Tuesday, October 12, 2010

It's The Great Pumpkin!

Mid October a few years ago, I found myself feeling inspired and crafty and standing in the aisle at the supermarket, paging through a holiday magazine looking at those fancy schmancy pumpkins that are carved into amazing Jack O'Lanterns.

I decided that it didn't look that difficult and that I ought to make one. The timing was good, a couple of weeks before Halloween. It would last, I thought. This couldn't be that difficult, I was certain.

I bought a good size pumpkin, parked myself on a large towel on the garage floor on a sunny afternoon with the garage door open and the radio on and went to work. Cleaned it out, carved the lid, and then prepared to make my image.

I pulled out a Peanuts color book and found a great image of Snoopy that would be perfect on a pumpkin.  Snoopy is requisite Halloween subject matter, considering The Great Pumpkin.  I taped it to the pumpkin, took a toothpick and poked dots all along the lines that needed to be carved out; sort of a 'carve along the dotted line' idea.  Dotting done, I removed the color book page and set to work with my special pumpkin carving knife.

At first, things seemed to be going well and I was fairly pleased with the results... but then I overestimated the carve and tried to fix it with extra toothpicks pushed into the inside side of the pumpkin and superglue.  A word to the wise... superglue does not work on pumpkins.  It does, however, work very well on fingers, paper towels, cloth towels and plastic carving knives.  

In the end, I was relegated to carving my usual simple Jack O'Lantern face into a new pumpkin. 

I'll leave the fancy carving to the pros!
  
Have a Happy Halloween!
 
One for Viaggiatore














 
A Snoopy for me
 



5 comments:

molly said...

Amazing the creativity that comes out at Halloween on the humble pumpkin!

Wanderlust Scarlett said...

It's true!!! And that's precisely what I was going for, but wound up with quite a mess on my hands... ew and eek.

Thankfully, I've learned that it's best if I stick to simple carving of pumpkins, and pies in the oven. ;o)


Scarlett & Viaggiatore

Clowncar said...

yeah, I can't do those fancy ones either. but the sheer number of permutations on one mouth, one nose, two eyes will keep me busy for the rest of my halloweens, I'm sure.

Vesper said...

You were so courageous to attempt that!... :-) I wonder if some sort of electrical tool wouldn't do the carving better?
Judging by how difficult it is to just cut a pumpkin for the pie...

But they're all very beautiful!

Wanderlust Scarlett said...

Clowncar,

*laugh* Are you letting the girls carve their own baby pumpkins? You must! So fun!!! Take photos of them doing that, something to tuck away for later years that will always bring a smile to your face.


Vesper,

Actually, I'd thought of laser slicing one, but I don't know that I want to invest in a laser cutting device that will only be used for pumpkins once a year. Seems a bit much.
;D


Scarlett & Viaggiatore