Easy Fall Craft: DIY Candy Corn Pumpkin with Felt Ruffles

See how to make a candy corn pumpkin using felt ruffles that is perfect for fall!

It’s SO easy, inexpensive, and can be customized in any way!

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Easy Fall Craft: DIY Candy Corn Pumpkin with Felt Ruffles

Fall is my favorite time of year, and that means I have a never-ending list of project ideas!

So much DIY inspiration, so little time… {sigh}

One of the best parts of fall is of course candy corn!

Sorry pumpkin spice, but you don’t have a fan in this girl. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I decided to combine the look of the sweet little treat with another autumn classic–the pumpkin–and this project couldn’t be easier!

You can knock it out in no time and customize it in so many different ways!

My Inspiration

Since my husband frequently reminds me that I already have plenty of wreaths and door hangers, especially for fall (he’s got a point…), I decided to combine the two ideas and create a pumpkin decoration for our mantel using felt, and jazz it up with a fun candy corn vibe.

It was also nice that I was able to use up some supplies that were left over from previous projects:

• Lots of felt that I used on my son’s toddler Christmas tree
• Straight pins from our birthday balloon wreath with interchangeable initials

Hooray for frugal crafts!

Candy Corn Pumpkin Supplies

Here’s what I used to whip up this easy DIY candy corn pumpkin:

• One 4-inch foam ball
• Five 8.5″ x 11″ craft felt sheets
  • Two sheets each of orange and yellowy orange, and one of white
• Scissors
• Serrated knife
• Pencil & stencil (I used a salt shaker)
• Straight pins
• Small stick
• Green deco mesh (pictured further below because I’m not good at planning ahead)

Step 1: Cutting Out the Felt Circles

A super easy way to add some texture and interest to styrofoam or straw forms is with felt!

Yep, those basic felt sheets from the craft store are all you need to create pretty ruffles or petals.

I didn’t want my pumpkin to end up being too poofy or too chintzy either, so I used circles of felt that were around the size of a lemon slice.

It just seemed like a nice size.

Our salt shaker proved to be the perfect little stencil (about 2.5″ in diameter), and I was able to fit 16 circles on each sheet of felt.

I cut up two sheets of each color, but I didn’t end up using all of the white.

One sheet probably would have been just enough, but I’m not one to map out my crafts ahead of time.

I’m more of a wing-it-and-let’s-see-what-happens gal.

Step 2: Prepping the Pumpkin Form

In order to get my foam ball looking more pumpkiny, and to make it more stable and less roly-poly, I grabbed a serrated knife and cut off a small section to give it a flat edge.

Now it rested nicely on the table.

Step 3: Giving the Candy Corn Pumpkin Its Ruffles

It was now time to add all the felt circles and make those ruffles!

This is where the magic happens and it couldn’t be easier:

1. Grab a felt circle
2. Fold it in half
3. Fold it in half again
4. Stick a straight pin through the corner
5. Add the felt to the foam ball by sticking the straight pin all the way in

I started at the bottom along the flat edge and worked my way around and then up, fluffing and adjusting the felt ruffles along the way.

This is where you can get really creative too!

You can cut squares instead of circles, change the size up, overlap or intersperse the colors as you add them, or pack them in really dense or spread them out to change the effect.

Lots of possibilities!

Step 4: Adding the Pumpkin’s Stem

To turn this baby into a pumpkin and not just a candy corn sphere, I of course needed to add a stem.

With some of my other pumpkin projects, namely my shabby chic ‘Happy Fall’ pumpkin door hanger and my deco mesh pumpkin wreath, I used some burlap to make the stems for my DIY gourds.

However, for this project, I wanted to use something natural.

A quick trip to the backyard revealed the perfect little addition–a stick!

It was added simply by creating a small hole at the top of the foam ball with my scissors then pushing the stick into place.

I intentionally left it sticking pretty far up because a nice chunk of it will be covered by the white felt ruffles once they get added.

Oh, and I know the felt looks pretty wonky in these pics, so please disregard the crazy Chinese fortune cookie appearance here.

I went back after adding all the felt and made a bunch of adjustments to even everything out.

Step 5: Adding the Pumpkin’s Leaf

Now this little booger took me a while to conquer.

When I started this project I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to end up using (which is why there’s no leaf material in the supplies photo above), so there was a lot of trial and error.

Everything I tried just didn’t look right.

Felt, flannel, scrapbook paper, fake leaves…they all just didn’t work.

Boo.

Then it was some deco mesh to the rescue!

I simply cut off a tiny square and folded it around and in on itself, removed the stick from the foam, then inserted the pointed end of the mesh followed by the stick.

Voila!

Instant pumpkin leaf.

The Completed Candy Corn Pumpkin!

And here it is!

After some adjusting of the pins and tweaking the poofiness and ruffle positions, my candy corn felt pumpkin is complete!

I think it turned out so stinking cute, and it’s a nice combination of my two inspiration pieces: candy corn and pumpkins.

I also love how simple and inexpensive it was to make, and how you can easily readjust the felt as needed and make any changes if you don’t like how something looks.

You gotta love projects with some leeway!

You could also make some in all red or green to use as apple decor…also a fall classic!

If You Enjoyed This…

Make sure you check out my Project Gallery for all of my other crafty creations, tutorials, and freebies, including these other Halloween and Fall projects I’ve shared!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Happy Halloween!