The fiance and I carved four pumpkins this year. We got three of the stencils from zombiepumpkins.com and one from another message board. I did Hannibal Lecter and the Cheshire Cat, Jake did Batman and this pirate skull thingie . I don’t know if it’ll show up on anyone’s monitors, it doesn’t on mine, but apparently it does on my mother’s, but Jake also carved the bat symbol in the back of his Batman so it would project on the wall behind and above the pumpkin. It looks really cool in person.
The Batman one is way too cool! I also thought the pirate one was really good.
Okay, here are a couple that I carved. This one I thought was pretty good, I used a pattern and whatnot.
Okay, don’t laugh at these other ones . I couldn’t decide what to carve, and didn’t want to take the time to use a pattern and all that jazz. My friend said, “make a dinosaur!” so I just freehanded a really crappy dinosaur. Then my brother thought it would be…interesting if my friend carved a pumpkin into her pumpkin. There. I feel retarted. But I do laugh every time I see that picture, or see the stupid things out on the front steps.
How do you people do that?! I learned yesterday that I can’t carve a pumpkin to save my life!
Here is ours. DH drew the design and I attempted to follow his lines. Although, while I am not so good at carving a pumpkin, I learned that I am rather good at turning it into pie and roasted seeds.
Mishell, those are all great pumpkins. Very nicely done!
We did two this year. My son’s was from a pumpkin design book which they sell with the pumpkin carving tools. It’s a couple of ghosts. My daughter did a simple vampire-standard jack-o-lantern hybrid. It actually looked pretty good and I also did a bat back projection, which looked very cool. It was even more cool because the flickering of the candle made it looks as if the bat was dancing on the wall a bit.
For anyone who want to do back projection next year, keep the design small and towards the top of the pumpkin so that it projects up.
Metj, these are not really possible, or at least not easy at all, to do with a kitchen knife. Try going to a store today and buying a pumpkin carving kit at a discount. Also make sure you use a firm pumpkin but if it has thick walls then scrape them down to about 1" thickness or less. If it’s too thin it can break, though, so be careful on that.
I made my own stencil this year, which took a decent chunk of time. I’ll have the pictures either later today or tomorrow.
It turned out okay but I unfortunately had to take 2 days off between 98% of the carving and the last details, which meant the flesh was too rubbery to do the last 2% justice. Plus the pictures were taken after the cut edges had shrank away a bit so some of the lines look wonkier than they were when I initially cut them. But I’m still a bit proud of doing the stencil.
We did this one also. However, keeping the stencil straight was difficult. The spider leg bled a bit into the W. I made it fit anyways.
From that same stencil book LilMiss did the cat with the spider coming down between its’ eyes and the last pumpkin was supposed to be this ghoulish face, but my hand was tired by that time. Ended up looking like your usual wide eyed big smiling face.
I did this Witch flying across the moon on her broom . I assure you, it looks awesome in person. I drew it on and then carved it. Really, in person it looks SO much better. I got goosebumps when I first lit the candle.
Plus the pictures were taken after the cut edges had shrank away a bit so some of the lines look wonkier than they were when I initially cut them. But I’m still a bit proud of doing the stencil.
