Smoosh Painted Pumpkin Art – Happy Hooligans
Smoosh and Stamp Pumpkin art for kids: a fun and easy Halloween craft for toddlers and preschoolers to make.
Well, here we are, the day before Halloween! We’ve been doing crafting for Halloween in my daycare these past few weeks. Today, on our last day of daycare before Halloween, we used one of my favourite toddler painting techniques to make this Smoosh and Stamp Pumpkin Art.
It combines a few of the kids’ favourite art techniques – smoosh painting and stamping.
I’ve had this little pumpkin art project in the back of my mind for weeks, and I’m really glad we got around to it today. It was very cool! And like most of our projects, it was inexpensive, and easy enough for even the youngest Hooligans to have fun with.
Supplies needed for smoosh painting your halloween pumpkin art:
- Paint (we used orange, red, yellow, brown and green)
- Plastic grocery bag
- Stamps for eyes/nose/mouth (we used wooden blocks, and I made a couple from yogurt containers and styrofoam)
- Cardboard or sturdy construction paper for your “canvas”
Start by drizzling your paint on your canvas; pumpkin colours on the main part of the page and a small drizzle of green at the top for the stem of the pumpkin.
Now place your plastic bag on top of your canvas and start smooshing, patting and rubbing the paint all around.
Smoosh it well. You want good coverage here. To keep things even tidier, slip your canvas INTO the plastic bag and smoosh away!
Lift up your plastic bag and voila!
If you’re not happy with your coverage, place the bag back down and smoosh again.
We used a hair dryer to dry our pumpkins so we could get to the stamping.
I made a few stamps for eyes, noses and mouths by cutting some foam packaging and hot gluing the pieces to a few small containers (yogurt containers are great for this).
I also pulled out a few wooden blocks from our block bucket so the Hooligan’s would have a variety of shapes to choose from.
They dipped their stamps in some black paint and turned their pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns.
Some chose to be quite deliberate in how they stamped, and some were more creative. This little Hooligans rubbed and smeared her stamps around creating a beautiful collage.
As a final touch, we added “teeth”. I set out corn kernels, borrowed from our corn bin, and white pasta leftover from our “boneyard wreath” project.
How cute is THIS?!
Aren’t they fabulous? I love that each one is so unique and beautiful!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Looking for more pumpkin art ideas for toddlers and preschoolers?
Check out this easy and adorable pumpkin art project the kids made recently. And how about these smoosh painted pumpkins? They were a ton of fun to make!
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
