Raise your hand if you love Halloween! I hope your hand is up because I'm going to share some fun and easy no-carve ways to turn your pumpkins into amazing masterpieces. You'll be the envy of the neighborhood when you display these no-carve pumpkins outside of your house.
The best part? Your kids will also be able to help with these no-carve pumpkins! The whole thing about "no carve" is that there are no sharp knives for them to want to grab and no messy goop for you to clean up!
Your kids will have a blast showing off their creativity and putting their personal stamp on their no-carve pumpkins. You can encourage them to show off their design skills and personalities in their handiwork -- all while creating Halloween memories as a family!
What you'll need to create pumpkins like ours
You can use any type of decorations you want, of course, but here's what we used to make ours:
- Glow in the dark puffy paint
- Push pins
- Googly eyes of various sizes
- Crayons, with wrappers removed
- A hairdryer
- Hot glue gun
Decorating tips!
Get outside.
I recommend working on the melted Crayon pumpkin outdoors or somewhere where you and your kids have a lot of room to make a mess. This process was a bit messier than I anticipated and the crayon splattered everywhere.
Glue the crayons onto the pumpkin.
I know this because I tried it without doing that and the hairdryer quickly blew the crayons off. Oops!
This is a job for a hot glue gun.
You'll also want to use a pretty strong adhesive. Good ol' white school glue wasn't quite strong enough to hold the crayons or the googly eyes in place. A hot glue gun or another similar strong adhesive is probably best. (Put it on the warm setting and supervise young kids!)
Teachable moment:
Talk to your kids about the colors that form from the melting crayons as they drip together on the pumpkin.
With a little creativity, you can make no-carve pumpkins with your kids -- without ever opening the knife drawer! Have a great Halloween!
Jamie Clark is the publisher of Macaroni Kid Roanoke, Va.
