Concrete Pumpkins for a fun Halloween

Having just discovered how fun and easy it is to work with concrete, Steph thought a plastic pumpkin would make a great concrete mold.The advantage for those of us living in warm to hot autumn weather is a concrete pumpkin will not rot and can be left out all October. Win!

All of these pumpkins start with a mold made from a $1 plastic pumpkin. Seems like these are in every big box store you go into these days! We picked up three (purple of course).

Materials/Tools

• $1 plastic pumpkin
• Plastic cup (we used a red Solo cup)
• 50lb bag Concrete, cement, or mortar
• Pam or a generic cooking spray or a silicone spray
• Water
• Trowel or mixing spoon (we used a kid’s sand shovel)
• Scissors, utility knife
• Face mask, disposable gloves

Optional:

• If you’re going to sift the rocks out of your concrete, you’ll need a basket (like for frying food) and a flour sifter. (watch how to do that here)
• Stain/paint
• Cement add-in colorant (this is added along with the water)
• Plant, candles

Let’s get started. First things first, put on the mask and gloves. Concrete/cement products create lots of fine dust—you don’t want to breathe that stuff in and the product is very drying to your hands—protect them with gloves.

Cut the handle off the bucket.

Using the Pam, cooking spray, or silicone, spray the outside of the cup and inside the pumpkin, set aside (this will help the plastic release from the concrete once it’s cured).

Mix up the concrete, cement, or mortar. For the orange pumpkin, we used concrete in which we sifted out the rocks. We used mortar for the other two. Slowly add water to the concrete and mix until all is well mixed. Err on the side of too little water than too much. You want a mixture about the consistency of brownie batter.

Add concrete mixture to pumpkin.

Gently tap pumpkin on the ground or table to bring air bubbles to the surface—continue mixing up concrete and adding to the pumpkin until nearly even with the top.

Center the cup and push down into the center of the pumpkin opening. Remove any excess concrete that oozes out the top sides.

Cover with plastic wrap and place a large, heavy, flat object on top to keep the cup from floating up out of place.

Leave undisturbed for at least 20+ hours.

Use the utility knife to cut through the plastic to remove.

Let dry another 24 hours before painting or staining.

Orange Pumpkin: stained with DecoArt Color stain. This pumpkin does double duty as a plant pot. That’s an oregano plant that makes the fun hair.

Waxed Pumpkin: This had a concrete terra cotta colorant added to the concrete/water mix. We dripped three colors of candles onto it. It does double duty as a candle holder.

Blue Pumpkin: This guy was painted with Rust-Oleum Lagoon spray paint and his face is painted with DecoArt Chalky finish paint. It does double duty as a non-candy holder to bring awareness of those little ones that have food allergies. This one is very close to us as my two grandsons have to be mindful of what they eat everyday—both have different food allergies. ​

We love how our three concrete pumpkins turned out!

Please note: We are not sponsored by any of the companies/products that we used. These products were picked and bought by us.

FYI: We are not professionals, and we don’t claim to be. This is what we found worked for our project. Yours may need a little different approach. Safety first!

FYI: Affiliate links are being used on this page. Purchasing via these links help support MDP!

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