Gather your materials.

Blow up 12″ balloons about half full. The bigger you blow the balloons, the more yarn you’ll need. But the smaller you blow them, the more egg-like the shape will be. It’s a balance.

Cut out about 21 pieces of yarn about 36 inches long. If you make your pieces of yarn too much longer than that, they’ll get tangled when you soak them in the glue.

Pour the glue into a small bowl. It takes about one full 2 ounce bottle of glue per yarn pumpkin. If you add three bottles into the bowl at a time, it makes it easier.

(Suggestion: Don’t use dollar store white glue. One of the best glue mixtures to use is half Aleene’s Tacky Glue/half water (if you can get it as it works better than regular white glue. Your pumpkin will be somewhat soft and flexible with other types of white glue.)

Tie one of the pieces of yarn to the end of the balloon. Open one of your kitchen cabinets and hang the balloon from the handle. It’s way easier (and cleaner) than trying to manipulate the balloon when it’s lying on a flat surface.

Dunk one of the pieces of yarn into the bowl of glue and swirl it around gently with a plastic fork to get it completely covered with glue.

Hold the end of the piece of yarn with your fingers, then gently run it between the tines of a fork to remove the excess glue. Running it through the fork left enough glue on the yarn that it held its shape once it dried, but not so much glue that it was dripping everywhere.

Don’t run the yarn through your fingers to “pinch” off the excess glue, it takes off nearly all the glue, and makes the yarn ball very soft once it dried. The fork method worked way better.

Take the glue covered yarn strand and press the end down somewhere and wind it around the balloon, making sure the press down the ends of the yarn to secure them when they’re in place.

Repeat with the remaining pieces of yarn.

When you’re done, find somewhere to hang the yarn covered balloons to dry.

They may drip a few drops of glue as they were drying, so make sure you put down an old towel, tarp, or dollar store tablecloth so you don’t wreck whatever is beneath them.

It took a full 24 hours for them to dry.

This is CRITICAL. You need to make sure you press your fingers down under the yarn to detach the glue from the balloon – around the entire surface of the balloon. It’s a little tedious, but if you don’t do it, the balloon will pull the yarn to the inside as it deflates and it may ruin the shape of your pumpkin.

Make a very small hole in the balloon close to where the knot is (it won’t pop if you cut it near the knot). You want the air to leak slowly so you can detach any yarn that you might have missed as it shrinks.

Then pull the deflated balloon out through one of the openings in the yarn.

Make the pipe cleaner stem and vine by wrapping the pipe cleaners around your baby finger. The stem is just a spiral, so tuck the end of the pipe cleaner into the yarn. You don’t need to glue it on, but just tuck it in and it stayed in place.

Your yarn pumpkin is complete!

If you use regular white glue, your pumpkin will be somewhat soft and flexible. We recommend using half Aleene’s tacky glue and half water mixed together to get a firmer pumpkin.