Sure, it’s fun to carve a Jack O’ Lantern, and you end up with tasty seeds as a bonus. But if you prefer to keep your hands free of orange slime, there are plenty of ways to decorate a pumpkin for Halloween that don’t require slicing and dicing.

Spooky Spiders
Paint a small or medium-sized pumpkin with silver spray paint. Once the paint dries, stretch a white fishnet stocking (easily found in the costume section at this time of year) over the pumpkin, then cut off the excess stocking and glue the edges to the pumpkin’s bottom. Use dabs of hot glue to attach black plastic spiders to the “web.”

Cute Kittens
Halloween isn’t all spooks and scares. If you prefer a more child-friendly design, turn miniature pumpkins into a basket full of kittens. Paint a few miniature pumpkins black, a few white and leave some orange. Cut triangles out of black construction paper, and glue them to the pumpkin to serve as ears. Cut smaller black triangles to use as noses, and circles for eyes. Finally, glue short lengths of black or white wire in place for whiskers. Pile the pumpkin kittens in a wicker basket to display on your porch or Halloween table.

Pumpkin Mummy
Wrap white gauze around a small pumpkin, overlapping the gauze several times. Glue a couple of googly eyes in place, and add a small mouth cut from black construction paper.

Pumpkin Elegance
For a super-easy, elegant Halloween touch, decorate perfectly round, unblemished pumpkins with paper washi tape. Choose three or four designs of washi tape in orange, black and white, along with silver or gold metallic tape. Alternate tape designs around the pumpkin, stretching the tape from the pumpkin’s top to underneath its base. Fasten a gold or silver bow to the top of the pumpkin to hide the tape edges.

Flower Power
Glue lines of sequins or metallic cord down the natural vertical grooves around the pumpkin. Glue a small faux flower at the top of each groove to create a floral crown for your pumpkin.

Pumpkin Grins
Here’s an extra-easy pumpkin design for your kids. Cut two large black eyes out of construction paper, then glue them to the front of your pumpkin. Glue a smaller circle for a nose. Cut a length of black rickrack trim, and glue it in the shape of a smile to complete the pumpkin’s grinning face.

Painted Pumpkins
There are lots of fun ways to paint a Halloween pumpkin.

• Turn a pumpkin into a candy corn by painting the upper third of the pumpkin white, and the lower third yellow.


• Circle the pumpkin with a few strips of shaped masking tape, (FrogTape makes several designs, including waves and chevrons) then spray paint the pumpkin white, silver, gold or black. Once the paint is dry, peel away the tape to reveal your perfectly formed design.


• Use glitter paint to turn small pumpkins into gleaming, sophisticated table decorations.


• Paint your pumpkin green, black or white, then glue googly eyes all around the sides and top.