Triangle-Nose No More: Revamping the Jack-O-Lantern

Halloween is only a couple days away, making this weekend your last chance to carve this year’s jack-o-lantern. Waiting until the last minute is actually a boon when it comes to pumpkin carving; your typical gourd will rot and wither within a week of carving, so slicing and dicing your pumpkin a day or two before Halloween ensures that it will be intact come Fright Night.

However, for many pumpkin aficionados carving two triangle eyes and a toothy grin is not enough. Like an impatient kid waiting until sunrise to drag their family downstairs on Christmas morning, the ninja-level pumpkin carver waits breathlessly until October for the chance to let their craft shine.

Take Scott Cummins, the “Pumpkin Gutter” of Plano, Texas. By carving just the outer rind of the pumpkin and not cutting all the way through the gourd (no triangle noses here), Cummins creates detailed, three-dimensional pumpkin sculptures. Cummins offers several tutorials on his website that let even the novice jack-o-lantern learn the techniques necessary to create their own pumpkin sculpture. This year’s gallery of Cummins creations include Samara from the horror film “The Ring,” as well as lighter fare like an origami butterfly and MAD Magazine’s Alfred P. Neuman.

Carving and sculpting aren’t the only options you have for creating a thoroughly memorable jack-o-lantern. While it may sound odd to say that there are “trends” in the gourd-decorating world, the biggest one by far for 2011 has to be the “henna” pumpkin decorating effect. Use black or dark brown puffy paint to dot on intricate, henna-inspired patterns for a dramatic, elegant pumpkin. Just because you aren’t carving the pumpkin doesn’t mean you can’t hollow it out before applying your faux-henna; a candle-lit interior will help the decorations stand out when darkness falls.

Painting your pumpkin is a thoroughly under-rated pumpkin decorating technique; often less messy and less dangerous than carving, painting a pumpkin lets you play with the traditional notion of a homey, folksy jack-o-lantern and twist it into something unexpected. Chalkboard paint lets you leave a message for trick-or-treaters (“Take one piece of candy or the yard monster will eat you” might require a fairly large pumpkin) or gives you the freedom to change up your design whenever the mood strikes. Spray-painting pumpkins with high-shine metallic paint gives even the humble pumpkin a futuristic, Jeff Koons-esque edge, especially when you use a metallic teal or magenta paint. It’s kitschy, subversive and out of the ordinary; in short, it’s everything that Halloween should be.

Sound off, Studio 602 readers! Got any great pumpkin designs in store this year? Any carving tips that you want to share with your fellow gourd artistes? Leave us your thoughts and photos in the comments!

Photo Credit: “The Big Lebowski”/Scott Cummins