Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:07 am
#105774
I typically carve around 25-30 pumpkins the last few years, and I mainly start 2 days before Halloween. This year is a little different as I'll only be carving on Thursday and Friday, and keeping the weekend pumpkin free. That should give me the opportunity to get photographs completed late on Friday night and/or Saturday night, and spend more time preparing for our Halloween party on Sunday.
Once I have carved a pumpkin I give them a good soak in water and then wrap them in cling film, then when they are ready to be photographed it's off with the cling film. I use tea light candles for the photographs only, and then once the photography is completed, they get another soak in water and wrapped in cling film once more.
On Halloween afternoon they all get put out on display outside our home and then I use LED lights instead of tea lights.
I used to use a 'Pumpkin Gutter' to start the process of gutting them, but it was always a right pain lifting and moving pumpkins around, cleaning the gutter and switching batteries on the drill, and the drill is quite heavy. By the time I'd gutted a bunch of pumpkins, I was exhausted before I'd even start carving.
The last couple of years, I've stopped using the 'Pumpkin Gutter' altogether, and have just switched to a large serrated spoon (the sort designed for pumpkins), and this does a great quick job of gutting without anywhere as near the effort of using the 'Pumpkin Gutter'.
To thin the interior walls then I use a pear shaped clay loop, which is probably the single most important change I've made to my workflow in the past 3 years. It really gives me a lot of control over the thickness, it's a game changer for me.
For the carving itself, then I still use Stick 'n Carve which I've been using for quite a long time now. It still has its challenges when it sometimes wants to dissolve too quickly, but I know what to expect from it now, and I've not yet ruined a carving to date.
