Ok, so I’ve seen these pumpkin topiaries for a while now and decided I just NEEDED to have them this year! Seriously, how fabulous and festive are these?!

What you need (per topiary)

• 3 different sized fake pumpkins (I didn’t want to use real pumpkins, just to have them rot out in a few weeks!)
• acrylic black paint- whatever brand you prefer
• paint brush(es)- smaller sized for the accent painting
• retractable utility knife
• clear silicon caulk
• clear lacquer spray

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I got my pumpkins from Michaels. This time of year it seems like they’re pretty much always on sale. I bought orange 13” and 6.5” pumpkins and one 9” cream pumpkin per set, so a total of 6. Depending on the look and pattern on each pumpkin you’re planning to do there are several variations of sizes and colors. Michaels also sells black pumpkins. I decided I was going to do black and orange argyle on the bottom, vertical black and white stripes in the middle and black with orange polka dots on the top. Below are the pumpkins I ended up getting to accomplish those patterns.

Let’s do this!

Now comes the fun part! I knocked out the medium sized white and black striped pumpkins first. Then finished the small black with orange polka dotted pumpkins. I thought that it would be easiest to put circle dots on the pumpkin, paint black over them and then take the stickers off to have beautiful orange perfect circles… nope. That darn black paint worked it’s way under the dots (even though I rubbed them on real good.) So what I did was cut out 3/4 inch circles in orange vinyl with my cricut cutter and put them over the first attempt at polka dots which worked out great!

Figuring out how to get the argyle pattern on the large pumpkin was definitely a little tricky. I did the hard part in figuring out how to do it so you don’t have to! This pattern did take longer than the polka dots and stripes, so if you’re not sure about embarking on the argyle journey just pick another pattern!

I wrapped and taped a piece of string tightly horizontally around the middle of the pumpkin. Then I put thumb tacks in both the middle bottom and top stem. These were my anchors for wrapping the string vertically around the pumpkin. Think about how wide and tall you want the diamonds to be. I cut nine strings the diameter of the pumpkin and wrapped them around the bottom thumb tack then up to the top one. I tried to position the strings so that they were equal width between each.

After making guide dots every two inches horizontally, I drew the diamonds with a dry erase marker. This made it easy to wipe off with a wet wipe if I needed to redraw any lines. Once I had the argyle pattern mapped, I took the string off and was ready to paint!

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Because I was planning to put these outside, I wanted to coat them with a clear lacquer coat to withstand time and the elements outside. I sprayed three coats on all the pumpkins making sure to have gotten all sides thoroughly.

I put a ring of caulk on the bottom side of the top two pumpkins then stacked and positioned the three pumpkins on top of each other to make the topiary. Once I was pleased with the positioning I put a bead of caulk between the pumpkins to ensure they were going to be nice and sturdy. Nobody wants a leaning tower of pumpkins! Depending on the brand of clear caulk you get it may be white at first, but rest assured it will dry clear!

And there you have it! I’ve now got two beautiful Halloween pumpkin topiaries that I didn’t pay and arm and a leg for and am super proud to display outside my front door to welcome the Halloween spirit. Oh, and now all my neighbors have front door envy!