Playbook: Pumpkin Carving / Jack-o'-lantern
Playbook for Pumpkin Carvin / Jack-o’-lantern
- Decide on a theme
- Get stencils/templates
- Get pumpkin(s) & tools
- Wet stencil & apply
- Trace out - punch dots and/or draw lines
- Carve!
- Spray with bleach based cleaner
- Light up
- ???
- 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
- Pumpkin Pile provides great free templates!
- How to Carve
For Next Time?
As I’m wrapping up this article, I found ideas for my next carve: