Mommiepedia: Pumpkin "Minion" Decorating

What is Halloween without Pumpkin carving/decorating?

Its like Halloween without costumes or trick-or-treating.

INCOMPLETE....

So we just had to do it.

In our house we try not to do any activity without involving our daughter. Saanvi is only 5 and she can't (or I won't let her) use carving tools to carve out Pumpkins. The second best choice is decorating the pumpkins, and since my daughter loves to paint we decided to do an afternoon filled with painting and decorating pumpkins.

Saanvi loves Minions (Ok, Ok, so do I). In fact a few weeks before we decided to decorate our pumpkins into Minions, she got her nails painted as minions. Cool huh!!

Our inspiration came from Pinterest, of course.. Although it did not show any how-to's so I improvised.

So here is the supplies list:

Pumpkins (we went for cheap $5 ones from Wal-Mart)
Colors (Acrylic paints, non-washable)
Paint brushes
Foam brushes
Permanent markers (Black and Blue)
Mason jar lids (3 or more)
Super glue
Googly eyes

(I had most of the supplies in my house (what can I say, we love painting and crafting) although you can find most of these in a local crafting store like Michaels or Hobby Lobby. But if you like to shop online then just click the links).

Ready with all the Supplies

Pumpkins ready to be decorated

Saanvi did the 1st coat of yellow paint on both Pre-Minion-Pumpkins. My husband did the 2nd coat of yellow, while I painted the inside of Mason jar lids white and pasted googly eyes on them.

1st coat underway

I tell my daughter to go for up and down motions while painting,
it gives a neater look.

2nd coat underway

I used a brush and paint to mark out lines for black strip behind the eyes and the blue overalls, then filled them in with colors. After the paint was dried off I outlines them with permanent marker (no need to make it look perfect, as cartoonish look is never perfect). Then I made buttons and pocket on the overalls using the marker as well. Made a mouth, some teeth, tongue, etc, In fact there was a hole in the pumpkin where the mouth was going to be, so I incorporated that and showed it as a missing tooth (tickled my husband's funny bone ;).

Then my husband super glued the eyes (hold them for a minute or 2). We also tilted the pumpkin and let it dry for 10 minutes, to make sure the eyes are stuck properly.

Last step was to paint the stem black (for hair) and Saanvi did an awesome job with it.

And voila Minions are ready.

Happy and Sad Minions

It took us a good 4 hours to finish these minions. And we all were buried into doing something or the other to create these Minion Pumpkins. Of course Saanvi was getting bored so she painted 5-6 of her own little pumpkins, some cute some scary. But In the end we loved spending time together and creating something together.