How to Carve a Pumpkin and Handy Leftover Tips

First you're going to need a pumpkin. If you grow them... great! If not, you'll need to get down to the local store and buy one.

Don't just walk in to the local greengrocers or supermarket and buy the first pumpkin you see. Think about the size and shape of it. What design do you have in mind? Are you going to make your design fit the pumpkin or do you need your pumpkin to fit your design?!

Use your kitchen knife to cut around the stalk of the pumpkin to create the lid. The trick here is to cut on an angle. Rather than stab your pumpkin with your knife tip pointing straight at the floor angle it so you cut on a 30 degree angle. This will make sure that the lid tapers inwards and will stop it from falling in to the pumpkin. Doing this will also allow for shrinkage as it starts to dry out.

How big you make the lid is entirely up to you. I like my lid about twice the size of my fist so I don't lose any carving area and I can still get my spoon in to do some scraping. Of course, it also depends on the size of your pumpkin!

You can't start carving until you've removed the pumpkin guts. I like to get messy here so I use my hand. You may find it easier to use a sppon to loosen the stringy bits first.

Get rid of all the seeds and stringy mess but don't throw the seeds away... they can be used for other things! Once rid of most of the mess you'll need to use your spoons to carve away at the inside of the pumpkin and thin out your pumpkin so you don't have as much to cut through.

You'll end up with something that looks like the photo below. Don't throw those pumpkin scrapings away! I'll show you what to do with it later. Don't forget to make a flat bit on the base so you can stand a candle on it.

This can be quite tricky. You're going to need to transfer your design on to the pumpkin.

If you already have it drawn on a piece of paper tape the design to the pumpkin like I have in the photo above. What you need to do is use a needle to make holes in the pumpkin.

Follow the lines of your design and every half a centimetre or so push the needle through so that you puncture the skin of the pumpkin. What you're aiming for is kind of like a massive dot to dot. You may find that you need to press and mould the paper as you go so that it is always flat against the pumpkin while you are tracing the outline.

Of course you could always just wing it and draw your design straight on to the pumpkin!

Time to start carving. An ordinary craft knife or scalpel will do but you may find it easier to buy a specially designed pumpkin carving tool set.

For an extra special effect leave areas of your design where you haven't gone entirely through to the inside of the pumpkin. The more pumpkin flesh you leave, the less the light will shine through. You can see in the photo where I haven't gone all the way through on the nose and mouth detail.

That's all there is to it. Remember to wash off the non-permanent marker so you have a nice clean pumpkin. A pumpkin like this will take around 2 hours to complete, this includes time to make a lid, remove the guts and transfer the design.

My design was fairly simple with not too much fine detail. The more intricate you make your design the longer it will take!