I like a traditional face design.

I rarely go for something other than a face, but if I do, it's done for impact.

(Projector pumpkin)

I also like to carve pumpkins freehand. I'm not a fan of the pre-printed designs that you dot onto the pumpkin, and then carve like connect the dots.

I usually prefer a scary face with lots of sharp teeth. The more teeth, the better.

But sometimes I like to just do something goofy and light.

I occasionally like to dress up my pumpkins with props.

Here was one easy one I did in 2011 (I had a four month old little fellow at the time, so this was easy - outgrown baby footed sleeper, tissue paper, voila! - NONflame candle!).

Part 1 of 4:Choosing a Pumpkin
1. Buy a pumpkin shortly before Halloween.

Although Halloween excitement can build early in October (especially for children), do not buy your pumpkin too early. Most pumpkins will be rotten beyond recovery after a week and a half to two weeks. With this in mind, buy your pumpkin about a week or less before Halloween.

2. Select a pumpkin from a pumpkin patch or supermarket.

Many venues will sell carving pumpkins as Halloween approaches. Visit your local supermarket or pumpkin patch for a good offering. If you live near a farmer's market, vendors there may also sell pumpkins. Find a location with a healthy selection of pumpkins and a range of sizes.

If you're pumpkin hunting with young children, a pumpkin patch may be the most fun for them. You can find a local pumpkin patch by searching online or keeping an eye open for advertisements around the area where you live.

3. Select a healthy pumpkin.

When you're choosing a pumpkin, try to pick one that's free of nicks, bruises, and cuts. Look for a sturdy stem that doesn't feel too bendable, and for a mostly consistent color all the way around. Knock or thump on the skin like you would a melon; if you hear a hollow sound, the pumpkin is ripe.

Look for a pumpkin with a flat base. This will make it easier to display the carved pumpkin on Halloween night.

It's not important if the pumpkin you like is clean or dirty. Remember you can always wash the pumpkin with an old cloth when you get home.

4. Pick the size you need.

If you're planning on an elaborate pumpkin carving, note that a larger gourd will provide more surface space, but also takes more work to carve. Selecting a round, medium-sized pumpkin is a popular option.

If you have kids and simply plan on drawing faces on your pumpkins with a permanent marker, try picking up several small to medium samples for them to put different designs on.

Part 2 of 4:Tracing a Design
1. Choose a design before you start carving.

Before you start cutting, figure out what kind of design or face you want on your pumpkin: you can carve a typical "spooky" face with a toothed grin, a haunted house, or the silhouette of a cat or a bat.

Many jack-o'-lantern templates are available online; try searching for more ideas. Alternatively, drop into your local library and borrow a book of carving ideas. A variety of images can be very inspirational for developing your own.

2. Choose a method for carving your pumpkin.

While it's conventional to hollow your pumpkin and then carve through the outer gourd into the hollow center, other methods of carving will allow your pumpkin to last longer, and involve less work with knives. A few popular carving options include:

Carve a traditional jack-o'-lantern. Plan to cut out eyes, a mouth, and perhaps a nose. This design is easiest for beginners.

Carve a silhouette. Pick a shape—for instance, a ghost—and carve out the "negative space" around the ghost's shape, then carve out features like eyes or a mouth. You'll end up with a circle of light around the dark shape, with lighted details.

Carve down to the pulp. For a daytime jack-o'-lantern that you don't intend to light, use an x-acto knife to scratch away the pumpkin skin and reveal the pulp. Don't carve all the way into the gourd.

3. Trace your design on the pumpkin.

For traditional, silhouette and pulp carving, use a permanent marker or dry-erase marker to outline your design on the pumpkin. (Dry-erase markings can be wiped off if you mess up.) If you'd rather not draw your jack-o'-lantern design free-hand, you can find a pattern online and trace it onto your pumpkin.

You can also use tacks to secure your image to the pumpkin. Then, poke around the edges of the template to create a guideline for where to carve.

If you're decorating pumpkins with children, letting them draw the designs can be a fun way to include them, yet avoid having them handle sharp carving tools.

