Ok I’ll be honest. I do NOT like carving pumpkins. I know, I know… it is tradition and festive but its also a lot of work! This year we decided to try something different. I wanted to skip carving, skip the mess, skip the hassle. The downside is that we did not have any pumpkin seeds to eat afterward, booooo (get it? boo!) but last year we burnt them anyways. So instead of having a pumpkin carving party, we had an anti-carving party and used alternate methods of decorum….
PAINTED PUMPKINS
Simple, easy, fun. All you need is acrylic paint and paint brushes! My husband was annoyed that I picked such a warty pumpkin so I found this hat on clearance at the craft store and painted a witch!
My friend Claire helped with the hat, we covered it in mustache duck tape I got at craft store.
We also painted a spider web pumpkin and two mini pumpkins, super easy! I painted my dollar tree store plastic spider white and glued him to the top of the web pumpkin.
MOD PODGE FABRIC PUMPKINS
I love me some Mod Podge! I got this idea from The36thAvenue.com, a killer crafting blog, check out the pumpkin article HERE. As a crafter I have tons of scrap fabrics laying around so I pulled out orange, white and black and cut the strips so they would be ready for the party.
The strips were about 1 1/2″ wide. When the mod podge goes on it is sticky and white but it dries clear. We learned quickly that you would need a good amount of mod podge. Im wondering if elmers glue would have worked just as well?! I was too lazy to follow the original instructions and cut off the top then glue it back on. We just mod podged around the stems.
DUCK TAPE PUMPKINS
Pretty straight forward. You simply roll the tape around the pumpkin.. easy easy easy. Michaels now carries a whole section of duck tapes. Tons of colors and patterns to choose from. A roll is 4.99 so I use my iphone app to get 40% off since I think that is too expensive for a roll of tape.
FABRIC ROSETTE PUMPKINS
This was an after thought but I really liked how it turned out! I had left over strips of fabric that were pre cut for the mod podge pumpkins. I simply hot glued the end of the strip to the pumpkin then twisted it around and continued to glue it down in different spots as I twisted it in a circle. At first I was trying to make it look really nice but quickly realized it was not possible and now I love how it looks a little bit messy and organic. Or maybe Im just making myself feel better about perfection failure.
The Anti-carving party was a success! We ended up with awesome pumpkins and the kids had fun. Hope you are able to use some of these ideas as well
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