Happy Halloween! Live-brary’s Pumpkin Carving 101
To test out different methods of carving, I visited the pumpkin patch near our offices and picked out three pumpkins of varying shapes and sizes. All of them were on the larger side, but I made sure that one was really round, one was taller and thinner and one was in between. I chose different shapes to see which was more conducive to a good carving surface.
Next, my colleagues and I came up with three carving ideas. One was all lettering to be carved out, which read, “Keep Calm and Live- brary On” to go with one of our bookmarks promoting our free homework help and tutoring service Brainfuse. The second pumpkin would be inscribed with the IndieFlix logo, our free Indie Movie streaming service, and a zombie hand, mimicking their Halloween poster that promotes their Zombies channel. The final pumpkin was a stencil that we chose of a gruesome screamer with the text “Why DIdn’t I Use…Live-brary.com” above it. We tried out a mix of stencil and freehand design work and also a mix of carving and reverse carving (carving around the lettering to make the letters stand out).
After a long day of carving, here’s what we learned:
Taller pumpkins were easier to carve – While most people seem to seek out the most perfectly round, large pumpkin for their carving creations, I found the taller pumpkin to be superior for carving. The height provides more surface area for intricate designs or for a design and lettering without having to worry about fitting it all in. The taller IndieFlix pumpkin was by far the easiest shape to work with!
Carving out letters is hard to do and often leads to mistakes – I found that the “Keep Calm” pumpkin was anything but calming to carve! It was hard to make so much lettering and some of the letters were compromised because of the small cuts that had to be made. For instance, I lost the stem on an “r” and the middle line on the “e,” which made it look like a “c.” Instead, I recommend reverse carving the letters if you have to carve a lot of words or have to have small lettering. Avoid the stress and mistakes!
Reverse carving letters looks really cool! It also isn’t that hard to do with the proper tools! This was the first time I tried this technique and it really came out awesome. I recommend that you give it a try if you want to try something new.
Stencils were the easiest to work with – I found that using a stencil made for pumpkin carving was far easier to work with than free –hand drawing or cutting. It provides you a plan of where to cut and it helps you to maintain proportions of the design. For example, I free-hand carve the word “live-brary” on the “Keep Calm” pumpkin, and it ended up not being properly centered. However, I used a drawing as a stencil for the IndieFLix zombie hand, drawn from their poster, and it came out perfect! You can’t always have a stencil, but try to find a picture or writing style you want and make it into a stencil so it makes the carving easier!
Some helpful tricks we learned as well are:
Make sure the inside of the pumpkin is scraped clean and patted dry. This makes carving easier and helps to decrease the mess factor.
After cleaning the pumpkin out, rub the inside and carved edges with Vaseline OR spray the inside of the pumpkin with a bleach and water mixture (one tablespoon of bleach for one quart of water). This will keep your pumpkin fresh for a longer period of time and prevent the growth of mold.
Reuse the pumpkin’s insides – don’t waste it! You can simply boil a large pot of water and put the insides of the pumpkin in to boil. The seeds will separate themselves from the pulp and float to the top, making it easy to strain the out and roast them in the oven for a yummy, healthy snack! Pumpkin seeds can also be used for planting and growing your own pumpkins!
Use battery operated LED candles inside the finished pumpkins instead of real ones; they come in fun colors and there is no need to worry about safety!
The MOST IMPORTANT thing is to have fun and be safe! Happy Carving! :)
