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How to Carve a Halloween Pumpkin

How to Carve a Halloween Pumpkin

Materials and tools:

pumpkin
halloween patterns
carbon paper
headband
pencil
carving kit
serrated knives
wood carving tools or pottery tools
Halloween Metal Shaped Cookie Cutters
light duty hammer
pliers

Steps:

1. Place your pattern on the carbon paper and affix it to the pumpkin. Trace around and the image will be left on the pumpkin so it's easy to follow the lines when cutting.

2. The tools that work best for carving are the small carving tools that are included in Halloween pumpkin carving kits. They are manageable for all ages. Other tools that work well include serrated fillet knives and grapefruit knives.

For more details, carving and pottery tools work very well.

Tips: The best trick of all is to use Halloween shaped metal cookie cutters.

3. Place your metal cookie cutter on the pumpkin. (Some plastic cookie cutters will work too, but they're usually not as flexible.)

Note: Do not cut the lid or clean yet! Do all your printing first.

4. Use a light hammer to drive the cookie cutter into the pumpkin. Work the cutter from side to side as you hammer.

5. Hammer cookie cutter until almost full.

6. Pry out the cookie cutter with pliers.

7. Continue hammering all the shapes where you want them on the pumpkin. Once you've stamped your designs in place, you're ready to cut off the top of the pumpkin and clean it up.

8. Once cleaned, finish cutting shapes with small serrated blades and remove from inside.

Option:Put the pieces in a bucket next to their pumpkins and the kids can have fun trying to put them back together. It's like a puzzle and they can decide which designs they want to light up each night!