13 Pumpkin Decorating Ideas For Your Small Business
Carving faces into turnips, potatoes, and more recently, pumpkins, has been done for centuries. Decorating pumpkins is a great way to transition your small business from general fall decor, as featured in “Jumpstart Fall Shopping With These 5 Tips” and “10 Fall Crafts to Decorate Your Shop” to Halloween decor. In honor of Halloween, this article features 13 pumpkin decorating ideas for your business. The most common ways are carving with a serrated knife and painting; let’s look at 13 ideas that are a bit more out-of-the-box.
1) Carved with Drills and Cookie Cutters
Let’s start with a twist on a classic: carving. Instead of carving your pumpkin with a serrated knife, use a drill to make small circles or cookie cutters to make predefined shapes. The drill can be used to make intricate lattice-work to look like a lace doily, or it can be as simplistic as creating a keyhole. The cookie cutter works great for pumpkins decorated near baked goods.
2) Ice Bucket Challenge
Transform your pumpkin into a place to chill drinks for your business’ Halloween party. Hosting a Halloween costume party, a pumpkin carving contest, or an event where children can trick or treat is a great way to increase traffic to your store.
3) Sequins & Rhinestones
Add sequins or rhinestones to pumpkins to add some glitz and glam to your shop. You can arrange the sequins in simple lines along the seam of the pumpkin, create interesting patterns, or completely cover the pumpkin with sequins and rhinestones. Each technique will create a different effect as seen below.
4) Centerpiece by Piece
Pumpkin centerpieces can be created by displaying pumpkins or gourds inside vases. Placing pumpkins on top of candlesticks or cake stands is also a unique solution to decorating pumpkins.
5) Labeled with Words
Painting wooden words or creating words from other items, like the keys featured below in the word “FALL,” and securing them to pumpkins is a fun way to introduce messaging into your store around Halloween. Another way to decorate with words is by decoupaging the pumpkin with newspaper clippings or a page from an old book.
6) Wrapped with Bows, Ribbons, Yarn, and String
Bows, ribbon, yarn and string all create very different effects as you can see from below. You can peruse and purchase a wide variety of bows and ribbon to create the perfect pumpkin for your business on Bags & Bows website.
7) Glitterized
Glitter is a wonderful way to add a little glitz and glam to your business, but be careful; it can be messy! Cover your pumpkin with spray glue then roll the pumpkin in glitter using the pumpkin stem as your handle, or alternatively, draw words in glue and sprinkle glitter over them to create messaging on your pumpkin.
8) Tulled for Perfection
Tulle and an accent of ribbon is an unexpected way to decorate a pumpkin. Choose black and orange for Halloween or get a little creative and mix layers of tulle to create different effects. These pumpkins look great by the register, especially if you offer gift wrap services. Bags & Bows has a wide variety of tulle to get you started on this project.
9) Topped with Topiaries
Topiaries work great placed outside your doors, in the corners of the room, or right in front of the checkout area. As with all of these decorating concepts, the only limit on how extravagant they become is your imagination! Topiaries can be created by stacking pumpkins and connecting them by using the stem from the pumpkin below as a stacking mechanism. This would also be a great project for faux pumpkins so you can use it year after year.
10) Decoupaged Nature
In our recent post, “Jumpstart Fall Shopping With These 5 Tips” we discuss the value of bringing natural elements into your store to set the atmosphere. Think about using some of these same materials to decorate your pumpkin. You can incorporate leaves, antlers, tree branches, flowers, feathers, or corn husks, and attach them to your pumpkin, like the image on the right.
11) Costumed
Create costumes for your pumpkins by dressing them up. You can use items from your store for this, like the earrings found in the center image. Customize the pumpkins to fit your store. The pumpkins in the left image would be great for a craft or children’s clothing or toy store. The pumpkin in the center image would be great for an accessories store, featuring the earrings and glasses. The image on the right would be great to display in a sports store.
12) Button Embellished
Decorate pumpkins with buttons to spell out words that fit the season, like “Boo!” This is a perfect fit for a local tailor or dry cleaner when decorating their store front.
13) Combined Techniques
Combining the above techniques along with the more common techniques like painting and carving pumpkins with a serrated blade can create a wide variety of multimedia effects to fit any brick and mortar business this Halloween.
All of these pumpkin decorating ideas and fall decorating inspiration can be found on my Pinterest board Fall Retail Decor. You can also find more fall holiday inspirations on Bags & Bows Fall Pinterest board. Happy Halloween!
