No-carve Pumpkins: DIY Painted Pumpkin Tutorial

Halloween is just days away and I am loving all of the no-carve pumpkins that keep popping up in my Pinterest feed.  Normally my son and I carve a couple of pumpkins together but as he’s away at University I thought, this year, I would do something different.

Of all the pumpkins appearing in Pinterest, my favourites were the painted kind, especially those with the gold and copper highlights so I decided to have a go at recreating some of these wonderful pumpkins.

The supermarkets are full of pumpkins at the moment so I chose a few of various sizes.  Unfortunately the stalks are very short but I managed to find a small pumpkin with a good sized stalk.

Tips on choosing pumpkins

• Regardless of whether you intend to carve it or not your pumpkin needs to be nicely rounded with no soft spots.  Blemishes are ok as long as they’re not squishy to the touch.
• If you are intending to carve your pumpkin try to have a design in mind before you go shopping, that way if your design is tall and thin you’ll know not to go for a short round pumpkin.
• Most pumpkins grown lying on their sides rather than being upright so you’ll be very lucky if you can find a pumpkin that doesn’t have a flat side.  Just make sure your pumpkin has at least one side that is full and as blemish free as possible to give you the best canvas for carving or painting.

Ok so lets get started…

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links (*), meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Here’s what you need for all three pumpkins

1. Pumpkin – you should be able to find fresh pumpkins everywhere at the moment but if you want a more permanent decoration, go fake.
2. Acrylic paint in your chosen colours – I decided to go with black, white and copper.  You can find acrylic paints in any shop that sells craft materials, I got mine from my local Wilko and paid around £1-£2 a tube.  If you are painting a fresh pumpkin then it is not going to last for long so you really don’t want to spend too much on your paint.
3. Nail polish – I used the cheapest black polish I could find.
4. Paint brushes or sponges – this is the pack that I used, it has a really good selection of brushes including some round sponges that I used to paint the spotty pumpkin. They’re great for all kinds of crafts.
5. Tile or palette, bowl and pots  for mixing paints.
6. The cardboard tube from inside a kitchen or toilet roll.
7. Toothpicks or the end of a paint brush.

Optional extra:

Modge Podge Outdoor – if you’re planning to put your painted pumpkins outside then you might want to consider sealing them to make the paint a bit more weatherproof and keep them looking great.

Prepare your pumpkins

First of all you need to prepare your pumpkins, check them over to make sure no soft spots have developed since you bought it and give it a quick clean to make sure any dirt is gone.

I originally had four pumpkins but one must have been bumped on the way home as two soft spots appeared and started leaking moisture so I will either have to leave it as is or I’ll have to carve it after all.

Spotty Painted Pumpkin

1.  Base colour – starting with the black acrylic paint, I simply squirted a blob of paint straight on to the top of the pumpkin (why bother with putting it in a pot first, that just creates more clearing up afterwards! ).  Using one of the larger brushes I worked the paint down the sides of the pumpkin, leaving the bottom unpainted (you can just see the unpainted section in the photo).  It took about 4 blobs of paint to cover the top section of the pumpkin including the stalk.  Leave to dry for approx 20 minutes.

Thick vs Thin

Should I go with one thick coat of paint or two (or three!) thinner coats?  In the end, I opted for two thin coats in the hopes that it would dry quicker.  The paint went on well with just a few streaks of orange showing through.  I did put a slightly thicker coat of paint on the stalk as I had to work it into all the cracks and holes.

2. Paint the underside – after about 20 minutes the top was mostly touch-dry, however, the stalk was still quite wet because of the extra paint which had gathered in the holes and cracks.  I guess I should have expected that.  I actually left it another 20 minutes to make sure it was completely dry before turning it over to paint the underside.  Leave to dry.

DON’T FORGET to clean your brushes between coats.  Acrylic paint can be cleaned up with water so carefully rinse your brushes making sure no paint is left.  If you don’t clean them properly they will go hard and be unusable .

3. Give it a second coat by repeating steps 1 and 2.  When I started putting the second coat of paint onto the pumpkin, I was very disappointed to see that the paint went a little grainy.  The paint from the previous coat must have been lifting off as I brushed on the wet paint.  However, it looked much better after it had dried and lost the grainy look.
4. Add your spots – I used a scrap of tinfoil to create a makeshift palette and squirted a blob of copper paint onto it.  Using one of the round sponges from the brush kit, carefully dab it into the blob of paint.  Dab some of the paint off onto a clean section of the foil then gently dab a spot onto your pumpkin.  You may need to dab in the same spot a couple of times to get a solid spot, turn the sponge slightly if needed.  Leave to dry.

