I was wandering through the isles of my local craft store, and these awesome paper mache pumpkins caught my eye. I immediately had a fun idea for Cricut Explore Pumpkins to decorate my house for Halloween.

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking one of these links, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Paper Mache shapes are EVERYWHERE! I even saw a freaky geometric dinosaur head. What in the world would you do with that???

There are tons of ways to decorate these pumpkins. They can be covered in fabric, decoupaged with fancy papers, or glittered with every color of the rainbow.

I decided to paint my pumpkins so that I could add black vinyl from Expressions Vinyl to them. Expressions Vinyl has a wonderful selection of indoor and outdoor vinyl. You can buy small sheets for 99 cents if it’s a color that you won’t use often.

Supply List for Cricut Explore Pumpkins

Paper Mache Pumpkins
Orange and Cream Acrylic Paint
Gold Metallic Paint
Foam Paint Brush
1″ Paint Brush
Black Vinyl
Cricut Explore Machine
Cricut Transfer Tape
Sharp X-acto knife or Cricut Weeding Tool

Have you seen the new Cricut Maker Machine?

To get started I painted my pumpkins. I was trying to decide if I wanted them the same color and finally decided to do one traditional orange and the other cream.

After 3 coats of paint, the paper mache still wasn’t complete covered. That stuff really soaks up paint.

I was getting ready to add a 4th coat, when my friend said, “How about trying a coat of gold paint over the orange and cream.” The metallic gold gave the pumpkins better coverage, and I LOVED how it looked.

I painted the stems gold as well. One coat of the metallic completely covered them.

The designs for these pumpkins are super easy. I used the insert image button on the left and searched “bats”. I selected the ones I liked and resized them.

Then I used the “duplicate” button in the lower right to make more of them.

Put your vinyl on the mat, making sure your dial is set to Vinyl. Load your mat and cut them out.

You may notice that I’m using a gray Extra Tacky mat. I have been using the same mat for months, and it still works great.

When the gray mats first come out of the package though, only use them for heavy weight materials. It will rip thin paper and cardstock. Once the tackiness wears off, you can use it for card stock and vinyl.

I used a very pointy X-acto knife to weed the bats. They were very easy to do except for their tiny eyes.

Then I peeled them off of the mat and stuck them on my pumpkin. I didn’t flatten them until I was sure that I had the placement the way I wanted it.

When the spacing was the way I liked, I pressed all the bats down and smoothed them out.

The scary face was also easy to weed using my X-acto knife, however, I used Transfer Tape to adhere. Also known as Application Tape, it makes it easier to place larger decals without wrinkles and bubbles.

If you’re not sure how to use Transfer Tape, here’s a video that will help you figure it out.