How to Carve a Jack-o'-Lantern With Spooky Eyes (GIFs)
Halloween is just around the corner, and although 2020 has been one disappointment after another, nothing can take Halloween away from us. To get you in a spooky festive mood, we made some easy to follow tutorials for how to carve some seriously awesome (and creepy) pumpkins. Get out the pumpkin carving tools, because it's that time of year again. If you're after something easier, check out the tutorial for making a simple Jack-o'-lantern.
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What you will need
Before you start carving, you will need the following materials:
- piece of paper
- scissors
- bamboo skewers
- tape
- thin flexible wire
- carving knife, bread knife and any other size knifes if you want
- marker
- paddle bit
- ice cream scoop (and a pumpkin scoop if you have one)
- and a pumpkin of course!
Optional tools include sculpting tools, a drill, super glue, and alcohol to clean the marker off the pumpkin. Gather all your tools, and let's get carving.
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Step 1
The first step in making your own spooky pumpkin head for Halloween is to create the face you want to carve onto it. The typical features you'd want to include are eyes, a mouth and a nose. Check out some ideas online for inspiration. Once you've decided on a face, draw it on a piece of paper. The size of your pumpkin will determine how big your face drawing should be, so size it accordingly. Once the face is drawn, cut out all the parts.
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Step 2
Next, get your tape and roll it on itself to create a piece of tape that's sticky on both sides. Then stick the cut-out face onto the pumpkin.
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Step 3
Trace around the paper face with a marker.
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Step 4
Take the paper and tape off, and trace around areas you missed.
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Step 5
Begin carving the pumpkin by cutting on all of the lines you drew for the face. After this, you can start carving out the larger sections of the eyes, mouth and nose.
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Step 7
Continue carving until the entire face has been carved out. Once you have finished carving the face, wipe off any marker lines left on the pumpkin with a toothbrush and some cleaning alcohol.
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Step 8
Now it's time to cut a square in the back of the pumpkin. Use a bread knife to cut the square, remembering that this square will be replaced once the candles have been put inside the pumpkin, so leave the edges of the square exactly as you cut them. After cutting out the square door, scrape any pumpkin seeds or bits off the inside of the square, making it nice and clean.
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Step 8
Put the square door aside and clean out the inside of the pumpkin. You can use a pumpkin scoop, ice cream scoop, or a loop tool. Scrape out all the insides until there is nothing left.
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Step 9
Now it's time to make the spooky eyes. Get your square door and scoop out a piece using an ice cream scoop. Go slowly and firmly to make you you get a clean scoop. It will look like a sphere chopped in half. Scoop out another piece so you have two half-circles for each eye.
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Step 10
Get the paddle bit and twist it slowly into the center of the circle. You can either do this by hand or with a drill. Do this to both circular pieces of pumpkin.
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Step 11
Cut the pointy ends off two skewers. These pieces should be long enough to go through the pumpkin eye.
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Step 12
Poke a skewer through one eye (either at the center where the pupil would be, or off to the side like a light highlight), making most of the skewer poke out of the back of the eye. Do this to both eyes.
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Step 13
Cut a piece of wire around 8 inches long. Poke one end into the back flesh of the pumpkin eye, then wrap it around the skewer that is poking out. Have about 2 inches of wire poking off once the wire is wrapped around the skewer. Do this twice on the same skewer so there are two pieces of wire coming from the back of the eye. Do this for both eyes.
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Step 14
Take both eyes and position them in the face where you want them to go. Then poke the four pieces of wire into the inside of the pumpkin. Make sure the pieces of wire are attached to the pumpkin above and below the eye so it gets good support.
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Step 15
Put your candle or LED light into the pumpkin and close the back.
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Step 16
Put your pumpkin in a spot where unsuspecting people will have a lovely spooky shock from your creepy pumpkin. Happy Halloween!
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