75 Easy and Creative Pumpkin Decorating Ideas for Halloween
Say goodbye to the messiness of pumpkin carving, and hello to these easy no-carve designs.
Jack-o'-lanterns may be a classic Halloween decoration, but there's no denying that pumpkin carving can be tricky, messy, and even a little dangerous. If you're worried about your kids handling sharp tools (or you simply don't have the time to deal with scooping out pumpkin guts), then you'll be glad to know that there are plenty of pumpkin decorating ideas that don't involve a carving knife. In fact, all you need to pull off our favorite no-carve pumpkin designs is an uncarved pumpkin, a bucket full of craft supplies, and a little inspiration to help get you started.
From painted pumpkins that would fit right in at a modern Halloween wedding, to funny pumpkin faces that kids will love creating, adults and children alike will love these easy, no-carve pumpkin decorations. So, what can you use to decorate a pumpkin? Pom poms, paint, glitter, fake spiders, cobwebs, twinkle lights, rickrack — you can use pretty much anything to decorate your gourds this fall. The sky's the limit when it comes to this classic Halloween craft.
Ready to create a work of art? Ahead, you'll find all kinds of ideas for decorating both big and mini pumpkins, whether you're up for some light carving work or just want to keep it simple with a few well-placed stickers.
Candy Jar Mini Pumpkins
Fill clear jars with candy. Decorate small to medium pumpkins with rickrack, googly eyes, buttons, felt, and zippers to create features and wardrobe. Use pins and hot glue to attach. For baseball cap, cut a 1½-inch Styrofoam ball in half. Cut four to five white felt triangles to form dome and a semicircle for brim. Attach with glue and add rickrack for embellishment.
Owl Pumpkin Stack
Stack two French heirloom pumpkins atop one another, and create eyes with pine cones. Finish it off with some leaves for feathers.
Button Candy Corn Pumpkins
Cut the tops off of two larger pumpkins, then stack them atop one another. Top them off with a smaller pumpkin, stem still attached. Grab your glue gun, and start attaching various sizes of buttons to create the shape of a piece of candy corn across all three gourds.
Mummy Dearest Pumpkin
Though this cool little design does require a little cutting, it's not technically carving. Start by painting your pumpkin white (unless you bought a white pumpkin, in which case, go on to the next step). Draw any sort of wrap design on it, and then etch the lines with a linoleum-cutting tool. Glue googly eyes onto a couple white pong balls and draw red veins. Finally, cut out the eye sockets so that the balls fit inside.
Floral Band Pumpkins
Use painter's tape to outline several vertical stripes or one thick horizontal stripe on your pumpkin, then use floral stencils and craft paint to fill in those spots with bold colors.
Black Widow Pumpkin
Few creatures are as Halloween-y as spiders with all of their eight-legged creepiness. Use tweezers and the adhesive to secure the sequins to the pumpkin.
"Hello Fall" Decal Pumpkin
Keep your Halloween decoration out for a little longer with this fall-friendly decal that you can just stick on a pumpkin.
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Rad in Plaid Pumpkins
Fall means there's plaid just about everywhere, and that includes your pumpkins! Get yourself some orange and white pumpkins and use duct tape to paint on the cozy designs.
Spooky and Sparkly Pumpkin
Hot-glue three long strips of ¼-inch glittered ribbon to a medium white pumpkin to create radial threads of web. Measure, cut, and glue 12 shorter ribbon strips to complete the web. For spider legs, cut eight 1-inch to 1½-inch pieces of 12-gauge gold aluminum wire; bend each and hot-glue to a ¾-inch gold stud for the spider body. Hot-glue spider body in place and add a small stud for the spider head.
Colorful Vine Pumpkin
Start off by painting a long, looping vine all over your pumpkin. Then, use a variety assortment of floral and leaf stencils to cover it with flowers and leaves.
What a Hoot Pumpkin
Place a smaller green pumpkin on a larger green pumpkin. Hot-glue on leaves and pine cones for eyes, brows, wings, and breastplate, and a popcorn kernel for each pupil.
Bat Tree Pumpkin
Use gold permanent marker to draw tree on tall white pumpkin. Add bat stickers, and you're golden!
Floral Monogram Pumpkins
To start, draw thick block letters on each pumpkin and outline them with painter's tape. Then tape flower stencils inside the letters and use a foam stippler to dab paint onto the pumpkin to fill in the stencil. Only remove the tape once the paint is dry.
Candy Clown Pumpkins
Make these candy cuties by hot-gluing pieces of Halloween candy to mini white pumpkins. Make the feet and ears out of foam sheets.
Subtle Shimmer Pumpkins
For a sophisticated front porch display, or romantic altar decorations for a fall wedding, arrange uncarved pumpkins of various sizes on steps and in terracotta pots. Cover a select few with glitter blast spray paint.
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Troll Pumpkins
For this motley crew, bumpy, odd-shaped gourds take center stage. To make eyeballs, cut small Styrofoam balls in half, then hot-glue hard candy in the center; attach with pins or hot glue. Hollow out gourds for ears. Use twigs for teeth and legs.
Splatter Paint Pumpkins
Keep it low key with a simple arrangement of white pumpkins splattered with gold paint, arrange atop wheat on your mantel. Paint the stems gold, too, for an extra sparkling touch.
Toothpick Hedgehog Pumpkin
Turn a squash into a cute little hedgehog by sticking toothpicks all over the top. Add tiny acorns for eyes and a nose.
Scaredy Cat Pumpkin
Mark off the eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and whiskers of a cat on an orange pumpkin with painter's tape. Cover the rest with black acrylic paint. Let dry, then remove the tape to reveal.
Button Spider Pumpkins
Decorate your pumpkins with creepy crawly spiders made of buttons and pipe cleaners. For an extra pop of color, sew red string into the spider backs before gluing the body onto the pumpkin.
Lauren (she/her) is the digital content director of the Hearst Lifestyle Group, where she oversees online content and strategy for Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day and other Hearst titles, including SEO, video, social media and e-commerce efforts. She has almost 20 years of experience writing and editing beauty, lifestyle, home, health, entertainment and product review content. She graduated from NYU with a degree in journalism and history.
Corinne Sullivan is an Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers a variety of beats, including lifestyle, entertainment, relationships, shopping, and more. She can tell you everything you need to know about the love lives of A-listers, the coziest bedsheets, and the sex toys actually worth your $$$. She is also the author of the 2018 novel Indecent. Follow her on Instagram for cute pics of her pup and bébé.
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