Our Favourite Pumpkin Carving Ideas

2 Simple but Effective Carving Ideas

We get it, carving pumpkins is WAY harder than it sounds, especially if you end up picking an intricate design with a load of curvy edges that you just can’t quite get a knife round without butchering it. Sometimes, simple is best, so we’ve got two easy ideas that you’ll be able to perfect even as a beginner pumpkin-carver.

Cute Is The New Scary – Right?

Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely love the horror vibes that come hand-in-hand with Halloween, but no one can resist a cutesy little pumpkin. This kitty-cat design is nice and basic, but still looks great and lights up really well in the evening – it’ll look great sat in any window or on any porch.

We find it easiest to draw on the pumpkin with a sharpie first to outline where you want to cut so that you don’t end up going off the rails and leave your cat looking lopsided – top tip, if you’re struggling with round eyes, we suggest using something like a wooden spoon, pushing it through and rolling it around to expand the hole. It’s much easier than trying to use a knife, we promise.

Classic Zombie Vibes

Zombies are obviously a perfect choice for all things Halloween, and this carving idea is no different. You can make it your own by changing the eye size, or the number and shape of teeth, but we must admit that there’s something about those huge eyes that unnerves us in the best way. Sometimes simple really is the right call.

2 Advanced Designs – Feeling Brave?

We see you out there, scoffing at our easy designs that you could smash out with your eyes closed – and we envy you, we really do. Pumpkin carving is an underrated art, and we wish that we could qualify for the more advanced designs, but you know what – we think we’ll leave these ones up to you instead.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

At first glance, this one might not look super advanced, until you realise just how thin some of those lines are and how precise you need to be for none of them to snap. We absolutely love these style of designs, that takes an incredibly steady hand and a very determined mind. Perfect for anyone who’s a fan of the classic Halloween film; if you’re taking this one, we’d love to see how it goes!

Super Spooky

We REALLY hope that someone gives this a go, because we’re absolutely blown away by it. At first glance, we really confidently thought ‘actually, we could give this a go’ – that was until we realised a lot of the detail isn’t carved, but scraped from the front to thin out the pumpkin flesh and allow the light through. This is way out of our carving skills, but we love and respect anyone who goes for it and we’d love to see how it went!

2 Knife-Free Ideas

Not a fan of getting your hands dirty and carving your pumpkin? Don’t worry, you can still play. It’s become more and more popular to say goodbye to carving, and say hello to painting pumpkins instead.

Poison Apple-Pumpkin

We think this is such a fun, cute idea and looks absolutely great! We’re also pretty confident that you don’t need to be an artist to make this look good, so anyone can have a crack at it and come out with a personalised pumpkin. We can already see this looking great in various colour combos, and it is one we absolutely want to try out ourselves this year.

Can’t Beat a Classic

This is another example where sketching out your idea first makes things A LOT easier. Pick yourself a fancy font, and you can use any of the famed Halloween phrases – we especially like these with film quotes on. Take your favourite scary movie and choose a quote. After that, you can make it as simple or as extra as you want to, and while you can’t stick a candle in them, we still think they look mint.

We’re going to be checking shops regularly waiting for pumpkins to arrive, and when they do we might grab more than one to try out some of these designs. Which is your favourite? We’d love to see some of the pumpkins that you carve – tag us in our socials to share your art!