Cardboard Pumpkin Halloween Craft
This is one of my favorite original ideas for a craft I’ve ever had! Last year I was looking at the dollar section of Target and was tempted to buy a cute cardboard pumpkin decoration. I looked at it and thought, “This looks simple enough, I can make this myself!” At the time, I used a cream cheese box in the center, staples to attach the strips of cardboard, a wine cork for the stem, and scrapbook paper for the leaves.
This fall, I wanted to make another one because I have perfected my method. This craft is even easy enough to do with your kids. So, I put together this photo tutorial to show you how!
The first step is to cut up a large piece of cardboard into two inch strips. I used a frozen pizza box–love ALDI grocery store–because it is a light weight, bendable cardboard. This project won’t work with thick cardboard.
After you’ve cut up all your strips of cardboard (approximately 16-20), gather an empty toilet paper roll. As you may recall, I’m pretty good at making adorable crafts out of toilet paper rolls.
Next, use a hot glue gun to glue the strips of cardboard to the toilet paper roll from the inside of the cylinder on both the top and bottom. This part is where I used a rectangular cream cheese box and staples the first time and it didn’t turn out as well.
This is what it looks like when you finish gluing strips on. I liked the space between the strips. But, you could keep adding more strips if desired. You could also just cut the strips of cardboard thicker than two inches in the beginning.
The next step was to spray paint. I picked gold metallic and love how it turned out! I was able to spray between the strips of cardboard to get the inside painted as well. I stuffed the middle cylinder left open from the toilet paper roll with leftover cardboard. Then I hot glued in a piece of potpourri for the stem. You could use a large wine cork or paint a spice container cap as other options.
The first time I made a cardboard pumpkin last year, I painted each strip with acrylic paint by hand because I didn’t have orange spray paint. Let me tell you, buy spray paint the right color instead of doing it by hand. It is 1000x faster and dries almost instantly!
This is my new gold pumpkin pictured next to the orange one I made last year. Now it was time to add them into my decor!
These pumpkins perch on the old ladder in my front door entrance decorations. They are not super waterproof, but I have them under an eve so I haven’t had a problem. Plus, you can reuse them year after year. This craft only took me 50 minutes and would be perfect to try with your kids!
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my pumpkin Halloween craft enough to pin and share it.
