My family has always loved carving pumpkins for Halloween. That’s one of mine in the photo. It was taken back in 2006 when all I had was a crappy 2 megapixel camera with poor light detection, hence the low quality. Here are two more from the same year – one from my then-girlfriend, now-wife, and the other from my brother.
We always print out templates to create fun and intricate designs. There are tons of sites providing pumpkin templates if you search online.
Here are few really good ones:
- Orange and Black Pumpkins
- Laboratory of the Zombie Pumpkins!
- Free stencils from Better Homes and Gardens
- Pumpkin Masters
- Disney Pumpkin Carving Patterns from Spoonful
- Kid friendly templates from Reader’s Digest
- Pumpkin Pile Patterns
- Templates from Dremel
It’s so rewarding to put a candle in the pumpkin and light it up to see an awesome design flickering in the total darkness of the night. Seeing all of your hard work come to life.
We’re not creative enough to free-hand, but even using templates can be challenging, as evidenced in this gallery of 20 pumpkin carving fails. I have to admit that I’ve had my own pumpkin fails in the past. I wish I had the photos to post online.
But if I do totally mess up a carving in the future, I found this great Buzzfeed post featuring a whole bunch (39 to be exact) of cool outside of the box pumpkin decorating ideas. No time to carve another pumpkin? No problem. Just put a bunch of stickers all over it!
I just learned about the fake pumpkins that craft stores sell and how you can carve right into them just like regular pumpkins. And the cool part is that we can reuse them every year. I love that idea!
Here’s the one my wife just finished.
She carved it using our rotary tool (Note: if you do this, wear a mask over your mouth). I put a book light in it and lit it up in the closet just to take a quick pic for this post, but it’ll be all cleaned up for Halloween. I haven’t carved mine yet.
We still plan on going to the pumpkin patch to get a couple of real pumpkins, just because it’s sort of tradition. I also want to make my own pumpkin seeds.