Ideas for pumpkin carving designs are all around you. Some people keep a clipping file for pumpkin carving ideas they come across thought out the year. Others rely on the fall magazines with articles showing the newest pumpkin carving designs.
Mainly, for a carving design, you need a simple picture with a smooth outline. Also, it needs to be easily recognizable in silhouette. You may be able to get a child’s coloring book and look through it for some ideas. Also there are pumpkin design sites on the internet where you can browse their designs and print out your choice. Many of the TV daytime talk shows have a Halloween link on their website.
Look around in the stores at Halloween time and you will see many pumpkin carving how to books and this year’s latest designs. Or you can just draw a simple design yourself, thinking of the positive and negative effect of the design where the inner light will show through the pumpkin opening.
You can also look up watermelon carving designs, which is the summertime equivalent of fall’s pumpkin carving. The designs may not be scary, but can give you ideas. Again, you can find these designs online at the places mentioned above, just look for summer time ideas.
Another thing to consider is that pumpkins come in other colors than orange nowadays. You can get white, green and a very dark green, almost black pumpkin. And failing that, you can just paint the whole pumpkin before or after you carve it, if you need to be a color. For example, if you are carving a ghost pumpkin and you want it to while skinned.
Think of using more than one pumpkin in your design. A caterpillar might use several pumpkins attached together or a “family” of pumpkins in different shapes and sizes. What about a snowman pumpkin with 3 pumpkins attached in ascending size? I would definitely use a strong dowel through all 3 pumpkins to secure them, but what an idea!
When you are choosing your pumpkin, be it in a pumpkin field or nearby store, let the pumpkin “speak” to you. Does its shape suggest something to you or does the surface blemish remind you of a human expression? Sometimes you will be surprised at what you find when you think of the individual pumpkin this way. A crease might suggest a wizened smile or a winking eye. You can start to see all kinds of human expressions and it just might scare you, too.