Part 3 of 4:Carving the Pumpkin
1. Set up a spacious work area.

Pumpkin carving can quickly become messy, and it's best to keep that mess off the floor or kitchen table. Lay down some newspaper or a brown sack from your grocery store on a flat surface. Lay out your tools, as well as a bowl for discarded pumpkin innards.

Doing this protects the floor or table surface and makes for an easy clean-up when done. Once you're finished carving, you can bundle up the newspapers and throw the whole mess away. You can recycle the newspapers.

2. Select a sharp knife.

For effective pumpkin carving, use a serrated bread knife, a jab saw (used to cut drywall), or a purpose-made serrated knife taken from a pumpkin-carving set. If you do not have a serrated knife, or if you prefer to use a straight-edged blade, opt for a paring knife or a fillet knife.

3. Cut a lid.

Measure a circle with about a 2-inch (5-cm) radius from the stem. You'll cut around this circle to make the lid. Do not make the cut completely vertical; instead, angle the point of the knife in towards the center of the circle. The lid will then sit in a bowl-shaped indentation that prevents it from falling into the center of the pumpkin.

The lid doesn't have to be cut in a circle. Try shaping the lid as a square, star or other shapes. Just make sure you keep the knife angled toward the center of the pumpkin as you carve the lid and opening.

4. Remove the filling from the pumpkin.

Use a large spoon, an ice-cream scoop, or your hands to pull all of the strands and seeds from the inside of your pumpkin. Place the seeds, pulp, and other scrapings into the large kitchen bowl that you set out earlier. Scrape the pumpkin as clean as you can, so that more light shines through your jack-o'-lantern.

This step can be skipped if you're simply carving down to the pulp of the pumpkin, with no intention of hollowing it out.

5. Carve your design.

Use a gentle back and forth motion to cut into the pumpkin, and take your time. Make sure to cut precisely along the design that you've traced on the pumpkin's surface. Draw the knife back and forth, while maintaining a steady downward pressure. Keep following your pattern until you've carved out the entire design.

If a cut section of your design doesn't remove easily the first time, run the blade around it again and then push on that section from the inside. You may also find that a toothpick stabbed into the section will help you to pull it out.

Use caution when wielding a knife. Cut away from yourself; never pull the knife up towards yourself through the pumpkin.

Part 4 of 4:Lighting and Displaying Your Carved Pumpkin
1. Light your pumpkin with a candle or tea light.

Traditionally, jack-o'-lanterns are lit with candlesticks or tea lights. If you choose to illuminate your carved pumpkin with candles, do not leave them lit overnight or if you're away from the house.

Ventilate as needed. If you do choose to use a real candle, make sure your carving will provide the flame with enough oxygen to keep burning. If you've cut several large holes in your pumpkin, you should be fine. If not, consider cutting a small vent in the lid, or remove the lid entirely.

2. Light your pumpkin with a LED light.

If you'd prefer not to illuminate your jack-o'-lantern with a lit candle, you can substitute an artificial light source for the same effect. Flashlights and flickering LEDs are popular modern options.

LED and other artificial lights are safer (less likely to start a fire) and can burn all night, unlike tea lights.

3. Display the pumpkin in a safe area.

If you're using a candle in your pumpkin, place it in an area away from flammable items. For instance, don't place it near a hay bale or scarecrow; those items could light on fire if your pumpkin gets jostled or knocked over. Additionally, take care that a trick-or-treaters' dangling costume won't get caught by the candle's flame.

If you're using a candle to light your pumpkin and placing it on anything wooden, place a dinner plate down first, to catch wax and avoid setting wooden porches, tables, or stairs on fire.

And a play on Quora User's.

To use a stencil on a rounded surface like a pumpkin, you should cut slits on the edges of your stencil before taping it to the gourd. The slits will allow you to wrap the flat stencil to the not flat surface.

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Once your stencil is slit and taped, use a push pin, BBQ skewer or other pointy object to trace around the images on the stencil. Remove the stencil and connect the dots using a knife, cutting all the way through the flesh of the hollowed out pumpkin.

