Its October 29th, 2 days away from one of my favourite holidays – Halloween. One thing that I’ve always loved doing around this time of year is carve a pumpkin. Usually Just the standard jack-o’-lantern face is what I end up doing, with a few exceptions. This year I wanted to try something a little more detailed. After surfing the net for a while and searching for jack-o’-lantern stencils, I came across one I liked and got to work. A whopping three hours later I present you this:

I learned a lot from carving that, and really like the result. I printed off the pattern and carved through it lightly with an x-acto knife to get the pattern to show up on the pumpkin, then chipped away at the parts I wanted to remove, taking off the surface skin of the pumpkin. I then found a very thin knife and started cutting all the way through where I needed to.

The tricky part is patience. If I hadn’t shipped off the outer skin first, the whole pieces to remove would not have been as easy to remove and I probably would have lost a lot of the detail. It now sits ominously near the front door, waiting to greet trick-or-treaters in a few days. Here’s a close-up:

And in case you can’t tell what that is in the carving, you’re looking at the Headless Horseman throwing a jack-o’-lantern at you