[Bravo020]

Getting close to that time of year again....

Have been purchasing pumpkins over the past couple of days, 14 decent sized so far. Plan to get some more up to the 20-25 mark.
I've also managed to order 3 sets of Ray Villafane studios pumpkin arms, which hopefully will arrive from the US in time, so I'm very keen to experiment with those on a few of the designs.

Current planned lineup for this year includes the following:

Harry Potter theme:

• Albus Dumbledore

• Harry Potter & Dobby

• Lord Voldemort

• Mad-Eye Moody

• Severus Snape & Sirius Black

Others:

• Willy Wonka

• Elvira

• Boo

• Demi

• Annabelle

• Eddie

• Simply Meant To Be

• Misfortune Teller

• Samhain Skull

• Chernabog

• Crank E. Frank

• Eek!

• Gelatin Skeleton

• Unicorn Reborn

• Grave 'n' Raven

• Animal

Double Designs:

• Tammy Morrow & Tom Morrow

• Valak The Nun

• Arrow Walker & Daryl Dixon

Non ZP designs:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger & Sylvester Stallone

Designs that didn't make the cut this year:

• Gizmo & Stripe

• Groot

• Rocket Racoon

• Deadite Ed & Ash

• Until Death Do Us Part

• Wicked Grin

• Kang & Homer

[Bravo020]

Now up to 20 pumpkins all of reasonable sizes, so just a few more to purchase so that the kids have some to carve as well....mustn't forget about them! I tend to hog all of the pumpkins in the house, so I must learn to be more generous with the kids...

Just realized that I may have bitten off more than I can chew with the total number of patterns selected this year, so as ever it is always up for change depending upon how much the hand cramp kicks in this year. But I know what to expect, a couple of days of carving, 18 hour days and a photo shoot at 2:00am.....

[Raven]

Can't wait to see them all! I used to do at least 10 to 13 each year. Sadly, I can no longer do that due to medical problems with my hands and wrists. I have 5 this year and really trying to add a 6th. but I'm not sure I can find any real pumpkins this late in the game.

[Bravo020]

Can't wait to see them all! I used to do at least 10 to 13 each year. Sadly, I can no longer do that due to medical problems with my hands and wrists. I have 5 this year and really trying to add a 6th. but I'm not sure I can find any real pumpkins this late in the game.

Hi Raven, thanks for the post. All the work begins tomorrow so I'll post some updates during the course of the carving....
It's getting tough to find decent sized pumpkins now too. I was lucky and bought my first 20 very early, just as they first appeared in the shops. Subsequently since then the sizes have gotten smaller and smaller, and well a "large" pumpkin is about the size of a large tennis ball now!! Monster sized pumpkins disappeared after about a week of first arriving in the shops...

Thankfully, a small pumpkin will work out just fine for the Misfortune Teller design, so hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do justice for Ryan's designs.

Take care, and Happy Halloween!

[Raven]

I found this today. Happiness!!

[Bravo020]

The raw material for 2019....

Pumpkins for 2019 by Andy Sharp, on Flickr

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

Bravo, I like how you have your list prepared. You have a game plan. Which is necessary, when you're attempting that many carvings. But you also realize that you might need to scale back. So work on those high priority ones first, I guess. Can't wait to see what you do!

[Bravo020]

Bravo, I like how you have your list prepared. You have a game plan. Which is necessary, when you're attempting that many carvings. But you also realize that you might need to scale back. So work on those high priority ones first, I guess. Can't wait to see what you do!

Thanks for the kind words Ryan. I've already started tweaking the list and putting multiple designs onto a single pumpkin, this became a bit of a necessity if there are to be any pumpkins left for the kids this year!! Any in the list with a have been carved and ready in waiting wrapped in cling film and soaking in readiness for Thursday.

Just a quick shot of the latest to be completed.

Tammy Morrow & Tom Morrow by Andy Sharp, on Flickr

[Raven]

Very nice! I love them on one pumpkin!!

[Bravo020]

Kids helped me out this year, Jaxon (6) did Boo and Demi, Jaydn (12) did Annabelle. They are worn out now and no longer asking to carve anymore today!!

