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!!!