Oh my goodness, did Kennedy ever love making these! She was still talking about how fun these were to make a week after they were done, so I knew I had a winning craft on my hands.
OK, so they’re not really the cutest things ever, but they definitely won me some “fun mom points” and that counts for something. I’m always on the lookout for fun, relatively easy crafts that we can make together, and if it involves recycled materials, all the better!
Here’s how we made them:
We started out by making the base out of newspaper, packing tape, and a couple of sticks from the yard.
We scrunched and wrapped the paper in tape around the stick until we had a pumpkinish shape.
If you’re having trouble locating the pumpkin shape in this picture, don’t worry. Kennedy and Chris are here to help.
We mixed up a solution of roughly 1 part white glue to 1 part water.
Kennedy got herself set up on the kitchen floor with some newspaper and paper towels strips and then got to work. She dipped each strip in the gluey water and smooshed it onto the pumpkin shape. Who doesn’t love the feeling of squishing glue between their fingers?
In the end, we had a couple of pumpkins that looked like this! We left them to dry on some plastic wrap for about 2 days, or until they were as hard as rock.
We used some orange and black paint to make them a little bit festive and that was it!
They don’t look half bad when they’re grouped together with a whole bunch of real pumpkins in the mudroom.
This little mini guy was my test pumpkin. You can see that if you want to take your time with them and make the paper towel strips a bit smoother, that you can actually get a pretty cute pumpkin out of this method.
…or you can just let your kids go nuts and make some great Halloween memories!
Have fun getting messy!
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.