We carved ours yesterday, and yes, this is a blatant excuse to show off my work. Little Cinnamon decided that she wanted a pumpkin carved like Cruella De Vil, so that’s (more or less) what she got. Luckily I have a Disney animated characters atlas, so I had a picture to work from: right at the end, in the car chase, when Cruella goes completely batshit . It makes a good scary Jack O’Lantern!
What have you got carved and/or planned this year?
We haven’t done a pumpkin this year, we’re probably going to blow the whole darn holiday off.
But I have to tell you - dude, that is COOL.
Wow! That is amazing.
I’ll admit that my pumpkin carving skills are at best weak, so do you have any tips?
I’m actually going to do my pumpkin tonight and I’m modeling it after one I saw at Disneyland. My pumpkin will be, naturally, Mickey. Actually, here is my model.
I got two little pumpkins to make the ears and I’m going to stick them in with some skewers. The carving itself is actually pretty simple.
Do you use regular knives or the special pumpkin ones?
My friends and I carve every year, just for fun. We always use patterns because it’s much more fun for us to end up with a nice-looking pumpkin than a shitty looking one because we designed it ourselves.
The guy who hosts the carving hasn’t sent us the photos yet…so the best I can do is post pics from the Web site where we got the patterns.
Hammy (mine)
Creature Reacher (T.)
Chupacabra (A.)
Davy Jones (not the Monkee!) (C.)
You’ll have to trust me that ours really look like these - and they look awesome!
Thanks!
I love the Mickey idea, with the little pumpkin ears - very cute!
I do use some tools from a grocery store pumpkin carving kit - the little saws make it easier and less dangerous to cut out the parts where you’re cutting all the way through the pumpkin. I’m also keen to get a Pumpkin Masters deluxe scraping scoop, because the real bitch is cleaning out the pumpkin and scraping the sides so they’re easier to carve and easier for the light to go through.
I think the best approach is to find a drawing (anything like a photo needs to be messed with in photoshop so it has fewer details) you like, draw it on the pumpkin, and decide which areas are “white,” which are “black,” and which are “grey.” White gets cut out completely, black gets left intact, and for grey I use a sturdy paring knife to cut away the skin and a bit of flesh, so the light shines through. The hard part is making sure to leave supporting bits so that parts you want to keep intact don’t accidentally get cut entirely free. (You might notice that Cruella’s right eye isn’t as fancy - the pupil came free and I had to stick it back in with a toothpick!)
Here’s my one and only pumpkin tip. Don’t cut the hole at the top around the stem. Cut a hole in the bottom to scoop the guts out. Then carve your design, and all you have to do is set the pumpkin on top of your candle. No trying to light a match at the bottom of a cavity, no toothpicking the cutoff top to make it stay in place. Just set the thing on top of the candle and be done.
Pretty cool stuff guys. I love carving, but just like decorating at Christmas, since I live alone I don’t do it by myself.
You’re my Halloween hero!
Does the pumpkin not tend to collapse sooner with the hole on the bottom? Seems to me like it would be pretty weak once the pumpkin started to dry out and curl in around all the cutouts.
To be honest, I don’t know. Generally at most we have ours out for a day and drying out hasn’t been an issue. What might help is to coat the exposed rind with vasoline. I can’t see why hole on bottom or top would make a difference. One more tip, when you’re done with the pumpkin, take it to the edge of a wooded area and let the deer have a treat.
A great idea, but this year I was wise and invested in a little battery powered light. I will say though that my purchase had nothing to do with the difficulty of lighting a candle in a pumpkin. Rather, the light I bought is fabulous and awesome- it shines red, then blue, then green. Awesome.
I put mine in the back yard and let the deer have a treat!
One tip: Use a thin keyhole saw or somesuch to cut out the eyes/nose/etc., not a kitchen knife. We decided to carve a Jack-o-lantern this year for the little’uns, and I’d been leary of doing anything more elaborate than triangle-eyes/nose until my brother gave me this tip. Now we have a cute, funny-faced pumpkin with a neat little cockeyed grin, and I don’t think I could have gotten that kind of detail with a paring knife.
Now, does anybody have a sure-fire method to keep the squirrels from nibbling on it when it’s not lit? I’ve though about splashing it with salt water, but if someone has a better idea, please post.
My friend (A. above) got one of those for his this year. It IS fabulous and awesome! Except the blue was just not very bright. It was strange like…red (oooh!) green (ooooooh!) blue (hey, I can’t see the…) red (ooooh!)
If you’re going to use that light make sure you DON’T follow BobLibDem’s awesome advice - afaik, the light “plugs in” to the pumpkin and you need it to have a bottom 
Also make sure the hole you cut in the top is big enough for the fancy light thingy to fit through.
Other tips we’ve learned…
My niece was carrying her pumpkin back after carving. As expected, she was swinging it a little bit, On the downswing, the pumpkin flew out of her grip. Her Jack-o-lantern transformed from a cute, bur very usual carving into an accident victim. We slathered it with band-aids along the fracture points, and she drew sutures on the sides. Her brother was clearly a little jealous.
-Lil
Here’s our set:
Cruella’s pretty sweet!
Gah! That’s awesome!!
Please take pics tonight of the pumpkins all aglow!
My brother is great at this. Here’s one he carved using a picture of my little girl as his model. That pic really doesn’t do it justice, there are a lot of details that didn’t show up.
