Turn Your Mini Gourds and Pumpkins Into a Spooky Vampire

I bought a Halloween toy variety pack for making my Halloween Gloves. When I was done assembling all of my gloves I noticed I had a few items left over. Not wanting anything to go to waste, I started looking for ways to use up some of my leftovers – specifically the leftover vampire teeth. Enter those mini gourds and pumpkins you see sold everywhere. Most people will just display them as is because they are so cute (really anything with mini in the name is adorable, right?!), but I thought why not dress them up a bit and turn them from cute to spooky?

To make these spooky gourds, I used the following items. I already had the Halloween Party Pack from a prior craft I made, but I included the full cost of it here anyways since I used the teeth from this pack – if you just bought the vampire teeth the cost would be much lower. 

Item	Cost
Bag of mini pumpkins	$5.99
Bag of mini gourds	$6.99
Mini squash	$1.13
Push Pins	$4.65
Halloween Party Pack – Vampire Teeth	$11.99
	$30.75

While I used red push pins to try and give my gourds a bit of a spookier look you could really use any color push pin eyes you want. I think it could also be fun to use glow in the dark vampire teeth instead of the white and neon ones I used (as mentioned, I was trying to use up leftovers from a party pack I had). Here is a pack of glow in the dark vampire teeth that could be used as a substitute. 

I will admit, this craft was harder than I thought it would be. The most difficult part was trying to get the mouth opening just right for the vampire teeth. When looking at the finished products of these from other crafters, I will say mine look much more homemade (a nice way of saying not as polished…).

Here is a step-by-step for how I made my spooky vampire gourds:

1. Grab your mini gourd or mini pumpkin and vampire teeth. Decide where you want the mouth to go. Compress the vampire teeth to the width you want them to be – you can really choose any degree of openness you want. Hold the teeth against the gourd (backwards to how you will put them in – with the back facing you) and trace around the teeth with a pencil, pen, or marker. This will ensure you cut the mouth hole in the right spot, with the right shape and size to fit your teeth how you want them to look.

NOTE:  I found it easiest to use a pen for marking where to cut the teeth hole. A pencil didn’t leave a noticeable enough line for my tastes and a marker left too permanent a line. The pen was very visible and I could wash off the remnants if my cuts didn’t match up to the lines just right.

2. Cut out the mouth hole you’ve just drawn. I found a pairing knife to be the easiest to use.

NOTE:  This step took a lot of finessing for me. Though I traced the teeth, the hole never seemed to be big enough for them to fit in. I spent a decent amount of time shaving a little bit more out so my teeth would fit. 

3. Scoop out the guts. Since these won’t be lit I didn’t get the insides as clean as I would a jack-o-lantern, but I did scoop out the bulk of it so it looked a little cleaner. If you wanted to go for the gross factor, you could leave the guts in tact and then pull some of them out of the mouth once your teeth are in.

4. Insert your vampire teeth with the fronts of the teeth facing you.

5. Grab your push pins and stick them into the mini gourd or mini pumpkin. These push pins are the eyes of your vampire.

6. Display proudly!

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