Here’s another way to stencil a pumpkin. I’ve never carved a pumpkin in this style and thought it turned out pretty darn well. 
Here’s what you need:
- Stencils! I used Garbo Small and Garbo Mini.
- A permanent marker. Fine-pointed works best.
- Knives/carvers. There are many, many tools available for pumpkin carving. I used an X-acto blade and a couple different linoleum-cutting tools.
- Some time. Depending on your design, this can be a quick craft or a weekend process.
- Olive oil. More on that later. (*See note below!)
- A pumpkin.
First, clean out the pumpkin. If you’ve never done this, I recommend looking it up online really quickly (it’s easy) and saving the seeds to munch on later. Please be careful with sharp objects. This is not an activity for kiddos (sorry!).
Draw whatever you want on the pumpkin. You really don’t have to be all that perfect about it, but you want to be able to see the lines clearly.
Start cutting! I used the X-acto blade to trace around each shape first. The pumpkin will cry a little. It’s okay. Beauty hurts.
Then, I scooped out the inside of each shape. I used different blades to get just the right depth and to refine the edges.
I used an old strand of Christmas lights to test the depth of my cuts as I went. The deeper the cut, the brighter the light coming through.
Because you’re working on a vegetable, I recommend coating all your cuts in a decent layer of olive oil. As the cutouts begin to dry, they shrink up and warp your image. Olive oil will keep those exposed parts moist — for a little while, at least.
And there you have it! I was surprised at how easy this technique is. Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes!
~ Libby
*UPDATE: Wouldn’t you know, that sucker started molding within a couple of days. If you want your pumpkin to last longer than it took you to carve it (I’m not bitter, no…), consider soaking it in water first and using petroleum jelly, use a bath and some kind of plastic wrap, or take a picture — that lasts the longest. Usually when I work with food, I eat it immediately, so preserving something edible isn’t usually this complicated.
