Pumpkin Carving

Halloween 2011: Tiger-Eye Fleur De Lis Pumpkin
GEAUX TIGERS!

I love carving pumpkins around Halloween, and as I've gotten older, I've started doing more complex designs. I have figured out the easiest and most perfect way to do it, at least for me. And of course I'm going to share it with you!

Some people buy pumpkin carving kits. We used to, and with small children it is probably smarter than using knives, but since I'm a college kid, I think I can handle knives. (And then I can save that money for my costume or some drinks at the bar...)

Before you start, be sure to lay out newspaper on your working surface. I did it outside so that our cottage wouldn't smell like raw pumpkin (my roommates don't really enjoy the smell). I also brought out a bowl to put the guts in, and another smaller one for the seeds. I always save the seeds! When you're finished with your pumpkin, you can roast the seeds for a nice festive treat!

EMPTYING YOUR PUMPKIN: I didn't take pictures of it, but cutting the top and emptying it is super easy.
1. Use a big knife, carve a circle around the top. Be sure to leave a triangular "notch" so that you can put the top back on correctly (you can see this on the top left side of the pumpkin in picture 1 below).
2. Cut off the strings and a small slice of "meat" from the top.
3. Pull out as much meat and stringy stuff as you can with your hands. It's fun and squishy! When doing this, I had two bowls - one for all of the squishy guts, and another for the seeds. It is easier to separate the seeds now while your hand are already covered in pumpkin guts.
4. Scrape out the rest of the guts and a thin layer of meat with a large spoon. Metal spoons are the best, because the edge can scrape into the meat and pull it out. I just scrape away and every now and then dump out what has accumulated inside.
-- Try to make the bottom as even as you can so that you can sit a candle in it later.
5. Once your pumpkin is all clean inside, you're ready to carve!

1. Print your design and tape it on your pumpkin. I love making intricate designs, but I'm not the best at creating them from scratch on my own. So I always start by finding a picture of what I want and printing it out. (Thanks, Google Images!)
-- It takes a bit of trial and error to get it to the right size. Try putting a piece of blank paper on your pumpkin, marking about the size that you want on the paper, laying it flat, and resizing the picture to take up about the same amount of space on the computer. I do this in Microsoft Word.
---- Computer note: To freely move and resize the picture, change the text wrapping of the picture to "square" or something other than in-line. This is on the picture toolbar.
-- Once it is a good size, cut it out and tape it onto your pumpkin. You'll have to tape it in lots of places, and it will not lay perfectly flat, but that's alright.

2. Use a push-pin to outline your design. It is really hard to draw the perfect design straight onto your pumpkin, but using a knife with a paper template cuts away pieces and gets increasingly hard to keep in place. To solve this problem, I use the push-pin method!
-- Using a push pin (or needle, something that is thin with a sharp point), outline your design with little holes.
-- Be sure to think about what you want to cut out. If your design has tons of thin lines, you may want to simplify it and make things thicker. Thin slices of pumpkin shrivel up quickly.
-- Once you have finished puncturing your outline, carefully take the template off, but DO NOT throw it away! You'll want it close by as a reference to make sure you don't cut anything wrong!

3. Play connect the dots with your knife. Do this section-by-section. If you need to, you can cut large pieces into two or three (as I did above with the top tiger stripe).
-- I use a small knife and first trace along the dots to make a sort of "track" before cutting all the way through. This makes getting the curves smooth easier.
-- Cut out the section, making sure your knife goes all the way through the pumpkin. If your pumpkin is too thick, get your spoon out again and shave away more layers of meat. But make sure you don't take too much away!

4. Punch out the cut-out piece.
-- I stick my knife sideways into the crack and use it to pull out the piece of pumpkin. You can also stick your hand inside the pumpkin and push it out.
-- The meat will make the actual hole small due to the angle of the knife when cutting. That's okay! Once you pull the chunk out, you can go back through and trim away excess meat.

5. Trim away the excess meat. This will maximize the amount of light from the candle that makes it out of the pumpkin, making your design more distinct.
-- Be sure not to make the wall of the pumpkin too thin! Cut straight down or angled slightly inward. Making the pumpkin wall too thin will make it shrivel up faster.

Repeat the above steps all the way around your design.

Because my design was the Tiger Eye Fleur de Lis, it was a little difficult to really see the design without outlining it. So I decided to cut a small outline to really make the design distinct.

6. Replace your template and use the pushpin or your knife to trace the outline. DO NOT cut all the way through the pumpkin. This is a very shallow cut.
-- Once it is all the way outlined, take off the template and go along the outline cut you just made, angling your knife so that it cuts out a shallow trench.
-- Remember, this outline is VERY shallow. If you go too deep or cut all the way through, your entire design will pop out.
-- Even though it is shallow, cutting away the outermost layer of the pumpkin will allow a small glow to come through the outline. 

Now put a candle in your pumpkin and the top back on and you're all finished!

This is how mine turned out...

Daytime Tiger Eye Fleur de Lis Pumpkin

The pumpkin lit up!

Happy carving!

-Soo Coco