How To Make An EASY Rosary Pumpkin

How To Make An EASY Rosary Pumpkin is a post by contributing writer Kristen at Drawn2BCreative and the adorable children in the pictures are my amazing nieces and nephew. Enjoy the post! 🙂 You can find all of my All Saints’ Day resources for kids here.

October is one of my favorite months! It’s full of beautiful fall weather, apple cider, pumpkin spice (yea I’m on that band wagon, don’t judge), pumpkin carving and if you’re Catholic, a whole month devoted to the Holy Rosary. If you’re really lucky you can combine all of those! I’m sure you’ve seen some youtube videos on using drill to make some neat patterns in your pumpkin. Use the same concept to make a rosary pattern on your pumpkin and light up the night with this beautiful devotion! 

Also, you should totally check out my All Saints’ Day food labels! This is the perfect All Saints’ Day party printable as it turns everyday kid snacks into symbols of the Saints, making celebrating a breeze for mom!

 

There are several ways ranging from easy to really easy.

What you’ll need for any of these options is:

  • A pumpkin (a decent sized one- you need room for 60ish beads)
  • A drill
  • Two sizes of drill bits. A bigger one (I used 5/8 in) and a smaller one (I used 3/8 inc). You just need a contrast in size for your Our Father Beads and your Hail Mary beads. (Don’t use the teeny tiny size drill bits, you need some light to be able to shine through- I think 1/4in is the smallest I’d go)
  • Usual pumpkin carving stuff- trash bag, spoons for scraping pumpkin goo, an area that’s easy to clean up (news papers/ table cloths on the floor, or just do it outside and hose it off), and a small knife or pumpkin carving knife for the cross and connector medallion.

First step is like usual, cut off the top and clean out your pumpkin. You want a nice clean inside without any seeds or goopy stringy stuff.

Ok now onto the rosary drilling! I have to put a short note about safety: Drills are real tools and should be used by an adult or really able-bodied older child under adult supervision. Please don’t injure yourself drilling your pumpkin, Mary wouldn’t want that.

The Really Easy Method:

Additional supplies: Print a copy of a Rosary Notebooking page or similar coloring page, tape

Print out a rosary coloring page. You can use one of my Rosary Notebooking pages like The Joyful Mysteries. Tape it to your favorite looking side of the pumpkin (probably the flattest side would be easiest to use), making sure the whole rosary is visible.

Use your hands to smooth the paper over the pumpkin creating creases. Then snip those creases with your scissors. Tape your corners and other little wedges to your pumpkin.

Now the really fun part. Use your smaller drill bit and drill right on through that paper into the pumpkin. Be careful not to put your hand on the inside of the pumpkin where you might drill into it.

You can do all the small Hail Mary bead-holes, then switch your drill bit to the larger one to do the Our Father bead-holes.

Use your knife or pumpkin carving knife and carefully cut out the cross and connector medallian (right through the paper).

When you’re done, just remove the paper and Ta-da- Really Easy Rosary Pumpkin.

The Free hand method:

Additional Supply: A dry erase marker (and possibly rubbing alcohol if you want to do a lot of erasing)

Use your dry erase marker to free-hand draw a rosary onto your favorite side of the pumpkin. The fun part of this is you can arrange your rosary in a wiggly form to match the uniqueness of your pumpkin, or stretch it out horizontal if you got a wide pumpkin, or really tall if you have a tall pumpkin, etc.

The best way to approach a free hand rosary is to start with the Our Father Beads. Draw 5 dime sized circles on your pumpkin with some space between them.

Next fill in the spaces between those with 10 Hail Mary Beads. If you mess up, it’s ok- remember you’re using a dry erase marker, just wipe it off and try again! If it leaves a smudge, use a little rubbing alcohol and a paper towel. Even if you mess up sometimes you can just add a little wiggle in your beads and it’ll still totally look like a rosary.

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Add your Our Father, Apostles Creed, Hail Marys and cross at the bottom and you’re ready to drill. Use your little drill bit and drill right into your small beads, then switch and do the big beads. Don’t forget, place your gripping hand somewhere where it won’t be drilled into.

The Real Rosary template method:

Additional supplies: Rosary, Tape, dry erase marker

Another way to make a Rosary on a pumpkin is to use an actual rosary and tape. Lay your Rosary out on the pumpkin the way you like it and use tape to secure it.

I tried just pressing the beads to make a small indention in the pumpkin as my pattern, and then decided my thumbs did not appreciate this idea, and switched to the expo marker. Once you have your rosary taped and laid out how you like, simply use your dry erase marker to make dots at the same intervals as your rosary. Make the Our Fathers bigger, and your Hail Marys smaller. I made dots for the top, bottom, and ends of the sides of my cross, and then connected them once I removed the rosary.

Carefully remove your rosary without accidentally erasing your pattern, and then drill, drill, drill (as explained above).

To make the cross super easy to cut out, drill some holes at the top and bottom, and ends of the sides. Don’t drill your hands! Then use your knife to cut out the sections in between.

Light it up!

You can put one of those electric candles inside, or a real candle (but practice fire safety!), or go all out and stick some Christmas lights in there! To get these really bright pictures, I actually jammed the Christmas light bulbs into the holes from the inside making it really shine. But in all honestly, just shoving all the lights inside and plugging it in made it look 90% as bright and nice. I cut a small hole in the back of my pumpkin to feed the cord and plug in my Christmas lights.

Happy Holy Rosary Month! I hope you enjoyed this fun Rosary Pumpkin idea.

For more Rosary Printables, check out my blog: www.Drawn2BCreative.com where I share lots of fun Catholic Printables.

Here are a few of my Favorites:

Kristen writes at Drawn 2 B Creative

Check out my All Saints’ Day Resource Page here.

Comments

  1. What a cute idea!

  2. Love it! Yes the rosary in the heart shape says it all!!

  3. Veronica Lodge says

    Kudos for this cute craft for Catholics!

  4. I am so going to do this, thank you 🙂