Tips for painting pumpkins: faux and real

Do you have some old ugly faux pumpkins laying around? Don’t throw them away, you can transform them with paint! Here are some tips for painting pumpkins.

I am back for the second part of my three part pumpkin tutorial. In part one, I showed you how to make fabric pumpkins (like the gingham ones in the picture below) and part three will be a finger knitted yarn pumpkin. Today I will give you tips for painting pumpkins. I painted both faux and real pumpkins this year and will be giving you some pointers for both.

How to paint faux pumpkins

We will start off with faux pumpkins. I loved painting my faux pumpkins. First, because I had some old ones around and I hated the color of them. I bought them when white pumpkins first started becoming popular but they were more of a yellow than cream or white. I never really used them so they were the perfect ones to use as guinea pigs. 🙂 I think they look 100% better!

The next reason why I loved to paint them is because they were so easy to paint. The paint went on easily and dried quickly. Another bonus is that I can paint them again in the future if I get tired of the color I painted them. Let’s get to the tips for painting faux pumpkins:

1. Use two different sized brushes.

If you need to paint around the stem, it is going to be hard to do that with a big brush. To eliminate paint all over the stem and to get right up next to it, use a small brush for that detail work.

Then finish the rest of the pumpkin with a bigger brush. It will speed up the process.

2. Paint two coats.

One coat will look too splotchy. The faux pumpkins were easy enough to hold by the stem to paint the whole thing at one time. By the time I was painting the bottom, the top was almost dry so I laid them upside down to dry the rest of the way. Let the pumpkin dry completely before painting the second coat.

3. Use MATTE acrylic or chalk paint

I tried both on my faux pumpkins and honestly I did not notice a difference between the two kinds of paints. They both went on easily and dried quickly. The acrylic paint is the less expensive option of the two so in my opinion, save yourself some money and go with acrylic. The one thing I did notice however was make sure to use a matte finish. I had this green semi-gloss acrylic paint around and thought it would be fine. I did not like the sheen it gave to the faux pumpkins but of course that is a personal opinion.

4. Use shading on your colored pumpkins to make them look more realistic.

I did not do this on the white pumpkins that I painted, I felt it was unnecessary. For the green pumpkins, I used a darker green (Apple Barrel Moss Green) mixed with the light green color to shade the ribs (the indented lines) on the pumpkins. Just follow along the ribs with your smaller brush and fan it out slightly. Don’t worry, it does not have to be perfect!

Then using the bigger brush, I LIGHTLY dry brushed on some of the antique white paint. In addition to adding some shading, this also helped to cut down some of the glossiness.

I also painted a dark green pumpkin with the Moss green color. You can see it here in the back.

I will be for sure painting more faux pumpkins in the future! I loved the transformation I got and how easy it was. Also they did not take long to paint, I did these in one evening, while watching TV!

How to paint real pumpkins

The real pumpkins were a little harder to do. While you are able to paint real pumpkins, there are a couple other things you need to take into consideration. I started by painting some mini orange pumpkins green like the one below.

These smaller pumpkins were fairly easy to paint. I used chalk paint for these mini pumpkins and again did not notice much difference from acrylic that I used on some bigger pumpkins. I have read that you should not use spray paint on a real pumpkin as it does not let the pumpkin breathe and the pumpkin might explode!? While I don’t know if that is true, I was not willing to risk it! Ha!

Just like with the faux pumpkins, I used 2 different size brushes, although bigger versions for these bigger pumpkins.

I found some gigantic orange pumpkins at Walmart this year for $4 each! However, I wanted to put some white pumpkins outside this year but did not want to pay the bigger price tag for them. So I figured I could paint the orange monster pumpkins! Here are my tips for painting real pumpkins:

1. Wash your pumpkins

Since real pumpkins grow in the ground, they are bound to have dirt on them that will not let your paint adhere to the surface. You can use a little bleach when washing them to help them last longer. I just used soap and water for these. Look how big they are! Our farmhouse sink is pretty deep and these still barley fit in there!

2. Lay a towel or better yet, parchment paper, underneath the pumpkins.

I originally laid a towel under the pumpkins but later used parchment paper so when I had to lay the pumpkin on it’s side to paint the bottom, the paint on the pumpkin would not stick to the counter top and rub off.

3. Use a latex primer first

First off, I need to tell you that I did not do this. I did some research after the fact of painting pumpkins to find out how to avoid some of the issues that I had. So, I can’t say that this works for sure but I read that it helps to give the paint something to stick to. The biggest problem with painting real pumpkins is their waxy surface. While the paint does adhere to it, it is EASILY scratched off. I experienced this with both the mini pumpkins and the big pumpkins.

The hardest part was trying to paint over a previously painted portion or in doing a second coat. If the first coat was not completely dry, the paint brush would rub off the first coat. To get around this, I made sure I had plenty of paint on the brush and tried not to go over an area too much.

This picture shows half of a second coat but you can see some areas where the first coat came off. This was easily touched up later when the pumpkin was completely dry but made it a little bit of a pain in the painting process. I could see where the primer could potentially help this.

4. Let the pumpkins dry overnight before painting the bottom.

I did not want to risk the paint chipping off by laying it on it’s side too soon after painting it, so I let them dry overnight. Looking good so far right?

I did not completely paint the bottom since you would not see that anyway.

Here is my last and most important tip for painting real pumpkins:

5. DO NOT put them outside in freezing temperatures!

Okay, this one I learned from experience. We have had a really cold October this year and it got below freezing the other night. I had not gotten pictures taken of the pumpkins outside yet and literally when we went outside to take some pictures for this post, we discovered this.

Noooooo!!!! I was so bummed! The freezing temps must have expanded the pumpkins and cracked the paint!! The other side was not too bad so you can get the idea of how good they looked previously. 🙁

Now I have pumpkins that have white paint chipping off of them!! Ugh! Well, you live and you learn. On the bright side, I guess this is a way to achieve a crackled look if that is what you want! 😉 I did also have the mini green pumpkins in a lantern on the front porch, but those are surviving fine so far! It is probably because of their smaller size, less to expand? Or they may be sheltered enough from the lantern.

I think I will be sticking to painting faux pumpkins in the future, or leaving real painted pumpkins indoors. If you live in a less cold climate, these would work just fine. They were outside for several weeks previous to this and even survived rain so I don’t think you should have an issue. Hopefully these tips for painting pumpkins will help you! Let me know if you try the primer tip and how it works out for you! Hopefully you have better luck!