How to Carve a Pumpkin - Fall Decor Tips- as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.
Hi, I am Diane with Autumn Harvest. First I start off with putting newspaper down for easy clean up then I choose my pumpkin. I want to make sure that its flat on the bottom, enough to where it is going to stand. Choose the side that you want to show your face on. And then you have to start carving. And I have just got a typical kitchen knife. I tend to make a pretty big hole so that it makes it easier to get the seeds and everything out of. If you make it too small that will make it really tough to get the seeds.
Pull it off and then you cut the guts that are on the top of the lid. Make a nice straight cut down through. Ok, then you can put this aside and now you are going to start working on the inside and you need just a nice heavy duty spoon, that is what I use and you are going to just start scrapping the walls to get a nice smooth inside. Just kind of working all the way around the sides of the pumpkin as far as I can reach down in there before I dump it out.
Ok, I am going to go ahead and dump the inside out. Some people save the seeds and will roast them, flavor them with some spices. Dig through it. Little bit more work with the spoon on the bottom part. Ok, now I have a pretty good smooth inside of the pumpkin. So, I am ready now to take a look at how I am going to make the face on it.
Now I am going to get ready to carve the pumpkin and I am going to get rid of all of the excess insides. So that it is off my working space. So, I am just going to fold up this newspaper and it is ready to go into the trash can. Sit right over there. Ok, so now we are going to look at doing this really simple face just the triangle eyes, nose and easy face and I am going to experiment a little bit on which knife is going to work best for me in each of them and I am going to use smaller knife and going to just make little marks so when I do the cutting it is more of a straight cut and I wanted about that deep so you can then pop it out, there it goes. Ok , to let more of the light when you have your candle inside out, I always kind of trim off some of the back edges. Allows the little bit more light to come in or come out.
And for now I am going to leave it as it is. I might choose to make it little bit bigger when we get the face going here a little bit but for now I am going to keep it as it is. And I just kind of getting myself wind up - trying to keep it matching. And then doing a little cut on the back to allow more light again. Now I am going to just take a look at it here. Alright, now I am going to switch and do my triangle the opposite direction and slice the nose in here. And I kind of make my point to where I want to be. Kind of see where I want to go and see how close I get. Pop the nose out there. So, there is my nose. Ok.
And I am going to think about to how I am going to make my face. I think I am going to make him a nice smiling face so, I want him here and I might need to, I think I am going to use a different knife that is thinner because I am going to make it a little more rounded and this is more of a flexible knife so that is why I am going to use the longer thinner knife. It might be more of like a fillet knife or something like that. So, I am going to try and stick a tooth in there. Just kind of a three sided square and now I am going to try and angle up to the corner that I marked up here. See how I do.
So, there is the bottom of the smile and now I am going to work on the top of the smile. Go back up here and do the three sided square again to get a tooth in there and one more tooth and hit aim of my mark again. I am going to cut this centerpiece a little bit so it pops out easier, there we go. Pushing from the back, I can pop it right out of there. Ok, I have the front of the face done and now I am just going to kind of make a flat spot down in the bottom in the base. Sometimes they have lumped up a little bit so, I am just going to make a flat spot to set my candle in. And I have the traditional candle and I also have a oil candle that you can buy in a store now. So, we will try that one and see how that one lights things up.
