Are you tired of seeing the same old scary faces on every Jack O’ Lantern you see? Are you obsessed with carving and looking for a way to bring your passion from “craft” to “work of art”? Or do you just have a few hours on your hands to try something totally different? Forget the triangle eyes and pointy, crooked teeth – a Jack O’ Lantern can be so much more than a face, and is not always black and white!

Beginning carvers only see two options when it comes to carving a pumpkin. We can see the orange of the pumpkin’s skin, or we can see a candle through holes in the skin. But we really do have more options than that. If we peel away the pumpkin’s skin, but do not cut all the way through the flesh, we are given the option of a yellowish white – the exposed flesh of the pumpkin. And if we’re really determined, we can scrape away only part of the orange, leaving a lighter orange which can be used for shadowing.

With these new options we can start to create some really unique Jack O’ Lanterns. So if you’ve got the time and the inclination, pull up a pumpkin and make a statement!

Pick and Prepare Your Pumpkin

Think about what kind of design you want to do, and how intricate it is. Use your best judgment to select the pumpkin size that’s best for you. Then try to find the smoothest pumpkin possible. Most pumpkins have ridges running from top to bottom, and that’s okay. But try to find one with the least amount of scratches and scars. At the very least, find one with one perfect side to carve on, even if the rest is a bit damaged. If you want a pumpkin without those vertical ridges, go for a bigger one, as they tend to smooth out as they fatten up. Once you’ve found your perfect pumpkin, it’s time to prepare it for carving.

Even if you only plan to carve on the surface of your pumpkin, you should prepare it the same way you would a normal Jack O’ Lantern, as this will help you protect it from rotting. Using a pumpkin knife from a carving kit, cut a circular hole around the stem and pop the top off. Scoop out all the seeds and save for roasting (yummy!). Scrape the insides to get rid of as much pumpkin goo as possible (bugs and bacteria love this stuff).

Pick and Prepare Your Picture

You can put pretty much anything on your pumpkin. One of my favorite things to carve is iconic images from classic horror movies. This time I chose a picture of Lon Chaney from the lost silent film, London After Midnight. A famous image, I think it would look perfect on my pumpkin.

When choosing your image, pick something that’s easily recognizable. If it’s a photo with a background, it’s probably best to omit it, and just focus on the characters or main figures so you don’t distract they eye with unnecessary detail. It’s best to find a picture with a lot of contrast – extreme darks and extreme lights working together well. If your design is in color, you will have to change it to gray scale. All photo editing programs can do this. Once your pic is in black and white, it’s wise to turn up the contrast. This will make the blacks blacker and the whites whiter. It will help simplify the image so you don’t have too much detail to worry about.

Print the Page and Puncture Your Pumpkin

Print your image out on a piece of paper. You may have to play with your settings to get it to the right size to fit your pumpkin. Once you have it printed, position it over the best side of your pumpkin and decide exactly where you want it to go. Next, use a few pins, needles, or thumb tacks to stick the photo in place.

With another pin (I suggest push pins, as they are easiest to hold) trace every line of your photo by stabbing into the pumpkin. Any line you want to make note of should be perforated this way. This may take a while but you’ll see the outcome is worth it. Take a break once in a while to munch some pumpkin seeds or candy corn. Keep your paper as still as possible to avoid warping your image.

When you’ve perforated the entire image, and while the lines are still fresh in your mind, remove the paper and connect the dots by slicing with a craft knife or box cutters. Keep the slices as straight as possible. They do not have to be too deep, but you do need to be able to use them as trustworthy guides.

Pick Your Pumpkin Pigments

You’re almost ready to carve, but first you need to decide what parts of the pumpkin represent white, black and gray. Once you decide, stick with it unless you absolutely have to change. You might run into this problem when you get to two shapes next to each other that are similar in color, but need to be separate. This is why it is wise to carve from the outside, toward the center. This will help you coordinate and will leave more possibilities to switch if you later find you need to.

I decided that for my picture, the black of his hat, hair and coat would be represented by the solid orange of the pumpkin skin. That means that the black lines of his face should also be solid orange. I chose never to carve all the way through my pumpkin, but instead to use the white meat of the pumpkin for the color of his skin and the whites of his eyes and teeth. I also knew that for subtler shadows (gray) I could gently scrape only the very top of the orange skin away and leave a light orange.

You may choose to do it the way I did, or you may have a better idea for your project. You may find a neat way to incorporate the black of cutting all the way into the pumpkin flesh to the other side. Do whatever you think is best for your design.

Pare and Peel Your Pumpkin’s Pelt

It is finally time to carve your pumpkin! After all this preparation you must be dying to get started, right? But first – Safety Tips!

