Our No-Carve, Glow-in-the-Dark Halloween Pumpkins

Confession: The smell of pumpkin guts makes Brian want to puke. Because of this issue, last year was the first year in our entire relationship that we’ve ever carved pumpkins together. (Brian claims to love Halloween and yet doesn’t participate in the pumpkin carving tradition, but I digress…) He made it through last year’s carving with a facemask and lavender scent but this year we decided to try something different and try completely no-carve pumpkins.

Here’s what we used to create them:

1 can white matte spray paint
1 can black matte spray paint
1 can metallic gold spray paint
1 can teal spray paint
1 small container black chalk paint (for Jack Skellington face)
1 package glow in the dark paint in squeezable tubes
Online printables (for C-3PO and Jack Skellington patterns)

We prepped all the pumpkins first by painting them, which took less than an hour including dry time. I failed and forgot to take pictures, but it did leave nice “crop circles” in our front yard, which will probably be there until spring. 🙂

For the pumpkins in which we just wanted words, we created word patterns in Photoshop, which was really easy. We just measured the approximate size we wanted it to be on the pumpkin and created the template accordingly in Photoshop. Then we were off and running.

To trace the pattern on the pumpkin we held the pattern on the pumpkin and used a pencil to trace the word and make an indentation into the wall of the pumpkin. We had to be careful not to press too hard, however, so it didn’t rip the paint off.

Once the patterns were traced on, the rest of the painting was easy. We just followed the lines and painted in them where necessary.

(The picture below is a bit misleading – we did the Jack Skellington pumpkin the same was as mentioned above the second time around. The photo below is the first attempt that failed and that we had to wash off the pumpkin, so don’t try that at home!)