Absolutely No Machete Juggling

Every year, I look forward to pumpkin carving because I design and carve my own jack-o-lantern patterns. I can't draw, so I generally steal images from the internet and turn them into patterns, but they usually come out looking pretty nice.

With all of the "Pumpkin Masters" books floating around, surely you don't want to be the losers on the block with a lame face carved into your jack-o-lantern. Your kids would be embarassed to even be related to you, and you're certainly asking for your pumpkins to be kicked in. The only way to win the hearts of your children (and impress hoodlums so much that they leave your jack-o-lanterns alone out of respect) is to carve a needlessly intricate pumpkin yourself.

But what happens when you buy a kit at the supermarket and carve your pumpkin, only to discover when you place it on your porch that your annoying neighbor carved the same one. Your kids would begin contemplating suicide, and pranksters would have little choice but to burn your entire house down.

Clearly what you need are UNIQUE pumpkin carving patterns that nobody else has. Well you're in luck, because you are one of the six visitors to my web site. As such, you can rest easy that nobody else has ever seen these patterns. Besides, who would want to? Only a nerd like you would want to carve Mario into a pumpkin.

Here is what you do:

Instructions

1. First, you need tools. Some craft stores will sell the "Pumpkin Masters" toolset without the booklets for a bit cheaper, so go for that. If you can't find one, you can pick up a booklet that includes tools. This has an added bonus, because you can give your kids the option of using patterns from the booklet, or using the patterns below. That way, if they don't pick Mario, you know they aren't really your kids and you can guiltlessly disown them. If you can't find these tools, you need: push pins, a toothpick, and small but long saw, and a pencil.
2. Next, hollow out your pumpkin. More specifically, complain about how disgusting you find this process and have your significant other hollow out your pumpkin. That's what I do. When you cut out the top, a good way to go is to cut a circle, but leave a chunk sticking out on one side. This ensures you know which way to place it back. For an example, go here. Decide on what you want the "face" of your pumpkin to be, and hollow that side out a bit more so it's thinner.
3. Print the pattern you want. Each one is a handy-dandy PDF file, so just dump it right to your printer. Pushpin it to your pumpkin face. Since the pumpkin is rounded, you may need to cut slits in the paper and overlap it to make it fit on the pumpkin. This is fine, but make sure that when you close it up, the black outlines are still touching where they need to be.
4. Poke holes in the paper all along the black outlines. Put them pretty close together, you are essentially using them to "draw" your pattern on your pumpkin. If you have the tools, they have a special tool for this in the kit. Otherwise use a toothpick. You can see Julia doing this here.
5. Remove your paper. Use a pencil to connect the dots on your pumpkin face to remove any ambiguity that may exist when dots are close together.
6. Use your saw to trace the lines you drew. You're looking to cut out the parts that are gray on the paper, so keep the paper nearby as a reference. If you threw it away, go fetch it from the trash. Hopefully you didn't get last nights dinner all over it. You want to start with "inner" holes. So basically, you need to think of the drawing in three dimensions. Each little gray part (a hole) is going to be cut out of the white (your pumpkin). Whenever you cut holes around a pumpkin part, that pumpkin part stays connected to the rest of the pumpkin only on the white parts. If you were to cut another hole inside such a pumpkin part, you're likely to break it off of its "hinges" with the rest of the pumpkin. A good rule of thumb is to start cutting from the inside and work your way out.
7. For some of the smaller holes, it may be impossible for light to get through. When you are COMPLETELY DONE cutting out the pumpkin pattern, you can cut some of the inside pumpkin away from these smaller holes, which will allow more light to come through. Try not to cut the actual skin though, as that part is the one that dictates the look of your pumpkin.
8. Place a candle or battery-powered light inside your pumpkin, and put the lid back on.
9. Place your pumpkin on your porch and marvel as neighbors come up to you asking how you did that. Don't tell them about this site though, or you'll look like a toolbag. Tell them you designed the patterns yourself and that you're way cooler than them.

Patterns

Some are more involved than others. Some of them are ridiculously hard and I won't even bother putting them here. You can usually tell which ones are kid-friendly and which are not, but I'll try to put them in order of difficulty. These were all designed by me based on stuff I stole from the internet. I am licensing them all under full Creative Commons license, so you can do whatever you want with them as long as you don't try to sell them or profit from them in any way.

If you use any of these, it'd be great if you could take a picture link to it in a comment.