Make A Recycled Pumpkin! Halloween Craft For Kids

Recycled Pumpkin Halloween Craft is a fun Halloween craft for kids! Make a recycled pumpkin Halloween decoration by recycling plastic bottles and gallon milk jugs into cute little pumpkins. This pumpkin craft is a great way to make use of all the plastic bottles, wrapping paper and newspaper from your household and contribute less materials to the recycling bin.

There are a few ways to make this pumpkin craft and the absolute easiest and quickest is to use the Dollar Store for an orange plastic table cloth. This should be a fun craft! No need to make the pumpkin ‘perfect’ as the homemade touch is part of its’ quirky charm.

How To Make Recycled Pumpkins

Materials

Plastic container of your choice (size depends upon the size of pumpkin)

Recycled Stuffing materials (see below)

Foil

Glue gun

Strong tape such as packing or shipping tape

Rubber bands

Pumpkin decorations (felt scraps, foam paper, construction paper, ribbon scraps)

Orange tissue paper or orange mesh or orange tablecloth

Materials For Base Of Pumpkin

Plastic milk gallon jug
Drink bottles
Mini drink bottles

Materials To Make The Pumpkin Body

Amazon packing materials
Newspaper
Packing Paper
Old Tissue Paper
Bubble Wrap

How To Cover The Recycled Pumpkins

I found a few ways to cover make the pumpkins using orange tissue paper and orange mesh. The easiest way is to use an orange plastic tablecloth from the dollar store!

Clean out the inside of the plastic milk gallon container or any bottle and dry.
Decide upon how ‘fat’ the pumpkin will be when finished. This is a what you see is what you get Halloween craft as the finished pumpkin size will not be much different than the size the container is when wrapped with recycled materials.
Begin wrapping the plastic container by covering the container in layers of the wrapping.
For these pumpkins I used newspaper and pieces of old bubble wrap.
Tip! If the finished pumpkin will have a stem then do not cover the opening of the container. A stem can be inserted into the bottle opening.
I began by using a few sheets of newspaper and wrapped the entire plastic gallon milk jug up to the opening of the mouth. The newspaper was taped to the container.
I then took pieces of recycled bubble wrap and brought out the glue gun. I glued the bubble wrap to the newspaper and began molding the shape of the pumpkin.
I used less plastic wrap at the top and more toward the middle and bottom of the container to create the shape of a pumpkin.
Plastic orange tablecloth, orange tissue paper and orange mesh was used to cover the pumpkin. A few sheets of standard size tissue paper is needed.

There are a few ways to cover the pumpkin body and turn this recycled container into a smiling pumpkin!

Dollar Store Pumpkin Craft Idea

This is the easiest way to cover and make the pumpkin orange! All that is needed is an orange plastic table cloth from the dollar store and the pumpkin is orange and ready to decorate in a few minutes.

For a life size pumpkin, cut a 50″ by 24″ piece from the orange table cloth.
Set the pumpkin in the middle of the cloth.
Bring all edges of the table cloth up to the top and secure with a rubber band.
“Fluff” the cloth as needed to create some give in the table cloth.
Decorate the face by cutting out free hand pieces from black foam paper or card stock.
Glue on the face.
Add a decorative bow at the top of the pumpkin if desired.

2020 Update

If you are like this household then there is not a shortage of packaging materials to use to make a recycled pumpkin!

Any packing material that is moldable will work: bubble wrap, packing paper, any grocery bag, old towels, old clothes pretty much old anything. This year I skipped purchasing pumpkins at all and a patch of pumpkins were made for Fall and Halloween.

Decorating A Recycled Pumpkin With Orange Mesh

Orange mesh gives a glimmery effect to the pumpkin, but it can be a bit testy to work with as the mesh can stick to together. This is the dollar store mesh used to make wreaths, but repurposed into a pumpkin.

The pumpkin body is now ready to be covered in orange mesh. The orange mesh is glittery, but an open pattern which shows the orange of the tissue paper. Orange mesh can be found at a craft store in rolls and is frequently on sale. One roll of mesh makes 3 pumpkins easily.

The size of the orange mesh can be tested by placing the pumpkin in the middle of the mesh and bringing the mesh up to the top of the pumpkin. I cut two sheets of 40″ by 10″ orange mesh (the default mesh width) for a large pumpkin. A smaller pumpkin can be covered with one sheet of mesh.

There is a bit of trail and error involved with judging the size of the mesh to the pumpkin as there is no standard size for the pumpkin. The size of the pumpkin to cover depends upon the size of container used and the amount of stuffing.

The top of the mesh was secured to the top of the pumpkin with hot glue. Depending upon the size of the orange mesh, one or two pieces of mesh may be needed. This is a Halloween craft for kids so there may be seams when using two sheets of mesh, but the seams can be glued to the pumpkin body. it will all work out!

Once the glue has dried the pumpkin is ready to decorate.

How To Decorate The Recycled Pumpkin

I cut out the Pumpkin face freehand style from black foam paper and glued on.
For the top of this pumpkin I cut out green leaves from old scrap felt.
I made a foil stem and then covered the stem with green felt and glued to the felt to the stem.
An easy hack for the foil stem is to leave the cap off the mouth of the container and I inserted the stem snugly fit into the mouth of the container.
The leaves were then glued onto the top of the pumpkin around the green stem.

The All Orange Mesh Pumpkin

Make the pumpkin body as described above.

I made the abstract mesh pumpkin by setting the pumpkin in the middle of a sheet of mesh and pulling the edges of the mesh up to the top of the pumpkin.