Yarn Pumpkins

These yarn pumpkins are such a fun fall craft idea! They’d make a beautiful centerpiece or mantle decoration, or you could even use them to decorate for Halloween.

Yarn Pumpkins

Materials :
21 pieces of orange yarn, cut to 36 inch lengths
2 ounces of white glue
1 balloon (12 inch size), blown up half full
1 brown pipe cleaner and 1 green pipe cleaner

Instructions:
Blow up 12″ balloons about half full. Cut out about 21 pieces of yarn about 36 inches long.
Tie one of the pieces of yarn to the end of the balloon. Hang the balloon someplace workable and put something to catch the mess underneath.

Pour the glue into a small bowl. It takes about one full 2 ounce bottle of glue per pumpkin.

Dunk one of the pieces of yarn into the bowl of glue, and swirl it around gently with a plastic fork to get it completely covered with glue. Hold the end of the piece of yarn with your fingers, then gently run it between the tines of a fork to remove the excess glue.

Take the glue covered yarn strand and press the end down somewhere and wind it around the balloon, making sure the press down the ends of the yarn to secure them when they’re in place. Repeat with the remaining pieces of yarn.

When you’re done, find somewhere to hang the yarn covered balloons to dry.
It took a full 24 hours for them to dry. But when they did, I was really happy with how firm they were.

This is CRITICAL. You need to make sure you press your fingers down under the yarn to detach the glue from the balloon – around the entire surface of the balloon, if you don’t the balloon will pull the yarn to the inside as it deflates and it may ruin the shape of your pumpkin.

Make a very small hole in the balloon close to where the knot is (it won’t pop if you cut it near the knot). You want the air to leak slowly so you can detach any yarn that you might have missed as it shrinks.

Then pull the deflated balloon out through one of the openings in the yarn.

Make the pipe cleaner stem and vine by wrapping the pipe cleaners around your baby finger. The stem is just a spiral, tuck into the end of the pipe cleaner into the yarn. I didn’t glue it on.