[Bravo020]

That's it for 2019. All pumpkins carved, and only 1:20am!

Now to setup the photo shoot and get to bed before 3:00am

[shaft28]

What a lineup indeed! Looks amazing!

[Bravo020]

Quick photo shoot, it's 4:00am, and I am beat!

Happy Halloween!!

048H3894 by Andy Sharp, on Flickr

048H3893 by Andy Sharp, on Flickr

[Ajax]

They look awesome. I'm jealous that you can do that many. I did 8 this year and felt like that was pushing it, but the impending threat of downpours doesn't help. I hope you get lots of people out to see them.

[Bravo020]

They look awesome. I'm jealous that you can do that many. I did 8 this year and felt like that was pushing it, but the impending threat of downpours doesn't help. I hope you get lots of people out to see them.

Thanks Ajax for the kind words. The only catch with doing 20+ pumpkins with complex designs is that it needs a couple of days solid carving and the muscle aches that follow for days in arms, legs, hands and back are quite a pain to put it mildly!

Over the years I've been trying different approaches to reduce the time to carve, and I think that I'm just about at the limit as to the maximum I can carve in 2 days. I usually buy my pumpkins at the start of October the moment that they appear in the shops. That way I can try to get a lot of decent sized pumpkins and a mix of tall, round, wide etc. I then start to grab some more just as soon as I am able to, and stop around the 20ish mark. This year I bought 26 and that covered most of the designs that I was looking at.

I store the pumpkins in our garden shed and/or in the loft and I've not suffered yet from any bad/rotten pumpkins as I am usually quite careful to check their condition during the lead-up to Halloween.

In past years, I have used a Pumpkin Gutter drill bit http://getcarvingquicker.com/ to good effect at gutting pumpkins, but this year I chose not to. Instead I used a combination of a metal serrated pumpkin scoop and a clay loop.

The scoop worked very well for removing the guts of the pumpkin, I think it was more effective than the pumpkin gutter as I didn't need to remove the drill bit and clean it, and it was certainly a lot easier on the arms that trying to steady a pumpkin with one arm and holding a drill in the other. I certainly felt less exhausted this year than in the past.

The next tool that I used was a pear shaped clay loop, this year was the first time I had used this tool and wow what a time saver!!! I can't recommend this tool enough. I put my whole hand in the pumpkin and held the loop in my hand in a closed fist, and just had to twist my wrist to scrape away the sides of the pumpkin. A lot more control than I had with the pumpkin gutter, I was able to make thinner walls on the pumpkins than I had in the past (makes carving sooo much easier), and I just can't put anymore praise onto the clay loop tool. It was a game changer for me this year. I was able to get a sense of the thickness of the walls much better than I had with the pumpkin gutter and I just felt that it was doing such a brilliant job.

After that it was Stick 'N' Carve to transfer the designs, and the ZP carving tool sets that I've had for so many years for the carving. I have 2 sets, one with the large blade attached and the other with the thinner blade attached. I use the larger blade only to cut open the top of the pumpkin, and the thinner blade for all design carving.

This year the kids helped me out on 3 designs that they wanted to do, and the rest I carved over the course of 2 days.

I guess we had somewhere around 100 children visit yesterday based on the number of sweet bags that we had made up, and we had a lot of compliments on the pumpkin designs this year.

I had a Bluetooth speaker positioned inside the Voldemort carving which was hanging on a pumpkin wire that was joined to another wire with the Harry Potter/Dobby carving. I then streamed the Harry Potter theme music and some sound clips from the films which added to the display of the 7 characters that were all in close proximity to each other. Certainly something that I will repeat again for the next Halloween.

We had a 10 foot spider web attached to the front of the house with a 4 ft spider also hanging on the web, and I had installed a 10W led light that had 16 different color choices and we set that up as purple to illuminate the web. Also nearby we had a fog machine running and that worked very well in conjunction with the purple illumination as the fog was great to see with a purple hint and just added so much more to the atmosphere.

Anyway, I plan to take some more photos this evening and will post them in due course.

I hope that everyone has had an utterly terrifying Halloween!!!