Instead of paying bills, cleaning the house or even just sitting down doing nothing, what do TGPP staffers do on their one afternoon at home? We make pumpkin crafts!!  Yesterday, after school and homework and before dinner and dance class, we decided to try our hand at pumpkin crayon art! I am sure you have seen it all over Pinterest, but here’s the tried and true TGPP version.

First, start out by choosing your pumpkin. We chose to use a Moonshine, one of the 400 varieties that we grow here at The Great Pumpkin Patch. (Next time we are going to try a Boer pumpkin – I will post that picture soon)!

Next choose what colors you want to use.  MY crew (ages 8, 6, and 3) decided to go with Halloween colors and after much debate about what colors are actually Halloween colors, we decided to go with orange, green and a touch of purple.  (We highly recommend Crayola crayons, they melt the best).  Then start peeling like crazy and break them in half – that was my 3 yr old’s job.  Glue the crayons on the top of the pumpkin.  (Don’t use hot glue – we tried that and the crayon just melted and slipped off).  We ended up using TackyGlue, fabric glue, and it worked great.

We did ours in layers, so the crayons did not melt together and make a big brown blob. Then we took the pumpkins outside (it is a little messy) and used my old hairdryer and started blowing.  It takes a little bit to get it started, but once it does, it is fun to watch. You can try moving the dryer around to get some different effects!!

We are already thinking about out next creative cucurbit craft!

~ Ginny