Pumpkin Carving Templates

Halloween is coming up, and I wanted to remind people about my old pumpkin carving related posts.

Darth Vader Pumpkin Carving Stencil - This is a link to a post where I have a template to carve a pumpkin that looks like Darth Vader.

Pumpkin Carving Links - This a link to an old page of links I made about pumpkin carving and other halloween related things.

There are lots of good resources describing how to carve pumpkins, how to make templates for carving more interesting designs as well as plenty of free places to get stencils for carving pumpkins.

Here is a little hint for making your own template.

In a photo editing program, turn your photo into a greyscale image, and then adjust the contrast alot until the photo loses all it's shades of grey and has only black and white.

Then you can decide if it looks enough like what you want to carve, if it doesn't pick another photo.

You'll have to decide if you want to cut out the black or the white, inverting the picture will help you decide which part to cut out. I've found that it works best if you use an easily recognizable photo.

There are tips about how to transfer the stencil to the pumpkin. I've found that using a needle to poke holes around the outside of the parts you want to cut helps. You can also use a felt tipped pen to shade the areas that you are going to cut.

I'll make a better how to post over the next few days, so that you can make a trogdor carving template or a lion or a George W. Bush jack 'o lantern if you want.

-Gary Milner