Coined the “Martha Stewart of the Coffin Crowd” Aurelio Voltaire has spent years turning his studio apartment in New York City into a Gothic lair. The musician and craftsman is in Halloween mode 24/7/365
7 pumpkin painting ideas — TikTok’s favorite Halloween trend
We’ve uncovered delightfully spooky and creative pumpkin painting ideas to help unleash your inner Picasso. Sipping a glass of mulled cider on the side is not required for any forthcoming creative pursuits, but encouraged.
We might be partial, but we firmly believe that Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year, and it’s a particularly suitable season to get creative juices flowing. Whether or not you’re opting for the spooky route, there is something worth celebrating on October 31st.
While you peruse the frighteningly adorable myriad of DIY Halloween decorating ideas, be sure to have your paintbrush at the ready. We know we do!
Pumpkin Painting Ideas: Quick Menu
7 Super-cute pumpkin painting ideas
Bloggers and crafters gave us a few ideas about trendy design ideas to pursue this Halloween, and we have a feeling your pumpkins are going to be the coolest gourds in town. A word to the wise: Make sure to put down the proper coverage as things will get messy.
For a super-simple, no-painting-required psychedelic accent, might we recommend crafter Elizabeth Jones’ paint-pouring pumpkin? All you need to do is get roughly four shades of the same color and manually pour them into a disposable cup one at a time. From there, place your pumpkin atop a paper cup and pour out the paint.
“I love choosing non-traditional fall colors to decorate pumpkins with,” Jones tells Real Homes. “I personally prefer to choose a pink, purple, and mustard yellow color palette. The ultimate goal is to fill your space with colors and designs that make you happy!”
Honestly, we’ll try one of these designs in every color.
Floral pumpkin
Who doesn’t appreciate a few fall florals? If you’d like to go for a botanical twist like Jones, she cuts out the styles from paper napkins that she most appreciates and applies them to the gourd with glue.
“I always have Mod Podge on standby,” she admits. “Plus a great gold craft paint to accent the stems. And, foam brushes to apply paint and Mod Podge.”
Painting Pumpkins! Fall Art for Infants and Toddlers
Painting pumpkins is a great alternative to carving pumpkins that you can do with younger children and children that do not like the feel of pumpkin guts. This activity often follows a trip to the pumpkin patch and cleaning our pumpkins in our always fun pumpkin washing sensory bin! It’s a great way to clean pumpkins before you paint them!
The infants and toddlers in my home daycare love this activity!
Painting Pumpkins with Infants and Toddlers
I usually do this activity with the infants and toddlers in my home daycare but it also is perfect for older children that are not fans of carving pumpkins. My kindergartener does not like the feel and texture of pumpkin guts so we still do this activity with her in the fall. I prefer it because it means I don’t have to clean up the slimy guts and risk inflaming my eczema, which happens when I handle the insides of pumpkins.
Plus painted pumpkins are just super cute!
Materials for pumpkin process art:
- Paint
- Pumpkins
- Paint Brushes
- Paint Smocks or Shirts
I use acrylic paint usually with my older kids. While I do like tempera paint for my younger kids (under 15 months), I’ve found that typical finger paint or tempera paint tends to dry and then flake off of the pumpkins. I haven’t had that issue with acrylic paints. My older kids are more concerned with their fall art flaking off than the younger kids so I try to use acrylic paints and paint smocks with the older kids.
We have an outdoor art station where we usually do this activity. If you can’t do it outside I’d recommend putting down newspaper or doing it on a large table. My kids always get very messy doing this fall art project. They want to cover the whole pumpkin and moving it gets messy!
The kids had such a fun time painting pumpkins! They created some very colorful creations! We are going to use ours as table decorations for our Thanksgiving feast in my home daycare.
If you are doing this with older children you can make it a lesson in color mixing too! My toddlers noticed that the colors changed as we mixed them up but overall this was just a fun art project for them. When I do it with my daughter (5) we like to predict what colors we will make by mixing and see if we can create any new colors! It’s so fun!
Now it’s your turn! Go do a painting pumpkins project today!!
Want more fall crafts? Try these simple tissue paper crafts for kids:
Looking for more crafts and activities? Check out our index for 100+ plus kids activities! Find activities by theme, materials, skills, age and much more!
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Alyssa has a passion for fun kid’s activities and crafts. She is a teacher, home daycare provider, author, and the founder of Where Imagination Grows. She has spent years teaching and crafting with toddlers and preschoolers and is excited to share those activities with you. With a degree in early childhood education, she has spent over 20 years working in both public and private schools, as well as running a preschool program and home daycare.
Top 3 Best Paint for Pumpkins Reviews
This set of acrylic paints from Crafts 4 All contains just the right assortment of colors for most pumpkin painting projects.
They provide you with three different brushes, two of which have flat, square heads of different widths. The third brush is perfect for detail work, and considering you get all of these things for such an affordable price, we thought that it was the best set on our list.
Each tube contains 0.4 ounces of paint, which isn’t going to be enough if you are painting a base coat on a pumpkin but it certainly is if you are just painting the face or drawing on other unique designs.
If you need a base coat, we recommend pairing this set with one of the spray paints or other solid acrylic paints on our list.
MyArtscape Acrylic Paint Set
If you need a more basic color selection and prefer to mix custom colors, then a set like this from My ArtScape might be better than the previous set.
We liked the Crafts 4 All paint and thought that they covered well, but the pigment in this set is much higher, resulting in more vibrant colors. These paints are slightly more expensive than the previous set, but not by very much. These are much better and will work great if you want to use the paint for other craft projects once pumpkin season is over.
Be sure you pick yourself up some brushes if you don’t already have them because this set doesn’t include any.
Rust-Oleum 1915830 Metallic Spray
Our final suggestion is to use a nice base coat of spray paint, and the Metallic colors offered by Rust-Oleum are fabulous.
We really loved the silver, but you can choose from copper , gold , and brass if you have other design goals in mind.
What is so unique about this paint is that it contains actual flakes of metal, yielding a shinier, brighter effect that will make your pumpkin shine when the light hits it.
Once you spray the pumpkin, you will need to wait 15 minutes for the paint to dry before you touch it or add another coat.
The best part is that you can also use this for a variety of other craft projects around the home, and you will be able to apply a much evener coat of paint when you opt for a spray like this.