If you intend to illuminate your carved pumpkin, cut the top at an inward angle so that the top of opening doesn’t fall though the gourd.

I wish I had some miracle tips, but I don’t. I saw some of those so-called child friendly cutting tools a few years back - but they were so dull and awkward to use that they took all the fun out of it. Which defeated the whole purpose.

Basic common sense is all that I can offer you.

Make sure that the child is old enough. Being excited about cutting a pumpkin unfortunately is not enough. Its a craft that requires a fair amount of patience, strength and and dexterity. If they’ve never done anything like this before, or anything as complex, then they shouldn’t be doing it. Let them help out in other ways that is more their age.

Make sure that the pumpkin design is planned out ahead of time before you start cutting. This takes a lot of frustration away beforehand.

Make sure that the knife, or whatever tool you use to cut with is sharp. A dull knife is more apt to cause an accident than a sharp one, because a dull one leads to you to pushing harder than you would have otherwise. And that leads to accidents.

Patience. This is work. Children get antsy and carving pumpkins takes more time than they sometimes realize. If they get tired, head them off at the pass and let them take a break. Let it stay a fun thing and not a dreaded chore.

If they don’t want to carve, there is always painting a jack o lantern. Its very popular.

Stay with the kids and over see everything. Don’t panic if it gets messy. It cleans up with soap and water. Do call a halt to food fights. This is not Animal House.

Above all, have fun.

Answer:

It turns out you just carve the thing, as it is no tougher than an ordinary pumpkin. Next, Quora User spends an hour scooping out the insides (another feat of patience and determination making him fit for Lucas Meadows Community Manager Campaign 2010).

Afterwards:

For the little ones? Don't carve at all. Draw or paint with washable colors, please. You might also try attaching face parts as if you were using a Mr. Potato Head. (Remember that Mr. Potato Head first used a real potato!). However, may I strongly encourage you not to use pin backed items. If I can't use them without stabbing myself, no toddler should try. Try using double faced tape or, better yet, tape rings. Making and using tape rings is a skill I recommend to all teachers and parents.

May I also suggest using plastic clay — if that is still available — creating face parts. These are easily pressed onto the pumpkin, are easily removed and replaced. Also, perhaps one could use a dollar store artificial punpkin. No rotting problems, and with the decoratins removed, it may be used throughout the autumn.

When my kids were little, I ran across a book that had templates for carving pumpkins. There were all sorts of great designs in it. Rather than tear up the book to use them, I photocopied the chosen pictures and used the copies.

The instructions were to pin the templates to the pumpkins, then following the pictures, poke out the design then use those holes to carve the pumpkin. It worked quite well.

So, find some Halloween themed pictures, poke out the design on the pumpkin, cut it out and there is your great carved pumpkins.

You can also paint your pumpkins with tempura paint.

Hint: whatever way you choose, having it go smoothly depends on the temperament of the people involved. Good luck!

I don’t know if this takes pumpkin carving to a whole new level, but it’s beyond the triangle eyes and nose!!!

I personally do it freehand as I believe using a template is “cheating”. I prefer sophisticated designs as seen in my pictures below..these are all carvings I've done..some from this year some from last year…

In Australia, Halloween is in the spring time - and after seeing a photo of a pineapple lantern, I decided to give it a try:

It’s a family of carved pumpkins which are illuminated and happy!! (oops, except for one.)

Back in Good Old England, you used to need lanterns at night. Street lights, even where available, were not so bright. However, poor people could not afford expensive lanterns, made of metal and glass and other pricey materials. They did have turnips they could carve—so they carved out a hollow with an opening and popped in a candle for a cheap, if crude, lantern.

“Jack ‘o’ lantern” gradually switched from a commoner (“Jack”) with such a carved turnip, to the turnip itself.

Concurrently, on All Hallows Eve, there was the idea that spirits roamed the earth, and to assuage those spirits, some lanterns were carved with demonic or fey faces.

