Hello pumpkin! I’m so glad that you’re here today because I have a great tutorial for you. It’s almost fall and that means pumpkin making season is upon us! Today I’m going to show you how to make rope pumpkins without needing to buy (or find for that matter) any pumpkin form or base, like the styrofoam ones from Dollar Tree. All you need is cardboard and rope. Let’s get into it!
Rope Pumpkin Supplies
- sisal or cotton rope
- scissors
- really thick cardboard
- thick stick for the stem
- artificial leaf
- hot glue gun & glue
- clear tape
Squeeze some hot glue on the end of the rope and begin to roll it in on itself. It will form a flat ball.
If you want the pumpkin to easily stand on its own, you need a very, very thick piece of cardboard. The piece I used was almost 3/4″ thick and came as packaging material in a 32″ TV box. Regular cardboard will work, you will just need to make more rounds on the sides of the pumpkin, create a kickstand, or place it on an easel. You could probably even glue multiple pieces together to form one thick piece.
Place your new rope pumpkin onto the cardboard and trace around it with a pencil. When you get to the bottom, leave it a bit square. That helps it stand, but with my thick cardboard my rope pumpkins stood pretty easily. I traced around and cut the little notch area where the rope pumpkin began, but in the end I didn’t need it because I placed that part at the bottom on one side.
Squeeze a good bit of hot glue on the cardboard, then place the rope pumpkin on it. Make sure that the notch where you began winding the rope is at the bottom on one of the sides.
Now that one side of the cardboard is covered, you need to cover the raw edges. Sit the rope pumpkin up on its side. Squeeze some hot glue on the side just to the left of the flat bottom.
With the width of my cardboard, I needed three rounds of rope to cover the exposed edge. If yours is thicker or thinner, leave a round off or keep adding more until your edge is covered.
When you add the final round of rope to cover the edge, don’t cut it off on the bottom right side. Bring it up to the back side of the cardboard and glue it along the flat bottom.
This is my pumpkin made with the white cotton rope. It’s made exactly the same way. This is what the top of the rope gourd will look like. You can slightly see the space that I left unglued.
I painted a leaf from a pack I bought at Dollar Tree with mustard yellow acrylic paint. Place the leaf at the opening that you left on top of the rope pumpkin. The slit that I left unglued looks wider because I pushed the stick through first. Once it’s placed in you won’t see a gap at all.
You won’t even have to glue the stem and leaf in place!
How cute are these bad boys?!

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