DIY Colourful Painted Pumpkins

Why not switch up your Halloween decor this year and opt for some DIY colourful painted pumpkins! A fun and far less messy way of decorating your home for halloween…

Over the past week, I’ve been busy coming up with creative ideas on how to dress my home for halloween in my own unique style! It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of colour, so I knew I wanted to do something a little bolder.

If you want to avoid the hassle of carving a pumpkin this year, then try painting some pumpkins instead. It’s a far more fun & creative way of adding some halloween excitement to your home.

DIY Colourful Painted Pumpkins

Painting pumpkins is really very simple. All you need is a few simple materials that you may well already have in your home.

Pumpkins & Gourds
All-purpose acrylic paint
Paintbrushes
Newspaper/card to protect surfaces from paint

Painted Pumpkins

Begin by protecting your worktop surface by laying down newspaper or card. Ensure the pumpkins are clean and don’t have any unnecessary residue on them.

How to paint a pumpkin

Paint the surrounding edges of the pumpkin. You can either let the stalk remain unpainted, or cover that too depending on how you want it to look. I opted to leave the stalk unpainted for a more realistic effect.

Repeat this process with all of your pumpkins a gourds and paint them in any of your chosen colours. Mix and match them up to create exciting colour clashes. Depending on the colour, you may need to apply two coats. Then, leave them to completely dry.

Painted pumpkins puns

For my pumpkins, I wanted to add a little bit of humour and decided to paint some halloween puns on the face of a couple of them. I sourced the puns from this website. Here’s a few examples and ideas of what you could write…

Witch, please!
Creep it real
Hello Gourd-geous
Life is Gourd
Happy Howl-o-ween
Bone to be wild
Hey boo-tiful

Painted Pumpkin tutorial

Once you have finished painting your pumpkins, experiment with different ways of displaying them in and around your home. Here’s a few examples of places you could display them…

A Mantel Display

Painted pumpkins

Dress your mantel piece with your smaller pumpkins or gourds, this is even more effective if they’re propped against a colourful wall!

Front door display

Wow your passers-by and gain some curb appeal with a colourful pumpkin display! I had many comments on mine when I was setting this up… Many people were intrigued by this different way of decorating pumpkins!

Painted pumpkin display

Use different sized plant pots to create stands for the pumpkins. Stagger them at different heights so that they can all be seen and scatter the different colours around.

It really is so simple! And what’s best is that painted pumpkins are perfectly safe to eat when the halloween season ends. Providing the pumpkins and gourds are kept in a well air-circulated space, they will be ripe to eat for two months after purchase. Ensure that no paint chippings get in to the pumpkin mix when making a nice soup, pie or stew!