10 minute DIY: A (not so) spooky painted pumpkin family

Here’s a quick and cute (rather than creepy) Halloween DIY.   I love how the Americans often paint their pumpkins rather than carve them.  For me, carved pumpkins look a bit too creepy – like they’re about to come and eat you up or something!  So I thought it would be fun to make my own mini painted pumpkins.

I decided to use not only mini pumpkins but their bigger cousins – the butternut squash – too and turned them in to a little (not so) spooky Halloween family.  I turned the mini pumpkins in to a witch, a ghost and a bat and the squash in to a one-eyed monster to make a spooktacular family!

This little family of pumpkins will make a fun Halloween table centrepiece or they’d look great placed on a table outside your door to welcome trick or treaters.

This is a really simple DIY so it doesn’t need much explanation.  Except maybe the witch one so here’s how I made that:

I started by painting the mini pumpkin black and then painted over the black in green because I wanted the colour to have a black undertone and not a flat green.

For the hat, you need some thin black card, glue and tape. Cut a round piece of card around the size of your pumpkin.  Make a hole in the centre and keep expanding the hole until it’s large enough to go through the stem of your pumpkin.  I used a toothpick to start and then made it bigger with a pencil.

Take another piece of card and cut a quarter circle with tabs, like in the picture.  The size will depend on the size of your pumpkin.  I have mini pumpkins and so my circle measured 20-22cms diameter and radius was around 10-11cms (geometry lesson over!).

Fold the card paper to form a cone shape with a pointy tip and stick using a glue gun or any strong glue. Make slits in your circle (easiest to use a craft knife) to line-up with the tabs in the hat and slip them through and tape on the back.  Bend the pointy top of the hat and slide on to your painted pumpkin.

The ghost, the bat and the monster pumpkins are very simple as you can see.  For the bat, I painted the pumpkin black, painted on some eyes and finished with some black garden wire that I taped to the back to make the over-sized ears.  I had planned to paint the butternut squash orange but I thought the natural soft orange colour was even prettier. So I left it and painted on a large spooky eye and also painted the stalk in black.

So, do you think you’ll have a go at creating your own mini painted pumpkins family this Halloween?

P.S. Want more Halloween stuff? Here is a post full of fun Halloween table decorations and another with a cute Halloween craft for kids with video.

*I know you can’t see the witch and the bat that clearly (they look better in real life!) but I wanted a dark background as it’s Halloween. I’m just a beginner at dark and moody photography and am trying to teach myself as I go. If anyone has any tips, please share them with me. Thanks!