Ok so, the kid is getting to be as good as I am at carving. Yep, she carved all of those up above. Didn't take her long either! I however only did two and they are as follows. Take a wild guess at which one took me ten hours from start to finish!?!
The witch you say? Well for that I'll laugh at you, just as you're laughing that I would waste 10 valuable hours on one pumpkin. Yes, The Green Man is the one that took me 10 whole bloody hours! I had some other templates I had wanted to do, but damn having spent so much time on one carving took all my interest in doing detailing out of me for the year. To be fair the 3 I showed you from last years carvings each took me longer, but that's because I designed the templates and I count that into the time spent as well. These I just took some templates from the net that I had found and went with them. So the time spent includes everything from hollowing out of the pumpkin all the way through the transfering of the pattern to the peeling and then the deep cutting. No, not one of my carvings (or Becca's) are all the way through the gourd, they are all just peeling areas and cutting different depths for brightness.
To preserve our pumpkins so they last a little longer than normal, after carving we wash them with a bleach solution to kill off bacteria. Even our scalpels and knives are sterilized before we start. Then, once washed and patted dry, we coat them inside and out with vaseline so they don't dry out and end up "peeling" back in the carved areas, enlarging cuts that shouldn't be enlarged any further. Another tip for future carving success is to never open the pumpkin at the top. If you look at the witch with the cauldron, you'll see a glow at the bottom of it. That's where I opened them up and hollowed them out from. The reason for this is simple, when you light up a pumpkin you heat it, that heat causes moisture to evaporate out of the pumpkin. What happens when water evaporates you ask, well it goes up into the atmosphere. If there are no cuts through the pumpkin at the top, the moisture has no place to go other than to run back down the inside getting reaborbed into the meat of the pumpkin, thereby helping it to last longer and not dry out so quickly.
Now that you know my carving secrets I hope to see you put them to use next year and show me your carvings!
Cheers, and I hope you all had a safe and wonderful night!
They really are masterpieces! I would have been by sooner but I was out of town!
ReplyDeleteWow. Very impressive and inspiring. I still do *gasp* the triangle eyes and nose and the mouth with the bad teeth. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
ReplyDeleteWow! First of all those are some awesome carvings. Secondly, I had no idea there were so many good tips to carving. I'm really curious about these templates you speak of, how you design them and then how you actually get from that to the carving of the pumpkin. Obviously, I'm totally stupid about pumpkin carving.
ReplyDeleteI'm just amazed.
Awesome pumpkins!
Otin - Thank you very much! No worries on not being around sooner, it's not like I come around all that often anymore, just don't have the time unfortunately!
ReplyDeleteNanodance - Thank you and you're welcome :)
Nanny - Thanks! Just so you know, I didn't design any of these, I printed up all these from different sites on the net. If I design my own templates I use the Corel PhotoPaint program. Silv on the other hand uses Gimp to create templates. Once the images are printed I put a cut into the corners and centers of the top, bottom and sides of the paper, tape it to the pumpkin while shaping it to the curves of the pumpkin. Then the long drawn out process of poking little dots around all the different parts I'll be cutting. Once the whole picture is dotted out with a tack, the template comes off and is used as a reference and the carving begins!
Wow! Those are amazing! I love the Green Man and who doesn't like unicorns? ;-)
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a good Halloween!
Yes Reffie we did have fun. I dressed up like a scarecrow, painted my face like a jack-o-lantern with black triangular eyes and nose and the bad teeth. I even had grass for hair...lol. After Becca was done her rounds of begging for candy, Silv and I went to the bar in the hotel where I work. I went into the kitchen to see my co-workers and they got a great kick out of my costume. It was priceless! Scaring the kids that came to my door was great as well!
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading I was thinking of some questions, but you answered them all in your post. How cool is that? The pumpkins are AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteoh wow! you truly are an artist! i am lucky to get triangle eyes and a big toothy grin!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Etta! I'm glad that it worked out that way, at least you got timely answers to your questions :)
ReplyDeleteBrian, welcome to my blogging home, thanks for coming by for a visit! I love having new visitors come around :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the compliments, triangle eyes and toothy grins go a long way as well. Especially when you're turning your face into a jack-o-lantern!