How to Carve a Pumpkin for Halloween Pumpkin Carving Tips and Instructions

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And we like the Homemory Flameless LED Tea Light Candles to light it up. Light one or two small tea lights and set them on the bottom of your pumpkin. Put the lid back on your pumpkin to light up your design so it’s visible. Just make sure to blow the tea lights out at the end of the night so they don’t stay lit or cause a fire. A pumpkin carving kit usually comes with a sharp tool you can use to poke holes. Once you're done carving your design, you'll want to see how it shines by lighting the pumpkin up!

For this reason, I recommend keeping your pumpkins on a covered porch or displaying them from indoors in a window. For many Americans, pumpkins mean that fall is here. In anticipation, coffee shops, restaurants and grocery stores start their pumpkin flavor promotions in lateAugust, a month before autumn officially begins.

So when you’re ready to turn your pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern, begin by either cutting a hole in the bottom, as Taryn recommends, or on the back side of your creation, as Evan suggests. And either way, save that piece so you can put it back in place like a stopper when you’re done. The Messermeister 3-Piece Pumpkin Carving Set we recommend comes with a sawtooth carver that’s perfect for this step.

The finished pumpkin won't look too impressive until you put a light or candle in it... 6 Free Templates included to start designing stunning carvings. Yes, stick your hand into the glop, stringy, icky stuff and try not to think of it as "pumpkin brains". But it may take a strong tug to pull it free (the stringy "brains" are still connected to the seeds on the inside).

Before you learn how to carve a pumpkin, you may well be wondering why we do it in the first place. The tradition of carving pumpkins into scary faces has its roots in Ireland. Pottery/leather craft needles or large embroidery needles can be used to transfer template designs and/or poke holes in pumpkins to add accessories. Stingy Jack thought he had tricked the devil, but the devil had the last laugh, condemning Jack to an eternity of wandering the planet with only an ember of hellfire for light. Jack’s lanterns were carved out of potatoes, turnips, and the vegetables, in Scotland and Ireland, while beets were used in England.

If you love to snack on roasted pumpkin seeds, especially around Halloween, you can make them fresh after saving the leftovers from your carved pumpkin. Their origin comes from an Irish myth about Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil for his own monetary gain. When Jack died, God didn’t allow him into heaven, and the Devil didn’t let him into hell, so Jack was sentenced to roam the earth for eternity. In Ireland, people started to carve demonic faces out of turnips to frighten away KrazyKidz Jack’s wandering soul.

Carving jack-o-lanterns is a popular Halloween tradition. Some like to carve scary faces, others carve silly faces and the more artistic among us carve incredible depictions of movie scenes or characters from popular Halloween and horror movies. Close-up of a jack-o'-lantern carved for Halloween night. If you find these issues as you carve, you may want to try carving another pumpkin. You can also paint your pumpkins instead of carving them, which averts the need to peer inside. Instead of candles—which make the inside of the pumpkin hot—use a battery-operated tea light that flickers or a glow stick.

And, of course, carving pumpkins isn't off-limits to a group of just adults as well. Start off by making sure you have the right gear—then read on to learn how to carve pumpkins, step by step. A sharp, sturdy, long-bladed knife and a sharp paring knife are serviceable carving tools for making a simple jack-o’-lantern.

Your hand makes a good scoop for extracting the bulk of the seeds and the stringy fibrous goo, but to get out all the guts, you’ll probably want a scraper other than your fingernails. A tablespoon, soup spoon or a melon-baller make serviceable scrapers for getting the last of the stringy guts out of a pumpkin. Small saws with serrated edges cut easily into tough-skinned pumpkins. These creations are called jack-o’-lanterns, and they are proudly displayed on porches and stoops across the country.