Five Easy Ways To Decorate Mini Pumpkins By Bumble and Bustle

Fun fact: living in the city, in a teeny-tiny one-bedroom apartment, I have virtually no storage. So for most holidays, my decorations are minimal – I have a 2 ft Christmas tree that I shove on the top shelf of my closet in the off season and that’s literally it. I love the idea of decorating for Halloween, but don’t want to spend a lot of money on stuff I have no place to store. Enter: mini pumpkins! Today, I’m sharing five ways to decorate mini pumpkins that are both budget friendly and extremely easy.

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: The Supplies

To start, I purchased 24 mini pumpkins at my local farmer’s market for $20. You definitely wouldn’t need that many – I purchased a large quantity since I was decorating in a few styles and I wasn’t sure what would work.

All of the craft supplies except for the cute cocktail napkins I bought for this were existing supplies I had at home. Because the pumpkins are so small, they take very little paint. I recognize that not everyone may have paint and mod podge on hand, but these are inexpensive if you don’t!

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: The Nail Polish Dip

I found this awesome tutorial from Alice & Lois on using nail polish to create a marbled effect on your mini pumpkin. They used a pretty indigo color, but I was thinking something a little spookier. The color I went with is a very dark charcoal with lots of sparkles in it. Part of this selection had to do with the fact that I barely ever actually wear this color, so I didn’t mind donating it to the decorating cause.

You can use the link above to see the full tutorial and directions, but essentially you start by putting water in a plastic bowl (one you don’t mind throwing away – I used a Tupperware that was missing a lid). Then, slowly pour some nail polish in the bowl and use a toothpick to swirl it around some. Finally, dip your pumpkin in the water and the nail polish will transfer over.

Pro tip: Be careful handling the pumpkins – even hours later – if there are spots where a lot of nail polish built up. I ruined a brand-new shirt this way. Yay.

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: Just Paint

It really doesn’t get easier than this. I love color – my whole apartment is filled with pinks and greens and lots of turquoise. I wanted some brightly colored pumpkins, so I literally just took a few colors of craft paint and slapped it on. Took 2 coats, but probably only ten minutes total time – not counting a break for the first coat to dry.

The color scheme options are endless here!

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: Gold Drip

Just barely a step up from the paint idea is doing a gold drip on a painted pumpkin. It’s hard to tell in the photos, but first I spray-painted the pumpkins with a very pale blush pink color. After that dried, I took gold craft paint and painted just the top of the pumpkins. Then, I took the paint tube itself and poured a line around the pumpkin at the widest point, so the paint spilled over the edge and down the sides.

These are actually my favorite of the bunch and are the ones I’ll keep on my desk this season. I think if I were to do these again, I would make sure the gold was an extra shiny paint as the one I was using was a little flat. You could also go for some creative color combos here – black paint with a gold drip would look awesome!

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: Mod Podged Napkins

During my research for this project, I came across a tutorial from Popcosmo on how to make a Lilly Pulitzer pumpkin. Ummm, yes, sign me up for this one. It used cocktail napkins adhered to the pumpkins via mod podge. I wasn’t able to find Lilly napkins, but found some other fun colorful ones instead.

I think this one definitely takes a higher skill level as I had a really tough time getting patterns to line up. Maybe different napkins would have looked better. I still think they’re a cute pop of color, just not as impressive as the original.

Pro tip: Each mini pumpkin required two napkins worth of paper, so do the math before you buy to make sure you have enough!

Decorate Mini Pumpkins: Glitter Paint

Okay, I love love love a glitter pumpkin, but no way was I unleashing craft herpes in my apartment for this. So, I tried using some glitter paint instead. No muss no fuss, but it did take a few coats to get this to be really opaque.

Pro Tip: The lighter colored green really didn’t pop enough. Make sure you’re using a glitter paint that is saturated with glitter (as opposed to just having flecks of it throughout) and a darker color will be easier to work with.