When the New World was discovered, pumpkins were also discovered. They were rather larger than turnips, and easier to hollow out—the seeds might be gooey, but they were not in a solid space like turnips had. So the turnip lanterns were easily replaced by the superior pumpkin lanterns.

Later, since it was both traditional and fun, it became a required Halloween activity, even when better lantern were available cheaply. And that continues today. Although many “pumpkin” jack o’lanterns are now plastic, in not very realistic colors.

In Ireland, people started to carve demonic faces out of turnips to frighten away Jack's wandering soul. When Irish immigrants moved to the U.S., they began carving jack-o'-lanterns from pumpkins, as these were native to the region.

Been awhile since I've done that maybe 8, 10 years since I've decorated or carved a pumpkin. But I still have that old idea of using marbles. It's really messy. Besides cleaning the seeds out, you need a power drill bit about the same width of the marble and you drill random spaced holes evenly in the pumpkin, pumpkin stuff flying everywhere. Then after you've drilled 60 holes in one pumpkin you take a marble and push it into the hole, only transparent marbles work. So I bought mine from dollar tree, transparent blue, green, clear, dark red. To light it I didn't use a candle, used a battery powered l.e.d. light those shine brighter than a candle. And come night it's totally way cool (63 years old and I still say TOTALLY WAY COOL, I'm never going to grow up 🤣) the light from the led shines so bright through the translucent marbles they shine and actually sparkle like rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires. Then there's the break down, it's hard trying to reclaim the marbles from the pumpkin and the rot factor when it goes it goes fast.

Here’s a Britannica article on the subject: Why Do We Carve Pumpkins at Halloween?

Halloween descends from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, a night when ghosts of the dead and other spirits slip through the veil between the worlds and wander the land. Later, an Irish story arose about Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil. When Jack later died, neither God nor the Devil wanted him, so his ghost roams the earth. This story became associated with Samhain/Halloween due to the obvious similarities of a wandering ghost in the night. Irish people began to carve demonic faces out of turnips, called Jack-O-Lanterns, to scare away the ghost of Stingy Jack, probably more as an artistic folk custom than a real belief.

When Irish immigrants came to the Americas, pumpkins were more available than turnips, so they switched to using pumpkins, and it caught on and became popular even outside the Irish immigrant community. And that’s why we still carve pumpkins for Halloween.

You are fighting inevitable biological forces here, so it is s pitched battle at best.

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My most common approach is to carve my Jack-o’-lanterns a day or so before Halloween. Even with the solutions below, you are simply buying a few more days at most. You are fighting dehydration, fungal growth, and hungry critters. Numerous squirrels have defaced mine over the years.

Solutions include:

• Freshness. Picking a nice hard pumpkin. The more fresh it is, the longer it will last. Dark spots are a sign of freeze damage. Soft ones are already starting to succumb to rot.
• Cold. Don’t allow it to freeze, but keeping it submerged in cold water can help. Temperatures between 50 & 60 degrees F are ideal weather.
• Disinfect: some people soak their pumpkin in water containing a healthy shot of household bleach for at least eight hours, starting immediately after carving. Some spray with bleach solution then wipe down the inside of their Jack-o’-lantern each day.
• Seal: Coat all cut surfaces with petroleum jelly (Vaseline or another brand) to minimze drying by preventing interior moisture from escaping.
• Heat. Avoid it! Light it with LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs and never use candles to avoid destructive heat and fire risk.
• Try a commercial preserver
• Experiment. I suspect that soaking it in water with an acrylic solution might work. I am considering trying an acrylic cement fortifier from a home improvement store. This is an acrylic liquid you add to the water mixed with dry concrete to add strength. Mold and bacteria won’t grow in acrylic artist’s paint, so I suspect something like this might work. Add a pint to a gallon of water, then soak the carved pumpkin overnight. I am hoping it will discourage microorganisms and seal the cut surfaces.

Good luck!

Paint, burn it, or dress it up. You could but a hat, scarf, earrings, glitter, false eyelashes, and anything you could glue on it with Gorilla Glue or hot glue. Have fun!

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