How to Decorate Pumpkins with Perfect Hand Lettering

Who doesn’t want beautiful pumpkins to decorate their home this time of year?! About a month ago, as I was thinking about a few pieces of fall decor I wanted to put up around our home for the season, I was thinking about what I might want to make this year. Light bulb: I wanted to figure out how to decorate pumpkins with perfect hand lettering! I had the bright idea to see about teaming up with one of my dearest friends and one of my most favorite people in all the world, a beautiful calligrapher, Catrina Ballard, to see if I could instate her help for some beautiful hand lettering that I could then transfer onto pumpkins.

As I presented the idea to her, just as she and I normally do, we exchanged a number of texts with an exuberant number of emojis (the one I use most often with her is the one with the face that’s laughing so hard it’s crying) and came up with a plan! Catrina and I are soul sisters – we became FAST friends when Aaron and I briefly lived in Houston, and we’ve been inseparable since then. And our seasons of life are lining up just about perfectly – she had her first baby just one month before I had mine, and she and I started our own little creative businesses (that have been like life-long dreams for both of us) at the same time, which also means we simultaneously share all of the questions/hesitations/nerves/excitement/frustrations/holy-moly-how-do-we-do-this-and-be-moms-and-get-food-on-the-table-and-get-some-sleep-in-the-same-lifetime feelings that you get when you start your own little baby business from a big ‘ole dream.

To sum it up, we’re good buds.

Check out her gorgeous work here, and check out my tutorial below to see how you (and ANYONE!!) can get her gorgeous hand lettering on some pumpkins of your very own! (And!! And!! She’s offering these exact hand letterings in this tutorial for you FOR FREE so you can follow this tutorial and make your very own with the same lettering!)

Are you ready?! This process will probably take you anywhere from 15-30 minutes per pumpkin. I learned quite a bit as I was figuring out the process I wanted to use to paint the lettering on each pumpkin, so I’ll be sharing those tips throughout this post and hopefully they’ll help you avoid some mistakes and save you some time.

Here’s what you need:

• A pumpkin of any size or color
• A damp rag to wipe down the pumpkin
• Tape (I used painter’s tape, but you can use masking tape)
• Printer paper with the lettering printed on it (make sure it’s the exact size on the paper that you want on the pumpkins)
• A fine tip ballpoint pen (It is really important to use one with a fine tip! This is the one I used and it worked well.)
• A paint pen (See my note further down on the types of paint pens I’d recommend – I learned quite a bit as I worked on these pumpkins.)

First, wipe down your pumpkin to remove any excess dirt that might be stuck to it.

Next, find the best part of the pumpkin to display your lettering. I chose the section on each pumpkin that seemed to be the flattest and that also seemed to be the clearest of markings. Place the paper with the lettering on the pumpkin and tape on either side (for the lettering that was longer horizontally, I taped on the sides; for the one that was longer vertically, I taped on the top and bottom).

Use your pen and carefully color in the letters by pressing down (pretty firmly!) on the paper in order to make an indentation into the pumpkin. Look at the following pictures to see what I mean:

The indentation is really hard to see in the picture. I tried taking several pictures, and the indentation just wouldn’t show up very well when I snapped my photos. It’s definitely subtle, but it is easier to see in person than it is in these pictures!

When I did this process on the smaller pumpkin, it showed up WAY better. The skin of the pumpkin was much firmer and seemed to be waxier (almost like an orange), so you can see the indentation much better in the smaller pumpkin:

As I was doing this part of the process, I learned a few big lessons:

1) You really need to make sure to use a pen with a fine tip. I began using one with a duller tip and it did not work anywhere near as well at making the impressions on the skin of the pumpkin. This is the one I used.

2) It’s much better if you color in the entire lettering, rather than just outline the lettering (in one of the pictures above, you can see I only traced the outline of the “Welcome” lettering, but I colored in all of the lettering for the “Happy Fall Y’all” sign – I think it was much easier to see the indentation, and thus much easier to paint in the letters, when I colored them in rather than just outlined them).

