Since Ella has an October birthday, I thought pumpkins would be a fun addition to her enchanted forest party. But I hate the color orange! So I knew I wanted to paint them my favorite pastel shades. At first I was going to use real pumpkins, but then I found these pumpkins at The Dollar Tree and Target– and they were perfect! The pumpkins from The Dollar Store are styrofoam so you have to be a little careful so they don’t get marked up but a lot of their imperfections can be easily covered by the paint.

Here’s what you’ll need:

pumpkins

paint

gold spray paint

brushes

kitchen gloves

First, I wiped the pumpkins down just to make sure the paint would go on smoothly. Then I took the gold spray paint and sprayed all the stems.

I did this first because you can’t control the spray paint as well and I knew I could paint over the extra gold parts on the top. Definitely wear gloves for this part!

After letting it dry (it dries pretty quickly but stays sticky for a while so wait longer than you think is necessary), it’s ready to paint! I used chalk paint so I had to stir it a little bit before starting.

It’s super easy! I would paint the tops and the sides, wait for those to dry, and then turn them over and paint the bottoms. It took a few coats to cover all the imperfections and make sure there was no orange showing through. But it was easy enough that Ella could help.

This was such an easy and effective DIY project. The paint made these super inexpensive pumpkins look so much nicer. I even spray painted some of them completely gold just for a bold pop.

I love how these turned out. They made the dessert table at Ella’s party look super lush.

And now that the party is over, they’re the perfect fall decor for my personal style. (No orange allowed)

xo

eb