Pumpkin Carvings

So its halloween on wednesday and even though here in England we don't made quite as big of a deal about halloween as the Americans do, we still like to throw a little party or two, and so whenever theres a halloween party of course there has to be pumpkins. Halloween and pumpkins goes together like Santa and his reindeer, so I'm going to let you in on a few tips and tricks to make your pumpkins the best in town. 

Although loads of people think that carving pumpkins takes skill and is a lot of hard work the truth is thats its pretty simple, firstly using cookie cutters or stencils can help you out a lot. Use a cookie cutter and push it into the hollowed out pumpkin, once you remove the cutter and repeat over the entire pumpkin you will have a really original and unique pumpkin, that will impress any party guests, similarly using a stencil you have the freedom to transfer any image you want onto the pumpkin. Basically draw a design on a piece of tracing paper (ordinary paper would also work) and lay it onto the pumpkin, then using a sharp blade or pen indent the image onto the pumpkin. once you have the basic outline on your pumpkin you can then use carving tools to separate the image from the pumpkin. 

Another quirky Idea is to simply hollow out your pumpkin and use it as a prop for amazing photographs of your young children, and you have instantly adorable photographs of your children to look back on in year to come. Simply cut two holes in the front of the pumpkin for your child to hang there feet out of and just watch as people 'aww' at your new photographs. Additional if your child is a newborn baby and to young to hold there own head up, stick a blanket in the pumpkin and lay them down inside it, its such an effective photography prop.

If your rubbish at carving then there are some basic and simple but effective carving ideas, Simply get a pen and stab the pumpkin many times and place a candle inside, the light from the candle will leak out through the holes and its such a beautiful and quick pumpkin idea that takes little effort. Or you could carve out little windows in your pumpkin to give it a warm 'homely' feeling and the light candle inside will represent the lights in a house, so cute. 

You don't even have to carve or cut or even stab your pumpkins, simply grab some paint and get creative. Painting your pumpkin white is such an unusually unique but effective little idea that looks incredible, you can add detail with a black sharpie, drawing cobwebs, spiders, ghosts or skeletons will instantly amaze your guests.

Im calling these ones 'Funkins' because there not scary at all, but more fun. Basically grab a handful of colourful sharpies and draw the most random characterised faces you can think of, You could even turn this one into a party game and get all the kids to design there own pumpkin and judge them. Such a cool little idea that can be enjoyed by the whole family. 

I hope you enjoyed my little pumpkin ideas and tips and tricks, I had a lot of fun with this post and I'm looking forward to halloween, I hope you found this post useful and now you have some more ideas for your halloween pumpkins.
Whats your favourite part of halloween? When I was younger mine was trick or treating and dressing up in the most scariest costumes of all (I was usually a witch every year).

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed and have a good day,
Rachel Ward