55 Easy Pumpkin Faces to Carve, Draw and Paint on Your Jack-o'-Lantern
Cute, silly and scary faces for your Halloween gourds.
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Decorating pumpkins is a fun Halloween tradition that's all about creativity. While there are tons of no-carve ideas and painted pumpkin projects to choose from, nothing is cooler than seeing the pumpkin faces you worked hard to carve into your gourds. If you ask us, you can't go wrong with classic ideas like lions, cats, scarecrows and skeletons.
Below, we share some of the silliest, spookiest and cutest pumpkin faces you'll want to display on Halloween. You'll find painted pineapple pumpkins, a crazy-eyed cookie monster, the beloved Hello Kitty and the static-loving Pokémon, Pikachu. Kids can easily use these simple stencils as inspiration (with adult supervision, of course!), along with our pumpkin carving tips to guide them along the way. Plus, many of our ideas are beginner-friendly, so you can purchase your pumpkin carving kit and get to scooping out those pumpkin guts for painting, drawing or carving.
What makes these fall and Halloween-inspired pumpkin faces so fun is their ability to be displayed all season long. Make them part of your fall porch decor or weave them into your overall indoor and outdoor autumn decorations. So, go big or gourd home, and choose any of these Halloween pumpkin faces to keep this entertaining, family-friendly activity going.
Pineapple Pumpkin Face
Keep the feeling of summer going with a pumpkin-turned pineapple, complete with sunglasses. Simply spray paint your gourd yellow before using green cardstock to DIY the pineapple head.
Googly-Eyed Warts Pumpkin Faces
Your bumpy pumpkins and gourds can be used for Halloween night before throwing them away for good. Make eyeballs by cutting styrofoam balls in half and hot gluing candy to the center (chocolatey M&M's, perhaps?). Hollow out the gourds to create the ears and use twigs for the teeth and tiny legs.
No-Carve Pumpkin Family Faces
Keep it in the family and go for these no-carve and no-face pumpkins. All you need to transform plain gourds are felt bows, glasses and mustaches.
Cookie Monster Pumpkin Face
Cookie Monster has never looked so cute! Spray paint your pumpkin blue before hot gluing styrofoam balls to the gourd to represent the eyes. Use black cardstock for the cookie monster's mouth and a black paint marker to draw the eyeballs.
Hello Kitty Pumpkin Face
If you can't find a white pumpkin at your local pumpkin patch, spray paint the gourd white. Cut out the shapes for the "kitty's" eyes, nose and whiskers before gluing them to the pumpkin. The adorable witch hat is another DIY creation, made using construction paper and felt.
Gnome Pumpkin Faces
If gnomes were real, we're sure they'd look just as adorable as these pumpkin replicas. Start by tracing this hat template on wool fabric. Adjust the size based on your preference before cutting it out. Glue straight edges together using craft glue and fill the hat with batting so it stands tall on the pumpkin. Hot glue wood craft beads for the nose and create a beard using yarn.
Skeleton Pumpkin Face
A painted spooky skeleton can be made by stacking two pumpkins on top of each other. Leave the oval gourd on top and the circular one at the bottom. For the finishing touch, spray paint them white and use black paint for the face and ribs.
Mini Kitten Pumpkin Faces
Paint your mini pumpkins black to transform them into adorable kittens. After the paint dries, use rhinestones for the eyes and embroidery thread for the whiskers. You can cut out cat ears from velour paper before attaching them to the pumpkins with toothpicks.
Woodland Creature Pumpkin Face
Search your backyard for leaves, nuts, acorns, seeds and other nature-inspired elements. Use toothpicks to attach them to small, large and medium-sized gourds to create a woodland creature family.
Fancy Vampire Pumpkin Face
Turn your plain pumpkin into a fancy vampire by carving out the mouth and filling the space with fake vampire teeth. Or, simply hot glue the teeth to the pumpkin's front.
Masked Pumpkins
A basic pumpkin gets an eye-catching transformation simply by attaching an eye mask to the gourd. Get creative with the masks chosen, opting for colorful and lacey designs that'll really make the decoration unique.
Fringe Pumpkin Face
Prepare to make the cutest scary pumpkin ever. Just wrap and glue fringe or yarn around the stem of a pumpkin, adding two to three layers until it looks nice and full. Using hot glue, attach googly eyes onto the fringe and add personality with cut paper eyelids and teeth.
Plant Person Pumpkin Face
We're obsessed with the idea of turning your pumpkins into planters. You can carve any face you'd like and use the greenery as hair.
Happy Pumpkin Face
The eyes and nose won't be a problem at all. To create the more realistic teeth, simply draw on the mouth that you'd like and shave off the orange so just the flesh is exposed. Then, you'll just use your knife to shape the teeth of your choice. Just be careful and take your time.
Lion Pumpkin Face
Woman's Day has the full details on how to create the tin man and scarecrow, but we're focusing on the beautiful lion!
To make: Hollow a large pumpkin from the base. Carve the mouth and eyes. Cut the nose from a smaller pumpkin, paint it black and then let it dry. Attach the nose to to a large pumpkin with toothpicks. Halve and hollow a small orange pumpkin for the snout and secure it with wood skewers. Halve and hollow a small orange pumpkin for ears and cut them flat on one side, before securing them to the bigger pumpkin with toothpicks. Straight-pin faux chrysanthemums around the face for the mane.
Spa Day Pumpkin Face
To make this spa-going pumpkin face, simply paint a "face mask" onto a real or faux pumpkin, while leaving space for the nose and mouth. Let it dry completely. Then, stretch a decorative shower cap onto the pumpkin's "head" and pin it in place with straight pins. To make the cucumber eyes, just print images of cucumbers from a picture online and glue them on.
Gourdolantern Pumpkin Faces
Grab some gourds and squashes from your local grocery store and simply create any face you want with acrylic paint.
Floral Vampire Pumpkin Face
After painting your pumpkin to your liking, use an awl to create eyeholes. Place flowers inside to represent the eyes and carve a square for fake fangs.
Deer Pumpkin Face
Oh, deer! This pumpkin design couldn't be cuter. All you need for this woodland creature-inspired look are a couple of tree branches, yarn, felt and buttons for eyes. Wind some yarn tightly around the branches and secure loose yarn ends with hot glue. To insert the antlers, drill two holes into the upper third of the shell, angling the drill bit down, so the antlers stick up, not out.
Cow Pumpkin Face
We dare you to find a mooo-re adorable pumpkin. Start by downloading, tracing and cutting out the cow nose and ears template onto brown leather. Repeat with the forehead pattern on a corn husk. Hot glue the ears, nose and forehead to the bottom of a pumpkin. Paint two pumpkin seeds with black craft paint. Hot glue the seeds for nostrils, black buttons for eyes and dried bunny tail grass tops for horns.
Cameron (she/her) is a staff writer for Good Housekeeping, where she covers everything from holidays to food. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she received a B.A. in magazine journalism. In her spare-time she can be found scrolling TikTok for the latest cleaning hacks and restaurant openings, binge-watching seasons of Project Runway or online shopping.
Mariah Thomas (she/her) is an assistant editor for Good Housekeeping, where she covers home and lifestyle content. Mariah has more than four years of editorial experience, having written for TLC, Apartment Therapy, Women's Health and Avocado Magazine. She received her master's degree in journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and published her first book, Heart and Soul: Poems of Thoughts and Emotions, in 2019. She's also the founder of RTF Community, a platform for creatives of color to connect, learn and showcase their work.
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