Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Playbook: Pumpkin Carving / Jack-o'-lantern

Playbook for Pumpkin Carvin / Jack-o’-lantern

  1. Decide on a theme
  2. Get stencils/templates
  3. Get pumpkin(s) & tools
  4. Wet stencil & apply
  5. Trace out - punch dots and/or draw lines
  6. Carve!
  7. Spray with bleach based cleaner
  8. Light up
  9. ???
  10. Profit!

Last year, I carved a pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween and it turned out to be a blast. My family had fun carving, the neighbors enjoyed looking at the jack-o’-lantern, and I learned a new skill.

Some of the things I learned this year for making a jack-o’-lantern:

  • Decide on a theme before getting pumpkins.
  • Have proper tools.
  • Have stencil handy as reference.
  • Disposable chopsticks and toothpicks can fix errors.

Theme

Deciding on what theme to have for your jack-o’-lanterns before buying the pumpkins will help on getting the right pumpkins.

When my son saw a “pumpkin brain” jack-o’-lantern, he wanted to make it. The design looks great and I would love to make it too.

Unfortunately, we bought three large pumpkins at our last grocery trip when we did not decide on a theme. 🤦

“So son, let’s do something else with the three large pumpkins we have.”

Proper Tools

Depending on your design, the more intricate the design, the better tools required.

My first year, I did the 👻 - emoji ghost and I was able to get away with using a standard paring knife. Large areas to cut out and the design is forgiving.

This year, I did the Ghostbusters logo and wow, I am glad my neighbor, AA, shared her pumpkin carving tool-set with me. There were parts of the design I struggled with using the specialized tools and even made errors when carving. 😱

Keep Stencil Around

For the emoji ghost jack-o’-lantern, I applied the stencil and traced it out by punching holes onto the pumpkin. That worked wonderfully.

I used the same process for the Ghostbusters logo and the smaller details tripped me up as the stencil deteriorated into the fine areas as I punched out the stencil. When my neighbor’s son, SA, mentioned that referring back to the stencil helps. I looked back to the stencil and found an error I made when tracing. 😖

Fixing Errors

With a jack-o’-lantern, any large errors are hard to recover from, until my wife mentioned I could use chopsticks to fix them. 💡

Yes, disposable chopsticks were the best things to use to help me recover errors in my carving. They are just the right length to fit the jack-o’-lantern’s internals and they are stable enough to provide structural integrity. AA suggested toothpicks, which are great for the smaller details.

Resources

Articles I used to help make m

For Next Time?

As I’m wrapping up this article, I found ideas for my next carve:

Happy Halloween!

My Ghostbusters
Jack-o'-Lantern