• Children should not do this without adult supervision.
• Cut away from yourself, not toward. If you need the blade at a different angle, just rotate the pumpkin!
• Always just BE CAREFUL!

Whew, now that that’s out of the way…

I started from the outside and worked inward. The first thing I did was make a little halo around the outside of my image in white. I did this by stripping away the orange flesh all the way around to distinguish the black hat, hair and coat from the rest of the pumpkin. It also just looks cool.

Then I moved in for the details. And you thought the perforating thing was hard work! This will probably actually feel more like whittling than carving. Have fun!

The main tip I can give you about doing the details is to slice down at an angle toward the part you are cutting out. If there is a piece of skin you need to keep, always push the blade away from it, or you weaken it underneath and risk loosing it. That’s how I lost the right side of Lon Chaey’s lower lip.

The hardest part of my design was probably the teeth because they were so close together, it was hard to take pieces out without damaging the others.

As I went, I found places where I wanted to leave a shadow. So before cutting all the skin away, I lightly scraped only the top off in these places. The main places I did this were along the length of his nose and on his jaw near his mouth. I thought this would give more depth and realism to his face, even though I did not follow the shadows in the picture exactly.

For a finishing touch, you can scoop out most of the flesh on the inside to make the wall very thin. Then put a candle inside and you’ll get a nice glow through the flesh. Just leave the top open so oxygen can get in.

When you are all done, sit back and admire your work. Looks pretty awesome, doesn’t it? If it’s not perfect, don’t worry – neither is mine. Nothing can ever be perfect. But you did something that’s totally you, and it’s sure to turn a few heads.

To help your pumpkin last longer, cover the inside and outside with vegetable oil or Vaseline (warning: flammable) and consider keeping it in the fridge until the big day.

Congratulations! You are an advanced pumpkin carver!

Constructing Halloween Mobiles are a fun way to spend an afternoon. There are so many different ways to be creative and make fun mobiles for the season. Let’s get started!

Halloween clip art images are an easy way to get a lot of pictures for coloring. Cookie cutters are also great for making cute shapes out of construction paper. The shapes can be colored and decorated anyway you want. Also, you could make a mobile with just one shape, like bats, or use all the different seasonal icons you can imagine.

Materials

• Cookie cutters or clip art
• Crayons, permanent markers, colored pencils
• Glue
• Fishing line or thread
• Small diameter dowels
• Construction paper

Optional Items

• Needle
• Hot glue gun
• Glitter, sparkling beads, feathers, etc.

Building Your Halloween Mobile

Any craft or home improvement store will have 3/8″ dowels available for purchase. I was able to find a package of small dowels cut to 12″ in length for about $1. Very handy. We first painted our dowels black.

Trace the cookie cutter shapes onto paper. Cut them out and have fun decorating. If you use clipart you may want to print a mirror image as well so the pictures are double sided.

Enjoy the decorating/coloring and talking with the kids about Halloween and what they are most excited about. Take your time during this step, because the hanging step could be difficult with little helpers.

When you are ready to assemble the mobile, cut the fishing line or thread to anywhere between 6″ and 10″ lengths. This will allow for a nice length once a knot is tied and glued, etc.

Use a 12″ dowel for the top. Cut another dowel into 6″ lengths and hang them from the ends of the top dowel. You can stop there or hang another 12” dowel from the center of the top so that it hangs below the 6” dowels, and so on. It just depends on how large you want the mobile to be and how many different shapes you want to add.(Don’t make it too heavy! Mine broke when I got too ambitious!)

We painted the dowels black and used fishing line to hang the Halloween shapes. We also bought some 1″ wooden letters to spell out “trick or treat”. They were not very expensive but you could do the same thing with scrapbook paper by gluing two pieces together so you have the back and front decorated, or use a two-sided piece.

The complete Halloween Mobile

Have fun! I’d love to hear of others who tried this project. Please comment below.

Sidewalk chalk takes on a whole new look this time of year. Making chalk rubbings on black construction paper gives it a ghostly appearance and can make for some spooky monster shapes! Check out how to create your own as part of your Halloween decor!

Materials Needed

• Sidewalk or other chalk, or crayons
• Construction paper-especially black
• Aerosol hair spray
• Shapes to rub
• Leaves and/or Halloween cut outs
• Textured papers or cloth

This is a simple project that even a 2-year-old can get into and enjoy!

1. Lay your choice of shape on the counter or other hard surface. You can do one shape at a time or lay several out at once. However, we found that leaves get lost in each other if they all get put down together.

2. Lay the construction paper over the shape(s).

3. With the chalk on its long side, begin rubbing. Depending on how distinct each shape is you may have to rub harder or softer.

