Halloween Pumpkin Carvings 2012

For day 31 of Crafty October I shared my pumpkin carvings for this year, I’ll let you know, in this post, how I carve my pumpkins!

I love carving pumpkins for Halloween – it’s probably my favourite activity! I *only* carved two pumpkins this year – I normally do at least 6! Both turned out fabulous, and I really like the designs I picked out this year.

Over the years I’ve collected many templates – freebies online, as well as ones that I have paid for. These two particular patterns are paid for ones, that I bought from Zombie Pumpkins.

I find carving pumpkins really satisfying and fun – nothing more cool than seeing the pattern come to life as you cut each section out. The boring, hard bit though, is the hollowing out!

I cut a lid from the top in a pentagon, with a notch at the back so I can fit it back on in the right place. I scrape to about an inch or just less thickness. I don’t bother doing this the whole way around – too much like hard work! I tend to do the front where I know I’m going to be carving.

I have my tools of the trade from Pumpkin Masters. I bought my kit about 15 years ago – and it still helps me to carve out pumpkins! I bought replacement parts the last time I was out in the USA, as I can’t seem to find these in the UK any more – even though I bought the original kit from my local supermarket.

Next step is the fun bit – the carving out!

I always tape my stencil to the front of the pumpkin, folding the paper so that it bends round and trying to keep the parts in the correct (ish) place. I then pierce through the outline of each section with a little pokey-pokey tool to make holes in the pumpkin. I then remove the template and start carving. I do it this way as that’s how I learned to do it when I got a carving instruction booklet with my kit. I like doing it this way as I can see clearly what I am cutting and if I’m getting too close to another edge. If I cut through the paper (which I have done as well) I find that I am carving blindly, and even though it’s a quicker technique, it’s easy to ruin your work (in my experience anyway!)

After carefully cutting the pieces out and cleaning the pumpkin up from bits of paper, it’s time to pop in a tea-light (or two, or three) and put outside for Halloween!

I have created my own templates in the past as well – it’s a bit of work, and I used a tutorial online how to do it, and my proudest one was this of Eddie (Iron Maiden) that I carved last year!

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