No Mess (but still cute) Pumpkins

I love decorated pumpkins. I HATE gutting them. Eewww, gross, never liked it as a kid and my own kids hate it now. But decorated pumpkins are fun!

Enter adhesive felt.

I started doing this last year and it worked so beautifully. The kids can draw whatever picture they want (on regular or construction paper) to decorate their pumpkin face and cut the shape out.



Then you turn it face down on the adhesive backing and trace with a marker.



Cut out your shape, remove the backing and stick on the pumpkin. You can layer felt on top of felt which is what I did here for the eyes and later for the tongue and teeth.



If you want to add hair to your pumpkin you can make it really cute with pipe cleaners. Just twist them around the stem of the pumpkin...



And style to suit



You can add ears with the felt too. Just make a little tab that will stick to the pumpkin in front of the ear (only remove the backing from the tab, not from the actual ear)...



And place a tab on the back to help it stick out



Want arms? My daughter came up with this idea and I really love it. Shape your hands out of pipe cleaners and use a piece of the felt to hold it on. I found it helps if you wrap it around the felt a bit to help it stay up.



Shape your arms and say hi!



And voila! When the kids are done you will have some cute little pumpkin families!





And after Halloween? Since you didn't actually carve these, the felt can be peeled off after the holiday and you have pretty pumpkins still for fall that didn't rot because they weren't cut. Last year these lasted past Thanksgiving and I bought them 3 weeks before Halloween. I think you could probably even keep the felt and stick it on a piece of wax paper if you have a face you want to reuse next year.

Here's a link to the pumpkins from last year.