It’s that time of year when we like to get decorating our homes for Halloween. A key feature of this in every Halloween-loving house, is a pumpkin. Last year, I shared my tutorial for how to paint pumpkins and decorate them on the outside (here); but this year, I’ve got carving.
I’ve teamed up with the guys at Prestige Cookware for this tutorial – they supplied me with a selection of their visually stunning and very useful Stone Quartz knifes* to carve my pumpkin with.
Step 1 – Choose Your Pumpkin
Try to choose a pumpkin that has as smooth a skin as possible, and is as uniform in colour as possible. This will help your design to stand out more and will make your pumpkin look more attractive.
Step 2 – Create a Lid
You need to be able to get inside your pumpkin to light it up, so you need to create a lid. With a small, sharp knife, cut a circle downwards around the stalk of the pumpkin, then lift off the cutaway section.
Step 3 – Empty Your Pumpkin
You need to scoop out the fleshy and fibrous contents of your pumpkin – it’s stringy, full of seeds and doesn’t smell that great; but it’s essential for carving and for lighting up the inside with tealights. The inside is very soft, so you will be able to use a spoon to do this, then a knife to scrape remaining strings from the inside. If you don’t want to waste the insides, you could always make a pumpkin pie!
Step 4 – Carve Your Pumpkin
Now it’s time to carve your pumpkin. Use a Sharpie to draw out your design, then cut just past these lines to remove the shapes from the pumpkin shell. You need to do one large star in the centre – the nose, two smaller stars above on each side – the eyes, then a long smile line for a mouth. It can be quite difficult to cut at first, but just work slowly.
Step 5 – Light Your Pumpkin
You can use real tealights and place them inside your pumpkin to light it, or you can use flickering battery-operated ones like I have. This means you can safely have your pumpkin on your front porch without the risk of a naked flame. Just lift the lid and pop them inside.
How are you styling your pumpkins this year?
This post contains press samples, but all opinions are my own.
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