Button Pumpkin: Bright and Easy Autumn Craft

When pumpkins fill the fields, autumn is here. This time of a year pumpkins also fill our garden and local farmer’s market. A couple of pumpkins decorates our porch, and the freezer is getting filled with pumpkin puree, which will be turned into many pumpkin pies and cookies later on. In celebration of this pumpkin bonanza, we made a pumpkin button collage.

After our previous moon collage, I was looking forward to making more button crafts with my toddler. It was so much fun to make, and I like the look of the finished project on the wall! This month pumpkins worked as our inspiration.

Materials to Make the Pumpkin Button Craft

How to Make a Button Pumpkin Craft

1. Download the template at the end of the post and print it on a piece of paper. Even if you choose black paper, like we did, you will still be able to see the shape well enough.

2. Cut the pumpkin shape out with a hobby knife and scissors.

3. Apply overlapping strips of tape to the back of the paper so that their sticky surface is exposed in the cutouts. This is the main trick: everything will stick to the tape only, forming a nice crisp silhouette.

4. Cut the strips of paper that go inside of the design and stick them to the tape.

5. Collect buttons and beads in a bowl. Get buttons of various shapes and shades. Dollar stores and craft stores usually carry fun button packs for scrapbooking and other crafts.

6. Set up an invitation to play!

As many toddlers before him, my son loves playing with buttons and stickers. His attachment is charming: every time we use a tape gun, he comes over and asks for a little piece of tape. Upon getting it, he acts very excited and walks around, looking for the best place to stick his piece. And this time he got so much tape all to himself!

He carefully selected one button after another and contemplated them before making a final decision of where to stick them onto the pumpkin. Sometimes he would sort buttons on the side, but soon return back to his pumpkin. It was getting filled with buttons pretty quickly!

Not only these button collages make for pretty art projects, but they are great for exercising fine motor skills! Simply picking round buttons and tiny bead – one after another – another takes a lot of concentration from a toddler, but if you want to make this part compelling for an older child, you can always add tweezers to the game.

Even though we do not have a single orange button left in our collection, we still did not have enough to fill the whole pumpkin. But not to worry! As a final step, I sprinkled some glitter onto our pumpkin.

Afterwards, I removed the glitter excess by brushing it off, and the pumpkin was finished! I am going to put it on the wall next to the button moon.

Download the Free Pumpkin Template!

Also Try!

Cardinal

Moon

Pumpkin

Christmas Tree