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Halloween is a fun and festive time of year, that with a little effort can raise your spirits and the spirits of those around you. Carving pumpkins has become a major part of celebrating Halloween with kits available for you to buy to help you create an orange masterpiece.
To make an incredibly creative pumpkin however, you don't need to be an artist these days. The kits you can buy provide complete instructions on how to "trace" a picture onto your pumpkin using a push pin or similar sharp object to transfer the drawing from paper to pumpkin skin giving you an outline to cut out. You can also draw your own patterns and transfer these to your pumpkins in the same manner.
However, there are many other ways to carve pumpkins that do not require such a high level of patience and effort.
To start out - most people clean out their pumpkins by cutting out the top and scraping out all of the insides. To make your work easier and quicker, cut out the BOTTOM of the pumpkin instead. This removes that big chunky core at the pumpkin that you can spend a lot of time trying to smooth flat so a candle can sit on it. This is also a good way to carve lopsided pumpkins as you can make a lopsided pumpkin sit straight by the way you cut the bottom out. Another plus to cutting out the bottom versus the top is that this puts the flame lower down inside of the pumpkin therefore giving you less of a chance of burning the top of the bottom, or having to wrap the lid in aluminum foil. This also gives the flame in the pumpkin a much brighter glow.
Of course you have to have your traditional jack-o-lanterns, with happy, angry and/or spooky faces, but now you can also experiment to see what you can create! You will need a supply of tools on hand - look for nails, screws, a tomato corer or peeler, an electric drill, screwdrivers in different sizes, and whatever else you can think of to try.
Create a "disco ball" pumpkin by using the electric drill and drilling small holes all over the pumpkin. Use a Phillips screwdriver to give your pumpkin a "starry" look to it. Larger holes can be made with the other tools you have collected. Make a pumpkin that has several different sized holes all over it. These kinds of carved pumpkins are excellent for lining driveways and walkways as they give off plenty of light.
You can also use metal cookie cutters to carve your pumpkin. Plastic cutters may work enough to give you an outline to carve out with a small paring knife too. Metal cookie cutters however will be able to go through some pumpkins depending on the skin and thickness of the pumpkin. Using cookie cutters you can create an entire Halloween scene on a larger size pumpkin. Since pumpkins are also a part of Thanksgiving, you can also use Thanksgiving themed cookie cutters to carve a pumpkin for Thanksgiving. Use your imagination and have a lot of fun!
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