Are you carving or painting this year?? One of our favourite times of the year is when we get to decorate pumpkins! Our boys absolutely love this spooky season and every year we try to combine our Doodlemoo designs with Halloween to make some fun pumpkin designs.

Last year’s pumpkins got so much attention and were re shared lots on social media. This year they were featured in Parade magazine as one of 26 best pumpkins to make, you can read the article here. When designing this year’s pumpkins its really felt like the pressure was on!

So here are some tips and details of the materials we used to achieve our vibrant colours and great coverage:

TIP 1 ~ We aim to find a variety of sized pumpkins and gourds and try to figure out what best suits each shape. This year we've found some ghost gourds that are so good that we've just left them bare and painted just little details, like eyes or a mouth. If you have a rough idea of what you want to make then that can inform what shape and size you buy or sometimes its best to improvise and be inspired by the odd shapes they come in.

TIP 2 ~ What paint to use for pumpkin decorations. We find that just using wall paint can work really well. We use any left over wall paint we have or tester pots we have around. We also combine these with the acrylic paints we have for the kids painting activities. It helps to have a bit of a colour scheme in mind, unless you’re going for something really multi colourful. We had quite a lot of pink paint left from the show we did a few months ago so that gave us lots of different shades to use on the pumpkins. Pink features a lot in our brand so that’s the main colour we wanted to go for, then black and also teal. We left the ghost gourds naked as their whitish look is too gourd to be painted!

TIP 3 ~ Tool yourself up with lots of different sized brushes, this will allow you to do all sorts of details. Make sure you have plenty of time to let them dry, you can't do them all in one go, we usually take about two/three days. Its important to let them dry well and you might need a couple of coats. We have painted a black and white lightning bolt on our teal pumpkin and had to make sure it had dried really well to ensure the new colours looked good. Acrylics usually dry very quickly so are better for details, and should you make any mistakes don't worry, just let it dry and go over it again with the base colour. Most of all be patient!

TIP 4 ~ If like us, you want some of your pumpkins to have details then you can use stickers, or cut some paper to stick on and paint on. In ours we decided to print a few elements on sticker paper, like some lips and letters. Last year we painted a mouth on one and found it a bit tricky, so we decided to use stickers this time. You will need a steady hand and some patience. If this is the effect you are after then you can download our Sticker sheet here

TIP 5 ~ Make sure you have fun! Remember anything goes, if you feel colourful then paint them like a rainbow, or you can go monochrome, with lots of different tones of one colour. We love painting and decorating pumpkins with our two boys. They really enjoy painting pumpkins as much as carving them for Halloween and can't wait to put them outside to make the house all spooky.

So what will you make this year?

Oh and if you get bored you can turn them into plant pots! we did these last year and they looked so good!

Don't forget to share your creations with us and tag us on socials. Instagram @doodle_moo and Twitter @Doodlemoo