I’ve heard bleach spray works, too. Anyone tried it?
My daughter did a bat silhouette against the moon.
My son did a scary face with scars.
My wife sculpted a ghost and BOO! in the flesh without cutting through. She’s also painted a couple black…not sure what she’ll carve though.
I tried a Death Star…turned out okay.
I also did a dragon head. I can’t wait to light the kerosene soaked toilet paper roll inside it! The flames will come out the mouth and nostrils.
Hereare some fun carvings.
Here’s the one I did last night of Darth Maul (sp?)
These are nice, but I’m more interested in seeing ones that Dopers did themselves.
Spelled correctly, and great work! Do you make any of your own stencils, or do you have some secret online resource to share? 
Ha - my ‘secret online resource’ is Starwars.com 
http://www.starwars.com/kids/activity/crafts/f20051027/index.html
(not attempting Tusken Raider!)
also here
I have been doing Jack-O-Lanterns from stencils for a few years now and haven’t tried to make my own stencil yet, but I have heard if you have photoshop it is pretty easy. The last few years stencils have been getting easier to find free online so I just haven’t bothered.
Excellent! I’ve forwarded the links on to a coworker who has kids who love Star Wars.
When I made the stencil for mine, I literally just printed off the panel I wanted to use all blown up, traced a basic outline with a pencil, then went back with a red pen and marked the bits that I actually wanted to cut, so that the whole thing wouldn’t just fall down in the middle. PS would have been easier, but I don’t have it on any computers at home.
My friends and I started using www.zombiepumpkins.com every year. $10 for me to print out 4-10 patterns (depending on who joins us) is a great deal IMHO and the pumpkins never fail to look awesome.
I did my own pattern once, just of a silhouette of a golden retriever. It was ok, but not anything as cool as I could get from online.
Velma your Darth Maul turned out great! I was going to do him this year too but he looked too complicated 
I find that even the stencils that look complicated really aren’t hard, just sometimes tedious. You just do one shape, then another and another. I set myself up with a glass of wine and catch up on my DVR 
I follow the instructions to punch out holes along the lines through to the pumpkin, although with Darth there I found that in some spots it was hard to follow the dots once I removed the paper since there were so many lines so close together. I keep the template in front of me so I can see what shapes I am trying to do.
Do you all find that it takes some practice to know how to angle your cuts so you get the right amount of pumpkin flesh behind the lines? (if that makes sense.) If you don’t leave enough structure there the thinner lines get weak and dried out and it looks kind of melted after a day or 2. But too much and all you see is the flesh and the shape doesn’t look as sharp.
I just use the cheapy little $3 carving sets that are displayed everywhere, those tiny saws really work just fine for the detail work. (although I broke one this year.) Does anyone use anything else?
I am about to start Darth Vader and then Yoda!
It’s kind of funny working on the Star Wars stuff this year because I’m not really a fan. I mean I like them fine but I hardly know the names besides the main people. I’ve seen a few of the movies but not all of them. My kids love it though and I let them pick out what they wanted for the pumpkins, but while I was working on the X-Wing I referred to it as a ‘spaceship’ and my son rolled his eyes. It’s an X-Wing mom! (I almost carved it upside down. I have no idea.)
Yes, that’s how I transferred mine to my pumpkin, too. Although after I did the dots, I took a thin marker and connected them all properly, so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing down at the original.
My big problems were:
1.) My pumpkin was really effing thick. After making my first few cuts, I went back with a scraper and took a lot of flesh off the inside, which made things a lot easier.
2.) Because my design was just lines, my biggest problem was getting thick enough cutouts in the pumpkin that the light would shine through, without distorting the design. I did end up going back and recutting the angles on a few of them to give it some more openness, but that’s about it. The thing did end up drooping, but so did the boy’s much-more-traditional-face-type pumpkin: I’m sure it’s just a function of the really warm weather and actual decay rather than gravity.
Yup, that’s exactly what we used. $5 got you two little saws of slightly different sizes, a scraper, a “drill” for making very small holes (e.g., pupils in eyes), the transfer-hole-punch wheel, and a book of patterns. Well worth it, in my opinion.
Here’s the final four:
I think Vader is the least successful. The template was poorly designed, I think. There just is nothing supporting a good portion of his face and his eye area just collapsed and I couldn’t salvage part of it. The force was not strong with him.
I think Yoda and Maul turned out nice though. The X-Wing is ok.
As usual the Family Circus has already convered this
I also use Zombie Pumpkins templates. I think I should try and be more creative, but then I also think, hey why reinvent the wheel. My son and husband take a more traditional approach. Here’s what we have so far:
This is one I chose.
Bloody Mary will be atop a combination scarecrow/karaoke machine that provides some Halloween entertainment.
Here’s the group shot.
Sadly my son’s first one, which he carved Tuesday evening already went too soft to keep. He’s doing on more tomorrow.
The final collection, complete with Death Star. It turned out pretty good I think!
I was totally disorganized this year, so we banged out some pumpkins yesterday afternoon. The coolest one was my attempt at the Other Motherfrom Coraline. I had grander plans than doing a simple outlining technique, but it came out OK.
Velma, that Death Star is amazing - how long did it take you?
I can’t believe you did the Death Star, Velma. Great work!!
gwendee who did Bloody Mary? Was it a template or did one of you draw it? Those are all great!
About 2 hours to plan / draw out on the pumpkin and maybe another 2-3 to carve it. We cheated and didn’t do a complete 360° though, there is an uncarved portion on the back that we just kept to the wall, so it didn’t take as long as it would to do all the way around. My husband has some nice little tools he used to make the lines that sped things up I think (razors, various screwdrivers, carving tools, etc. - he works in tool and die and collected a bunch of stuff beforehand that would work.)
Ditto on the Death Star! My son did an R2 o’lantern last year and it took him a couple of afternoons.
Bloody Mary is a template from Zombie Pumpkins. Our Halloween hosts set up a karaoke machine (or for this purpose really just a mic and amplifier) inside a costume and put a pumpkin head on it. One of them requested Mary as the topper this year.
Still doesn’t look too shabby, though! Maybe would work better with a smaller pumpkin and/or more flesh carved out from the inside (i.e., thinner walls)?
Awesome!
And you think right.
That did turn out well!