Easy DIY Doodled Henna Pumpkins
Doodle on your pumpkins with henna-inspired designs for a fabulous yet simple and totally boho fall DIY! Great Halloween craft, too!
How to Use Your Doodle Skills
I think if you consider yourself a doodler, you probably doodle all of the time. Just about anything near me gets doodled on when I get stuck on the phone for a while and my notebooks are full of little shapes and squiggles, if not drawings and kind of rough plans of things I’d like to make or have my father help me build.
And since doodling comes naturally to me, it seemed like a ton of fun to make doodled no-carve pumpkins. But I didn’t want just any kind of doodling, I decided I wanted totally bohemian, henna tattoo-inspired doodles to cover my pumpkins.
Turn Your Doodling Into Henna Designs
And so when I had a few minutes I’d make little henna-inspired doodles in my notebook (I wipe the pages clean with a wet paper towel so I don’t have to worry about “wasting” paper on doodles anymore, genius, right?!). Sometimes I’d do Google henna tattoo images or how to draw henna designs and mimic them.
And that is what I recommend you do, too. As I doodled I found that I was mad about the mandala shapes. Now getting a mandala shape that is nice and symmetrical can be quite tricky but it’s also what I think of most often when I think of henna designs.
Easy DIY Doodled Henna Pumpkins
I decided to grab my pumpkins, paint them up, which is kind of a funny story in itself, and get to doodling. Want to make your own henna pumpkins?
Items Needed for Doodled Henna Pumpkins
- Pumpkins
(mine are fake) - Paint in colorful colors
- White paint pen, medium tip
(mine are fake)
in colorful colors
Instructions for Doodled Henna Pumpkins
I started with a white and orange pumpkin. I painted the orange pumpkin red, but it still looks orange, and then I painted the white pumpkin teal, which they already sell at the same craft store I got the white one. Womp, womp, right? 🙂
Starting with the stem make a simple, basic shape around with a white oil paint pen. Things that are common in henna designs include petals (like above), triangles, leaf-like shapes, and more simple shapes or shapes inspired by nature.
After your first shape, build outward with a repetitive design. Each petal received a teardrop shape in between, which then lead to a leaf-like triangle shape connecting each of the teardrops. I then added an outline filled with lines on either side of the teardrops and a simple polka dot in each triangle, leaf-like shape.
As you repeat your designs around and around with petals and scrolls and squiggles and dots, you’ll find a place that you’re happy with the design. Feel free to stop before the pumpkin is filled all of the ways. I wanted designs that came from the stem down and looked similar to a lace doily being placed on top.
You can continue with other pumpkins in the same way. This one began with a star-like shape made of triangles, with dashes added inside of each triangle. Half circles connected each of the triangles to make a petal, flower-like shape.
With filling some areas in and adding more petals, the henna mandala design easily grew into something lovely despite the nature of the simple doodles.
As you work, be sure to keep your notebook of doodles nearby for ideas on what to do next. And feel free to repaint and start over if you’re not happy with the design. That’s one of the greatest things about this project. The paint pen is so thin that you can paint over it with very little of the design visibly raised beneath the paint. In fact, I’m thinking I might start my red, oh, who are we kidding, still orange, pumpkin again to be more similar to my teal one which I LOVE.
In the end, I love these guys. They’re simple and a colorful way to bring fall decor into your house this season!
A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.