition on to us as well.”