NASA Pumpkin Stencils

a picture of all the pumpkin designs: a galaxy, volcano, spacecraft, saturn, and sun

Celebrate the fall season and Halloween by making your very own NASA Space Place pumpkins with these easy-to-use stencils!


What you need:

  • Pumpkin
  • Black marker
  • Black paint
  • Small paintbrush
  • Your choice of NASA Space Place Stencil:

What to do:

  1. Print out the template page.

  2. Place the paper on the pumpkin and secure it with tape. You don't want it to move around while you trace the design. Since you're putting a flat piece of paper on a rounded surface, there will be some bunching, but don't worry about that too much.

  3. A paper template taped to a pumpkin

  4. With a black permanent marker, very slowly trace the outline of the shape. The marker will bleed through the paper and leave marks on the pumpkin for you to use as a guide.

    To be sure that it bleeds through enough, you can go back and forth over the same area a few times, or stop every few millimeters as you trace and let the marker bleed through some more.

  5. A black marker traces the outline of the template for a galaxy on the pumpkin

  6. Remove the paper. Look at your wonderful guide!

  7. a photo of a pumpkin with a rough outline of a galaxy shape

  8. Use your black marker to trace the outline of the shape.

  9. a marker is used to trace the shape of a galaxy on a pumpkin an outline of a galaxy shape on a pumpkin

  10. Fill in the design with the black marker or black paint. It's best to fill in the edges and small spaces with the marker, but the marker does not work well covering large areas. For those, paint is much easier.

  11. a partially filled in galaxy shape on a pumpkin a paintbrush with black paint is being used to fill in the galaxy shape on a pumpkin

  12. Display your wonderful NASA Space Place pumpkin for all to see! Don't forget to tell everyone what the shape is and what you know about it.

  13. a completely filled in galaxy shape on a pumpkin

Download a PDF of this activity.


More pumpkin stencils!

Make a NASA Climate Kids Pumpkin!
SciJinks Pumpkins

article last updated October 6, 2021
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