Fake Pumpkins for Fall

This idea was inspired by 2 different things I saw on Pinterest. Apparently I’m late to the game – there are a ton of people who knew you could make fake pumpkins out of grocery bags! I wasn’t exactly going for real-looking pumpkins with mine, so I used the basic instructions I found combined with another idea for how to decorate them. And, my kids helped, so this was a fun way to make decorations for Fall that we all can take some credit for. Best of all – it cost me practically nothing!

Step 1: Stuff and bundle grocery bags. We have an embarrassing pile of plastic grocery bags in our garage, waiting to be taken for recycling. Now for this project, I was glad we had them! Taking one bag, I fluffed up a bunch of others and stuffed them inside. For 3 of my pumpkins, I also added an empty, cleaned gallon jug to fill some space. You could add newspaper too, or packing paper – whatever will fill the main bag and still let it be squishy around the sides.

Once I had a bag full and generally sphere-like, I tied the top handles together so this could become the stem layer.

Step 2: Wrap to make dividing grooves and stems. I tried to make pumpkin grooves a few different ways.

For one pumpkin, I used painters tape. Starting at the top “stem” (which I wrapped in tape to create), I put on a long strip of tape and held it tightly near the stem, then ran it down and around the bottom of the bag. I did this a few more times around to make dividing sections around the bag. This worked okay but didn’t make as obvious grooves as other methods.

For another pumpkin, I used twine to make the grooves. I tied it around the stem, then wrapped it down and around the bottom of the bag, spacing it a bit and wrapping it around and around until I had a bunch of denting divides. This was my favorite look and worked the best, in my option. When I was happy with it, I tied off the twine at the stem again.

Unfortunately, I ran out of twine, so next I tried fine, clear fishing line for the last 2 pumpkins. This worked okay but slipped around a lot more than the twine had done. It was also harder to tie off and keep tight. But, it worked pretty well to make a lot of deep grooves.

As I’d done for the first pumpkin, I used painters tape to make the other pumpkins’ stems. Holding up the tied handles, I wrapped the tape around the handles to make a stiff, single stem. You can bend these a little bit to give the stems different shapes sticking out the top of your pumpkins.

Step 3: Paper mache the pumpkins. I’ve seen a lot of paper mache recipes that use flour, but that seemed kinda gross to me and I didn’t want a mess. 🤷‍♀️ Instead, I took about a spoonful of joint compound and stirred it around to dissolve in a bowl of water. If you don’t have joint compound, you could use glue – just be use you get the mixture right so that it sticks and hardens when dry.

You also normally use paper/newspaper, but I used sturdy paper towel. This worked really well because it was pliable and also had a nice texture. Be sure to use a good, thick paper towel so it doesn’t fall apart when wet, though.

After ripping the paper towel into smaller strips, I dipped each strip in the bowl’s mixture, let it drip off against the side of the bowl, and then stuck it on the pumpkin/grocery bag. I made sure to push the paper towel down into the dividing groves around the pumpkin to keep that shape.

It worked really well to set the grocery bag on a whole paper towel to catch the excess water – once this was wet enough, I flipped the pumpkin and used that paper towel to covered the bottom side of the bag. I then added a layer of paper towel strips around the edges of that bottom piece to help it stay on and also blend the edges.

Once I had the whole bag covered, I added a few strips over places where some edges didn’t stay flat. A good trick was to make sure all sides of my strips were ripped so that the wet edges really blended in. This looked better than leaving the paper towel strips with straight, blunt edges.

Step 4: Dry and paint stems. I set my pumpkins in the sun to help them dry, but mine still took overnight to completely dry and harden. The joint compound on the paper towels makes them just stiff enough to hold the pumpkin solid so that you can work with a harder surface for the following steps.

Step 5: Paint the pumpkins. Because you’re painting paper towel, little acrylic paints work just fine. One pumpkin I wanted to have a white base, so that one was easy to paint white, barely brighter than the dried paper towel was naturally anyway.

Another pumpkin I painted with a “realistic” orange , then added some brown touches in the groves.

The remaining 2 pumpkins were claimed by my daughters…and I let them go nuts since I planned to mostly cover these anyway. 😁 They had fun, and the reds and yellows in particular added a cool touch to the end result.

Also, to finish the stems, I took a dark brown paint and painted each stem, covering the blue painters tape.

You don’t have to paint the pumpkins if you’re going to cover them, but I thought it was a good idea to do so in case anything showed through in the end. (I also considered painting a pumpkin in a light brown, since the paper towel looked a lot like burlap – so that’s another option if you’d like to try it for me and see how it looks! lol)

Step 6: Cover the pumpkins in…

For my white pumpkin, I took an enormous, dried hydrangea that I’d spray painted with a rose gold paint last Fall. Pulling off a bunch of individual petals, I glued them on one at a time all over the pumpkin. I even took a few of the dried leaves from the hydrangea and added those around the stem. This option took a lot of time, but it looks really pretty!

For my “realistic” orange pumpkin, I took a lovely tissue paper and cut it up into strips that I then glued onto the pumpkin. Yes, I covered the whole thing, but I’m glad I painted the pumpkin because you can slightly see through the tissue, and this way the pumpkin looks like the real thing. Once I had all the tissue paper on, I added a little strip of burlap tied around the stem for an added decorative touch.

For my girls’ pumpkins, we headed outside and collected a whole bunch of fallen leaves. This was quite fun. We brought them inside and set them on paper towels to dry, and I placed a paper towel over them along with plates on top to keep them flat.

Taking the biggest leaves first, I spread a little hot glue around the edges and then pressed them onto the pumpkins, pushing them especially into the groves to keep the pumpkin shape as much as I could. I put mostly green leaves down first, then added the prettiest orange and red leaves on top, layering them like a collage.

Fun fact: if you spread hot glue on wet, green leaves, they make a smell like cooked spinach. 🤣🤣🤣 I learned after a while to turn the glue gun off if it got too hot, and it was much less painful on my hands to press the leaves on if the glue wasn’t so hot.

Because I didn’t want all their painting efforts to be lost, I left a few gaps where the red or yellow or even blue paint could show through. Much to my surprise, these leaf-covered pumpkins ended up being my favorite.

All finished, here were the end results:

There are a LOT of ways you could decorate these fake pumpkins. Let me know what you come up with! I ended up putting mine on the top of my kitchen cabinets for some added Fall decor, but you could use them as centerpieces on a dining table or on a mantle or on bookshelves – anywhere they’d look nice! It’s great that they won’t rot like real pumpkins, so all our crafty efforts might even be enjoyed next year.

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