DIY Vintage Clown Pumpkins – Decorating with Paper and Paint!
Decorate pumpkins with paper and paint to look like spooky vintage clowns!

Hello! It has been a while since I have carved pumpkins so I decided to decorate some fake ones this year instead. I love how my DIY Vintage Clown Pumpkins turned out! The best part – I only paint and paper!
I opted to buy fake white pumpkins I can reuse year to year and painted them instead! I purposefully kept my painted design to just one side of the pumpkin so I can re-use the other side of the pumpkins for Thanksgiving decorations!
I purchased three white pumpkins on sale for just $5 each at Michael’s craft store. I have tons of circus research saved from a project I did years ago, so I thought making vintage clowns would be fun!
Materials Needed for DIY Vintage Clown Pumpkins:
- Pumpkins! Fake or real
- Paint (I used acrylic paint)
- Paper – different colors and patterns
- Buttons
- Yarn
- Scissors, tape, glue gun
- Fabric trim
The Process
I created the clown pumpkin accessories out of paper – it was economical and works with the vintage feel I was going for. I made things up as I went trying to figure out new ways to manipulate the paper to look like ruffs and bows. For the hats I cut a half circle and wrapped them up, using tape to secure them. I added yarn pom-pons to the top and buttons down the front. Pleating a thin strip of paper worked well to add to the bottom of the hat using a glue gun.
For the ruffs I tried a couple different things – folding the fabric into accordion pleats and also cutting into small pieces and looping it. I used tape wherever I knew it wouldn’t be seen.
Once I had the paper accessories created, I painted clown faces on the front of the pumpkins using my orange and black paints. I did not attach any of my paper accessories to the pumpkins since I want to reuse the pumpkins in a different capacity, but you could hot-glue them on so they don’t move if knocked.
Happy Halloween!!!
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