Tips for Painted Pumpkins

I love the no carve solution to having fun with pumpkins- painted pumpkins! As a family with small children this is the ideal option for everyone to get involved and have fun at Halloween. I’ve got several tips for painted pumpkins in this post!

Tips for Painted Pumpkins

1. Buy small pumpkins.

If you’re painting with small children get small pumpkins. They are the most manageable and can be painted quickly. I purchased “pie” pumpkins at Walmart for $2.50 and they were perfect.

2. Gather supplies.

Craft paint works the best with pumpkins, the coverage stays and you get a great result. All the pumpkins in these photos were painted with the little tubes of craft paint and plain old paint brushes.

3. Stay Organized.

Everyone gets their own “workspace” complete with their own cup of water, paper plate for squirting paint onto and some type of cardboard under the pumpkin for catching drips. You can see the setup at our kitchen table in the photo below!

4. Make a plan for your pumpkin!

Get some ideas, look through pinterest or pull from your favorite things. The tiger at the top of this post is Hobbs from the beloved comic Calvin and Hobbs, my sons favorite thing to read right now. Calvin is penciled out in the photo below. If you are painting a character of some kind it helps tremendously to sketch your design out with pencil first.

You can also use sharpie if that works with your design. In the photo below my daughter had to take a book character painted pumpkin to school, she decided on ‘Mean Jean the Recess Queen’ and so I drew the face out with sharpie for her to paint.

5. Get fun supplies!

We love the glitterific paint by plaid crafts, the glitter is SO bright and prominent. We used it in the photos below.

Marbling paint is another really fun product to use when painting pumpkins. Look at how cool it looks in the 3 colors below.

Painting pumpkins is such a fun activity with kids. The two pumpkins below are what my 3 and 6 year old came up with. Even the three year old’s paint splotches turned out cute!

Don’t be afraid to let creativity run wild when painting your pumpkins! My daughter wanted to make a hat for her pumpkin so we used a little hot glue, some pom poms and a plastic cup!

I hope this gives you some ideas of how to enjoy painting pumpkins with your family! If you are looking for another fun way to decorate your home for Halloween click over to my FREE Halloween poem printables, they look so cute displayed in frames during October!