5. Paint the stalk – once you are happy with your spots and they are completely dry you can paint your stalk.  I had already painted it black but wanted a bit more bling so I added a coat of copper paint.  Leave to dry and you’re done!

If you are leaving your pumpkin out overnight before the big day you could add a coat of Modge Podge Outdoor to protect it.  Leave it to dry before placing outside.

Stripey Painted Pumpkin

1. Base colour – I chose to paint the whole pumpkin white to give me a blank canvas to work with.  As with the spotty pumpkin, I painted the top of the pumpkin, waited for it to dry before painting the underside.  The white paint didn’t cover nearly as well as the black, you could still see lots of orange with one coat.
2. Second coat – once the first coat is dry give it a second coat by repeating step one.  If needed you can repeat it again to give the pumpkin a third coat.
3. Add your stripes – hmm vertical or horizontal?  I went with vertical stripes because I like the look better than the horizontal stripes plus I could use the lines on the pumpkin’s skin as natural guides.  Using the black paint and one of the smaller brushes I painted in the lines by eye.  Allow it to dry.  My lines ended up being a little wobbly which drove my other half crazy. If it would bother you too then you could try using masking tape to give you straighter lines.  I would suggest sticking the tape to the back of your hand a couple of times to reduce the stickiness and test it on the bottom first.

4. Paint the stalk with copper paint and allow to dry.

As with the spotty pumpkin, if you will be leaving your pumpkin outside for a few days you can protect it by adding a coat of Modge Podge Outdoor.  Allow to dry completely before putting outside.

Drip Painted Pumpkin

I have a confession – this pumpkin was supposed to be marbled using the nail polish and a bowl of water so I gave it a white base coat.  However, as it was disastrously wrong, I switched to the drip painted version so that the pumpkin wasn’t wasted.

1. Acrylic paint is very thick so for this to work you will need to water down your paint.  Find some pots to mix your paint in, empty yogurt pots would be ideal.  I used some empty jars of baby food that were waiting to be recycled.  I used approx 1 tablespoon of paint and added approx 2 tablespoons of water until it was the consistency of single cream.
2. This is a very messy project so you will need to lay newspapers or something similar down to protect your surfaces and make sure you can easily reach a sink to wash your hands.
3. Prepare a stand for your pumpkin.  Take the cardboard tube and cut it into sections of about 1 inch/ 2.5cm thick, keep the first section whole but cut a slit in the others so they will easily wrap around the first section.  Sit the tube sections inside a bowl or empty container.  This makes the stand for your pumpkin to sit on whilst it dries.
4. Start adding paint to your pumpkin.  Holding the pumpkin by the stalk, I turned it on it’s side and started adding a thin drizzle of paint around the middle of the pumpkin.  Change colour and add another of paint around the pumpkin above the first.  Repeat with a third colour. Sorry, this part was so messy I couldn’t take photos.
5. Still holding the pumpkin upright by the stalk the paint should now start to drip down the pumpkin.  Alternating colours, add more paint so that it runs into the paint already on the pumpkin.  Allow some of the paint to drip into the well around the base of the pumpkin.
6. By now the paint was dripping nicely but the colours were running over each other in places.  So here comes the fun part.  Take your toothpick or the end of a paint brush and gently drag in down through the paint to create the spiky effect.  You can even use the toothpick to drag the paint over any spots that are missing paint.
7. Continue to add paint and drag through the toothpick until you are happy with the final effect.  Carefully stand your pumpkin on the cardboard tube inside the bowl or container.  The paint will continue to drip as it dries so you will need to place it some where safe where it won’t get knocked over.  Leave to dry.

The sides of my pumpkin took a full 24 hours to be touch dry.  At this point I dabbed the pumpkin on some paper towels to soak up any remaining drips on the bottom.  However, the well around the stalk, which is full of paint, was still quite wet.  It took another 24 hours for that to dry completely.

So what did my disastrous attempt at marbling look like?  Ok here is the monstrosity:

Yep, it looks worse than a dog’s dinner right?!  I don’t think I put enough nail polish in the water so it spread out too much.  Lesson learned.

Have fun this Halloween!