4. When you are satisfied with your rubbing hold the hair spray at a distance and spray it to hold the chalk in place. If you get it too close, the picture will disappear; but I’m happy to report that, eerily, your picture will return once it dries.

5. If you chose to use crayons you’ll need to be more careful in holding the paper in place because they do not move as smoothly as the chalk does.

Each of these pumpkins was rubbed separately with a single shape. After each pumpkin appeared we moved the pumpkin shape underneath to a different spot:

For the monsters we used grape leaves and then added the eyes after removing the leaf from under the paper. The purple monster is made with a whole leaf, the blue “bat’ was made after I tore the leaf a bit. Some of the shapes we used came from tracing cookie cutters on paper and then cutting out the shape.

You can also find shape inspiration by using Google Images to find clip art of Halloween themes or anything else you can imagine!

These tree-looking rubbings were made with a weed grass that still carried lots of seeds. The seeds gave quite a nice effect. Using different colored chalks and letting them blend together is a nice way to create a deeper visual. We used several different colors of paper, but the most stunning effects were achieved with the black construction paper.

Chalk Rubbings at Your Halloween Party

These chalk rubbings can become a fun game at a party, too! Get a roll of butcher paper (which you can buy in black) and cover your table with it or hang it along the wall. Offer a prize to whoever colors the best leaf or shape or whoever finds the biggest leaf/shape. You can also offer a “booby” prize. At least that’s what we called it when I was a kid: a prize for whoever is furthest from the mark. The idea, of course, is to have a lot of fun!

Heck, another neat idea is to take butcher paper to a graveyard and make rubbings of old gravestones to decorate your house with.

Let your imagination take you through the year with chalk rubbings!

Halloween is a holiday which has seen a wide variety of decorating options grow over the last decade. These options include Halloween villages, Halloween trees, and the expansion of miniature collectibles, some directly related to Halloween, and others to the fall season in general. Prices for such decorations can range from several dollars to upwards of a hundred, and while they are inevitable worth it at the moment of purchase, guilty can quickly follow – or at least it does for me.

In order to satisfy my Halloween addiction, and to keep money in my wallet, my wife introduced me to bake-able clay. Bake-able clay is sold in packets. Most of these packets are roughly one inch deep, two and a half inches wide, and three inches long.

The generic brands of bake-able clay, such as “craftsmart” Polymer Clay, usually cost under two dollars for one package. Craft stores such as Michael’s and A.C. Moore carry not only the “craftsmart” brand, but several others as well, and they are available in a broad array of colors. For Halloween, the basic colors needed are white, green, orange, and black. Bake-able clay is extremely malleable, and requires very little in the way of tools.

Working With Bakeable Clay

With aluminum foil, wax paper, a sharp knife, and some imagination, the creation of your own decorations is much closer than you realize. Each piece of bake-able clay can be cut or pulled apart, and the more that you work it with your hands, the warmer the clay will become. As the clay warms, it will be easier for you to form and shape it.

Once you’ve chosen the shape that you want, be patient, haste will only cause you to ruin whatever work you’ve done. As the clay cools a sharp knife can be used to trim the piece, or to do fine work. Sewing needles and pins can also be used for the same. Make sure you place the piece of clay on your wax-paper, or on a smooth clean surface so there’s no damage to it before you put it into the oven to bake.

Pumpkins are fairly easy to make, as you need only to roll a small amount of orange clay in your hand (as if you were making cookies), to get the basic shape that you want. Once you have the shape your sewing needle or knife can make the necessary lines. A small curl of green clay can be the remains of a vine, and if you’re truly skilled (like my wife), you can use an Exacto blade to make leaves for your pumpkin.

Headstones can be formed by warming up the clay as with the pumpkins, then rolling it flat with a pen on your wax paper. Once you have the clay to the thickness that you want, carefully use a sharp knife to trim the clay into the shape you want. A needle can be used to make decorations, or epitaphs. When you’re ready to make a base for your stone, follow the same procedures.

Baking in the Oven

Once you’ve finished your piece, or pieces, carefully move them from the wax-paper, or smooth surface, to a baking sheet lined with the aluminum foil. If you don’t have a baking sheet that you want to use for your project, then doubling up a sheet of aluminum foil will work fine as well.

When you place the ornaments on the aluminum foil you should use smaller pieces of foil to make sure the ornaments stay upright and don’t flatten in the baking process.

Baking only takes around fifteen minutes (look on the package for baking instructions), so depending on how many pieces you’re making, you can see the fruits of your labor quickly. Once the pieces are done, you’ll be ready to start decorating with your own ornaments for Halloween!