If your home is anything like mine, you may have extra craft supplies on hand from old school projects, unfinished big ideas, or an art/junk area that never stops. Here’s an easy 15-minute yarn pumpkin craft you can make with kids using minimal supplies. It can be used for Halloween and kept out for the rest of the fall!
In past years I’ve made these pumpkins with the toilet paper still on the rolls and used tissue paper. This year we had extra yarn sitting around and empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls sitting in the recycling bin ready to be used!
Supplies Needed
- Yarn, the thicker the better
- Empty Toilet Paper or Paper Towel Roll
- Scissors
- Sticks from a yard/park
- Optional: Self-Adhesive Googly Eyes, tape
Making Your Pumpkin
- Have kids gather small sticks to use for a pumpkin stem.
- Cut the toilet paper or paper towel roll to the size of a pumpkin you’d like. A thinner piece makes a cute, squatty pumpkin; cut a bigger size for a more robust pumpkin. My 10 and 6-year-old were able to cut the toilet paper roll themselves, but you know your kiddo and if they’ll need help cutting.
- Thread the yarn through the toilet paper roll and secure it to the inside of the roll with a piece of tape if needed.
- Keep threading inside and outside the roll, until you’ve gone all the way around the toilet paper roll. Since pumpkins are all different shapes and sizes, we didn’t stress about keeping the strands straight and just had fun wrapping.
- Once you’ve wrapped your pumpkin all the way around and to your liking, stuff any extra yarn in the middle of the roll or tuck under.
6. Now you’re ready to put in your stick for a stem and add googly eyes, for a silly pumpkin friend.
Notes:
- We also tried using old yogurt containers but found that we liked the flexibility of the cardboard better than hard plastic.
- The thinner yarn worked fine and we had a lot on hand, however, we found when we put the stick in, the yarn didn’t touch in the middle. As a result, we found we had to fill the space with more yarn to provide stability for the stick. You could also stuff it with some extra toilet paper under the yarn to fill it out.
- With a shorter stem and red, green, or yellow yarn, this could be an apple craft!
- Our pumpkins looked fun, awesome, unique, and kid-made! Which was the point! My kids were thrilled to decorate their rooms with the pumpkins.
There are a lot of variations to this craft, so do what works for you! I’ve seen using the roll with the toilet paper on to make it chunkier, using a styrofoam pumpkin instead of a roll, or using other materials such as raffia or felt. Feel free to use the supplies you have on hand for this easy 15-minute pumpkin craft!
We love all things pumpkin around here and my kids reported enjoying this craft! They’re telling me they can’t wait until we use more toilet paper and paper towels so they can create more!
Let us know if you try this!
