Solar Halloween Pumpkins, Turn Artificial or Edible Pumpkins into Solar Pumpkins, Quick and Easy DIY Tutorial

I can't take credit for this idea, I read somewhere about using a solar light

 in a real pumpkin but I had not seen them made with artificial pumpkins.

I've had these plug in artificial pumpkins since my boys were little.

They are 18 and 20 now, just goes to show how long this foam lasts!

We still like to put them out at Halloween but I wasn't happy about all the 

electrical cords everywhere. We use solar string lights at Christmas

and solar pathway lights that work beautifully so I thought this

would be a great solution... plus...free energy, what's not to love?

To start, I cut and removed all the electrical cords and light bulbs.

Solar lights...about .99 each, found at Walmart

I removed the bottom stake part that you would normally stick in the ground.

For this pumpkin I loved the stem on it since it was natural looking and 

didn't want to cut it off so I decided to put the light towards the back of 

the pumpkin. I drew an outline in the diameter of the plastic globe

part of the solar light, predrilled a large hole and used a tiny serrated knife 

to cut the rest away.

Inserted the plastic "globe" part. It fit snugly, I didn't use glue.

The solar charger part screws on to the clear globe.

The whole process took about 5 minutes.

I was in my garage studio when making them but had to go into the 

closet to check it out...success!

I had two more pumpkins in a smaller round size that had  plain

foam stems. I cut those off and repeated the steps above to insert the 

light directly on top to mimic a stem. I brushed on a little 

brown paint and polyurethane to seal.

You can see how beat up this little guy is. I ended up applying a quick coat 

of paint then poly to freshen all of them up.

Since it's not Halloween yet and I live in Florida and it's still like

90 degrees...not good for fresh pumpkin life... I simply turned 

the pumpkin faces to the rear so it looks like I have whole

pumpkins on the porch. 

Of course now that I placed the solar light in the back of the 

large pumpkin to save the realistic stem, it doesn't look so 

great turned around so I just left it out of the pic. 

In hindsight I would have cut the pretty stem off !

Shown with my painted pumpkin topiary I made last Fall.

Sorry for the grainy pic but I took this at night, they really do work well.

When it's closer to Halloween, I may have to move them to the edge of

the porch so they get a good dose of sun for maximum solar charge but

even with the morning sun they've been getting, they seem to work fine.

The rest of the porch is decorated with cats ;)

Thanks for reading about my solar light pumpkins!

Visit my new online store for coastal and nature themed mosaic art, and

coastal ornaments. 

Find me on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube

Cheers!

~Lucy