Painted Pumpkins With DIY Chalk Paint

I didn’t have any chalk paint handy, so I decided to make my own. All you need is paint and baking powder! The idea of this is just to give your paint a bit of texture.

What you’ll need:

Pumpkins

Paint (2+ colors)

Baking powder

Paper towels

Step 1: Mix your chalk paint

I’ve seen a few different recipes for this online. Generally, recipes say 1 tsp of baking powder to 1 cup of paint. I didn’t measure anything though- I just mixed a little baking powder into my paint bowl at a time, until I was happy with the texture.

Step 2: Paint your pumpkins

First I removed the stems from each pumpkin. If you can’t do this, you can always cover them with painters tape. Then I used my chalk paint to give each pumpkin a solid base. I did two coats and let them dry overnight.

Step 3: Add dimension

Once they were dry, I took my second color (gray) and painted a thin line in each crease of the pumpkins. While it was still wet, I took a damp paper towel and wiped it away. You can leave as much or as little of the paint as you’d like. This step is just to give some dimension to the pumpkins.

At first, I made the mistake of using a dry paper towel, and it left way too much of the paint. I basically was left with striped pumpkins which looked horrible! I corrected this by mixing some white paint with water, and lightly painting over the each line. Would have been much easier to do it right the first time though.

Once they were all dry, I added the stems back in and styled them on our entryway table. This was a quick and easy $0 update for those bright orange pumpkins! They now match my house and fall decor much better and I'm very pleased.