Alternative Pumpkin Decorations

Now is the perfect time to start preparing your house for fall festivities, and with Halloween just around the corner, we wanted to share a few alternative ideas for decorating pumpkins and gourds! It’s always fun to do the traditional pumpkin carving, but this year, we loved the idea of incorporating fun techniques like painting, yarn bombing and decoupaging!

I always like visiting a local pumpkin patch to search for the perfect pumpkin. Since we are well into October, most grocery stores will have pumpkins and gourds readily available for purchase, too. I picked up a variety of sizes this year, and I love this white one I found!

Leaf Decoupage

I found that decoupaging fall foliage onto a white pumpkin looks really natural and earthy. To try this, you need:

Mod Podge

Pumpkin or gourd

Paintbrush

Soft leaves

I collected some leaves outside and laid out a pattern on the pumpkin. It’s best to find soft leaves since they will form to the pumpkin better.

Once you figure out where you are placing your leaves, coat the first one with a layer of Mod Podge on the front and back. It’s good to paint some directly where you are placing it on the pumpkin, too.

Continue to do this until all of your leaves have been placed. Press down on each leaf for a few seconds to make sure the Mod Podge is sticking. Let the pumpkin sit overnight to dry.

In the morning, all of the Mod Podge will have dried clear!

Yarn-Bombed Pumpkin

This technique is really simple and looks awesome on smaller-sized pumpkins! All you need is:

Multi-colored yarn

Pumpkin

Glue gun

First, secure the yarn to the bottom of the pumpkin using a hot glue gun.

Next, start to wrap the yarn around your pumpkin.

I wrapped the yarn in a criss-cross pattern on the top and bottom to make sure it stayed in place.

Continue wrapping until all of the pumpkin has been covered.

To finish, hot glue the end of the yarn to the pumpkin.

Painted Pumpkin 

I love how free you can be with this technique. As long as you have some paint and paintbrushes, you can create any sort of design on your pumpkin. I used a variety of acrylic paints and picked out a couple different-sized brushes.

I started out by completely covering my pumpkin in black paint. This background will make the other colors pop.

After the black paint was completely dry,  I started free-handing little shapes on the pumpkin.

I chose to draw some floral designs and finished off with some line detailing.

Which of these methods do you like best?

More DIY projects from the BLDG 25 Blog.

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