DIY Pumpkin Dioramas (Made with Dollar Store Styrofoam Pumpkins)

Today we are making some DIY Pumpkin Dioramas….using only items that we could find at the Dollar Store.

(Which is a good thing since my girls are obsessed with them.)

To begin you are going to need a pumpkin and the ones we used are silly styrofoam pumpkins from the Dollar Store.

Then you need to round up a few supplies:

Like a knife, paint, paint brushes, glue and whatever creatures or items you want to put inside.

Next you cut your pumpkin in half…almost.  I like to leave the stem intact so I cut my pumpkins in half right next to the stem.

Now it’s time to paint!!!

I like to paint my sky first…and pretty much cover the entire inside of the pupkin with various shades of blue (or black).

After the sky dries I paint the “pumpkin flesh” (or the white styrofoam edges) orange.

And finally I paint in some ground.

For paint I just use bottles of acrylic paint that you can find at the Dollar Store (or any craft store) and as you can see it doesn’t cover the cracks in the pumpkin mold.

If I was serious about making these into beautiful keepsake dioramas I would putty up the cracks and slice off protruding parts of the mold.  However since these are only to be used for my kids to play with for the next 6 weeks the cracks and protrusions remain.

Alright!  Now it’s time to decorate!

You can fancy up the ground by adding rocks with your hot glue gun:

Or you can pile in some spanish moss to make your night scene more spooky:

Then add the critters!

I found cool packs of zombies and tombstones at my Dollar Store.

But if you can’t find those you can always you the packs of farm animals and make some happy cows:

Or a scene of monstrous sized insects taking over the world.

Either way I don’t glue in my objects because my girls use them as a play house of sorts for their newly purchased dollar store creatures which means the scenes change several times a day.

BUT..if you wanted to keep your scene stationary I would recommend gluing all items into place.

And speaking of recommendations…

I highly recommend letting your kids make their own diorama from start to finish…it’s entertaining to watch and you might be surprised with what you get.

This is what my 9 year old villian loving, park core daring, running shoe wearing daughter made:

And this is what my princess loving, dress wearing, 5 year old daughter who is obsessed with pink came up with:

And I have to say I love both the rainbow cat and the zombie apocalyse.  They are both perfection….surprising, not what I would have expected perfection.

So there you have it.  How to make: Dollar Store Styrofoam Pumkin Dioramas.  A fun an inexpensive afternoon project.

Happy Crafting.

-liZ

*If you are not close to a Dollar Store I found the exact pumpkins that we used HERE on Amazon.  (But they are selling them for $6 a piece!)

*I also looked for my zombie men on Amazon.  I couldn’t find them.  (Sorry) The best I could do was find a pack of 2″zombies for $5.  And you can find them HERE.

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