Mutant Cyborg Pumpkin Halloween Costume v1.3

Step 9: The Pumpkin Head

So far we did a lot of Cyborg work, but not much Pumpkin work. Let’s fix that and build the pumpkin head.

This pumpkin head started its life as a $10 lamp gathering dust on a shelf in Target. If not its price tag the helmet would probably be based on slightly more versatile $22 plastic carveable pumpkin from Michaels.

I started work on the helmet from removing the bulb and cutting the remaining shell almost into two halves, leaving them connected just at the top of the stem. Then I cut out the bottom part almost completely so it is possible to put the pumpkin on head, keep the chin on the small remaining part of the bottom and close it like a clamshell.

Then I started cutting out random pieces of the pumpkin with rotary tool. The rotary tool is somewhat difficult to control when you’re using it to cut curvy lines while keeping everything hanging in the air and that’s perfect because the result is completely random. After cutting out some holes I hot-glued pieces of aluminum foil from inside. The result looked like Terminator of Arnold Schwarzenegger would be a pumpkin. Awesome!

I wanted the costume to be slightly eerie, but the lamp was so happy that had to do some plastic (literally plastic) surgery and took out some parts of the face side. Namely the eyebrows area and happy smile had to go. Poor pumpkin …

I spent some time comparing evil and funny pumpkin carvings and here are a few ideas about how to turn smiley into evil. Reverse them if you need to turn evil into good (I wish it is so simple in real life).
- Smiley eyebrows go from outside-lower corner to inside upper corner pretty much like house roof does. The evil ones go in opposite direction
- Smiley has a few dull teeth. Evil has a lot of sharp teeth. I replaced mine with aluminum so it looks like bugs and decay ate happy smile.