Halloween Decor- Pumpkin Plant Pots

Halloween is my favorite day of the year, even more exciting and important than my birthday. That’s why each year I do what I can to continue showing my Halloween spirit, from decorating my apartment and balcony, to dressing up in full costumes with props. This year I haven’t quite settled on a halloween costume yet, but I’ve already started to work on my spooky house decorating that will culminate until I’ve made my home a modern witches lair.

This decorating idea is so simple, cost effective, and produces stunning results. The only materials you need are:

1. clay pots (the orange generic kind work best)
2. paintbrushes
3. orange, black, purple, green and white acrylic paint.

• First, I paint the entire pot. For the middle one, I painted the entire pot orange, and after it dried I brushed some yellow streaks in for extra color. It sort of gives it a tarnished look. I did this using a dry brush technique, where you take a brush (dry obviously) with a small touch of paint on the tip, and you brush it lightly over the surface of the dry paint to create some colored streaks.

• I made darker pots to resemble those dark acorn squashes. For the darker pots, I mixed the green and purple to create a couple dark shades. I ended up with a greenish-greyish-blue pot (on the right) and a dark purplish pot (on the left).
• For the pot on the right, I brushed some purple streaks over the paint, and for the pot on the left, I brushed some green over. The pictures below show the result of this technique:

• Next, I made jack-o-lantern designs. For the orange pot I used straight black paint, but for the dark pots I used bright yellow. Bright orange will work well too, but you will probably need to paint the design out in white paint or gesso first so that the bright color will stand out without the color underneath showing through.
• For a final touch, I paint the inside of the pot straight black

I keep these things out year-round. They’re great for holding pencils, markers, plants, storing tea, and on Halloween I fill them with candy! They’re so versatile and it’s easy to come up with other great painting ideas for Halloween or any holiday.