Ombre Painted Pumpkins DIY | Easy Fall Mantel Tutorial

Looking for simple and stylish fall mantel decor ideas? Create an easy fall mantel with this ombre painted pumpkins DIY. You can make your own ombre pumpkins with our simple step by step pumpkin painting tutorial. Let’s get painting!

Welcome to our coastal blue fall home 🙂

Blue is definitely my “fall color” this year. Last year it was pink, but this year I’m having a love affair with the color blue! (Shhh..Don’t tell my pink kitchen ceiling and pink stock tank pool)

I love the timeless yet trendy vibe that comes from the color blue. Y’all know I love to spray paint my collection of pumpkins every year, so this year I decided to go ALL out with blues!

The ombre pumpkin painting trend looked so fun, so I picked out some of my favorite blue spray paint colors and went to town making an ombre pumpkin fall mantel. Read below for my easy step-by-step tutorial on how to paint ombre pumpkins for your own fall decor!

How to Paint Ombre Pumpkins

I went to my local Walmart and picked out 5 shades of blue spray paint – technically 4 because I already had navy. I tried to find shades of blue that ranged from light to dark, and that weren’t too bright, but had more of a coastal tone to them.

The blue spray paint colors I chose were:

Navy Blue

Spa Blue

Slate Blue (I ended up not using this color, it was a little too dark grey for me)

French Blue

Solstice Blue

And also White

I brought down my assortment of pumpkins I’ve collected over the years from the attic. I like to buy cheap pumpkins from Dollar Tree, Amazon, Walmart, or Michael’s and then paint them!

When I’m ready to start spray painting, I lay down a cardboard box or extra piece of plywood and spread out the pumpkins. I wipe down the pumpkins with a lint free cloth first. There’s two different ways I will spray paint pumpkins: one is less messy but more time consuming, and the other is more messy but faster. I tend to start out with the less messy way, but get impatient and start doing the faster way 🙂

The less messy way is to spray the pumpkins from the top, while the are sitting face up on the cardboard. I spray in quick short motions all around the pumpkin, getting about 2/3 of the pumpkin sprayed. Then I wait for it to dry, and I’ll turn the pumpkin upside down to spray paint the bottom sides that I couldn’t reach the first round.

The messy way is to hold the pumpkin by the stem with one hand, and spray paint it with the other hand, while spinning the pumpkin around. This way, you are able to get all sides and the bottom sprayed at once, but will spray your fingers holding the stem in the process! When I have a LOT of pumpkins to spray paint, this is usually what I end up doing so that it goes faster.

Depending on what color the pumpkin is to begin with, I will do about 2-3 coats to get full coverage. The navy pumpkins I only had to do 1 coat of paint, but the white pumpkins I did 3 coats total.

After all of the pumpkins are dry, I grab a small paint brush and gold acrylic paint to paint the stems. The added touch of gold gives the pumpkins a more polished modern look.

On the mantel, I arranged the bigger pumpkins of each color first. Then I filled in the holes with the mini pumpkins of the same color, going from darkest to lightest.

Coastal Blue Ombre Painted Pumpkins

I like to stack some pumpkins on top or on side of one another, and some facing in different directions. This helps bundle the pumpkins together and create a wavy flow of one color to the next.

For an added decor touch on the ends of the mantel, I also made DIY orchid arrangements and painted the planters in matching white and blue.

I’m working on a DIY Potted Orchid blog post and will post the tutorial soon! They were SO easy to make, and much more cost effective than buying one already made, which can get pricey!