Paint and free templates transform Halloween pumpkins into sweet and colorful frosted circus animal cookies. Fun no-carve idea for the whole family!
It’s been so long since we’ve done an animal cookie project here and I am missing them! (Although this trail mix recipe wasn’t long ago)…But an actual DIY? A while. And since my favorite animal cookie project we’ve ever done was for Halloween (my daughter’s first costume) I thought it’d be fun to circle back around to the frosted treats for this Hallow’s Eve.
Actually, these pumpkins were totally Malissa’s idea! But I stole them for myself because…I wanted them :D My porch is just full of colorful and whimsical pumpkins this year and I thought these would fit right in! And they do!
We are definitely not going to make it around to any other Halloween decorations this year (baby due to come SO SOON!) so this year will be the fun, silly side of Halloween and absolutely none of the spooky. Which is totally ok by me! I am a little sad that I don’t think we’re making it to any pumpkin patches or witch festivals though…I was really itching for some in September but now that we’re so close to baby I just don’t think we can spare the time!
Anyway, this no carve pumpkin idea is totally fun for kids and adults alike! Who wouldn’t like pink polka dot pumpkins? Honestly, they’d be cute at just that. But add on some animal details and they’re really over the top! But not over the top difficult. Super easy! I even made all the animal paper parts available to you for free below to print out! So click through to see the how-to and grab the templates for a lion, an elephant and I rhino.
Materials
- Pumpkins //
- Pink or white spray paint (I used this pink) //
- Craft paints in: red, sky blue, white, pink, purple, green, yellow and orange (all in this set) //
- Circular foam brushes (I used the 3 small ones from this set) //
- Black sharpie //
- Animal part templates //
- Glue (I used hot glue) //
- Pink or white tissue festooning (for lion)
Instructions
- Choose pumpkins that have stems matching the animals you need. Like a long twisted one for an elephants trunk. No stem for the lion (I used the underside of a pumpkin for that one) and a slightly up pointing one for the rhino.
- Paint your pumpkins pink or white.
- Draw on little animal faces. I chose a lion, rhino and elephant but you could choose whatever you wanted! Refer to the pictures to see what to draw.
- Using a circular brush, apply all the various colors of paint in dots all over the pumpkins. Make them look sprinkley and not too uniform!
I found the best way was to press down and twist in a circle then dab the brush a bit. Some of my colors needed second coats that I added with a small paintbrush. I also got all my colors on with just the 3 brushes. I just dabbed them off really well onto a piece of paper when I was done with that color and then used colors similar. (For example, one brush did white first, then yellow, then orange. Another did green, blue, then purple.) - Print out template. I used really small pumpkins so the template is sized appropriately for that. If you decide to scale up, just be sure to print the file out larger. There should be an option to do this in your print dialog box.
- Cut out the parts you need and attach to your pumpkins with glue. Attach festooning around lion’s head.