3) You really need to press pretty hard with the pen. I was originally fearful of using a fine point pen because I figured it would rip the paper, but even with me pressing down firmly on the paper, it only poked through the paper a couple of times and it was very minor (and it doesn’t matter if a tiny bit of ink gets on the pumpkins because you’re painting over it anyway).

Ok, now comes the fun part! Painting! Follow the instructions on the paint pen you’re using for getting it to produce the paint, and then start coloring in the indentation on the pumpkin! Use the paper as a guide in case some of the indentations are too faint to see.

So pretty! You may need to do a couple of coats depending on the paint pen you’re using. I think I did just one full coat with the gold, but I went over a couple of spots more than once with it.

Here are some important tips for using the paint pens:

1) I did this whole tutorial on the white pumpkin first. The gold paint pen I used worked like a charm. I would recommend using it! I got mine at Hobby Lobby a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t see a link for it on their website.

2) Because the first pumpkin went so well, I had high hopes for the second. Womp womp. Doing the white on the orange was NOT as smooth. In the midst of trying out every white paint pen I could find in my drawer after using the one I bought for this project, I talked to Catrina in a panic and she said she’s had the same problem. She doesn’t use a white paint pen on pumpkins as often because she ran into the same issues I was running into (the paint was gloopy and not going on very smoothly), but she said this is what she uses when she does use white and she said it works pretty well. This is the one I ended up using and it worked MUCH better than the ones I had been trying, but because it’s a chalk paint pen, I’m not sure how well it would hold up if you were putting a pumpkin outdoors. If you’re doing it indoors, this one would probably be just fine.)

3) I didn’t use a black paint pen, but Catrina said she swears by this one if you’re wanting to do black lettering on your pumpkins!

I was able to get this far along in this tutorial (took me a while because of trying to figure out the best way to get the indentation on the pumpkins!) before my kiddo woke up from her nap and joined me. When she saw those pumpkins sitting on our living room floor, I thought she was going to flip: “PUH-KIN! B-i-i-i-i-i-i-g puh-kin!”

Totally crashing this tutorial…

#reallife.

The cutest tutorial crashers ever. Welcome to my living room: where all the magic in this tutorial happens. And where puzzles, stickers, coloring, dog napping, and toddler shenanigans also happen.

After some trial and error (that I can then help you avoid now that I’ve made the mistakes myself and can tell you what to do and what not to do!), look how pretty they turned out!

Such cute welcoming porch decor!

Or you can use your pumpkin as a lovely table centerpiece:

Or as part of a little fall vignette on a display table:

Or as a warm piece of decor on your kitchen counter!

The options are endless! I absolutely love the way they turned out.

You can also make these pumpkins to decorate for a fall shower you might be planning – you can see the ones I made for a baby shower a few years ago, and you could totally do something similar by using this method!

This is proof that anyone can make gorgeous hand-lettered pumpkins to decorate their home! THANK YOU, Catrina, for your GORGEOUS lettering skills and for sharing them with us! If you want to go download any or all of these beautiful hand-lettered messages that I’ve used, you can go check out Catrina’s website where she’s enabling you to snag the downloads for FREE! Wahoo! She’s also doing custom work on via her store on Etsy – go check it out if you’re wanting something specific but don’t have the time to make it yourself!

If you follow this tutorial to make your own beautiful pumpkins, take a picture and tag us (Catrina: @camelandbirdie; Mauri: @theamericanpatriette) on Instagram so we can see your lovely work! We’d be so excited with you!

If you want more ideas for fall decorating, go check out my post on how to create a beautiful budget-friendly fall entryway table and a beautiful DIY fall sign from an old frame, as well as my post on how to create a DIY patriotic fall wheat centerpiece!

I love fall. Have I mentioned that before?

Happy painting! 🙂