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Step 7Phase 2: Carve It Out
Here is your time to decide the type of pumpkin you want to carve. Both will be treated in similar ways, but they each have their own advantages and challenges.
If you decide to go with a real pumpkin, your first step is going to be to cut open the top and clean out the insides. Get all of the seeds and guts out, and scrape the walls down from the inside a bit. Feel free to take up to a third of the wall out on the side you will be carving. This will help more of the light shine through when you stick a candle or light on the inside later on. Real pumpkins have the advantage of being more authentic and to some people, more impressive. You can use regular knives to carve them, but the cheap little carving sets for jack-o-lanterns are actually a decent investment. Real pumpkins tend to dry out and shrink though, so any fine details will disappear in a day or two.
Because I like to be able to display my pumpkins for more than a couple days, and reuse some of them year after year, I have made the transition to craft pumpkins. I get mine at Michaels, but they should be available at most large craft stores during the fall season. While you are there you may also want to grab a heated knife. The hot knife will make carving much easier, and it would be almost impossible to do large areas of shading without this type of tool.
For the rest of this Instructable, I will use a craft pumpkin, but all steps should also apply in a similar manner to carving a real pumpkin.
If you decide to go with a real pumpkin, your first step is going to be to cut open the top and clean out the insides. Get all of the seeds and guts out, and scrape the walls down from the inside a bit. Feel free to take up to a third of the wall out on the side you will be carving. This will help more of the light shine through when you stick a candle or light on the inside later on. Real pumpkins have the advantage of being more authentic and to some people, more impressive. You can use regular knives to carve them, but the cheap little carving sets for jack-o-lanterns are actually a decent investment. Real pumpkins tend to dry out and shrink though, so any fine details will disappear in a day or two.
Because I like to be able to display my pumpkins for more than a couple days, and reuse some of them year after year, I have made the transition to craft pumpkins. I get mine at Michaels, but they should be available at most large craft stores during the fall season. While you are there you may also want to grab a heated knife. The hot knife will make carving much easier, and it would be almost impossible to do large areas of shading without this type of tool.
For the rest of this Instructable, I will use a craft pumpkin, but all steps should also apply in a similar manner to carving a real pumpkin.
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