I am not an artist.

[EZ_Pedric Cuf]

So, every year at Halloween, I carve geeky pumpkins. My first year it was a Pikachu (I was 14!), second year was a Mew (I was 15!), third year was a Starcraft Archon, fourth year was a Ragebringer, and fifth year was Warcraft 3 Orc Coat of Arms. This year I decided to do something I thought was pretty cool and find a short round pumpkin and carve out the inscription of The One Ring into it.

Now, as anyone who's carved a pumpkin knows, carving letters is really not very easy, especially ones incredibly thin and with lots of flair and frill. Unfortunately, I didn't follow any intelligence I have and tried carving it anyways. The end result is a disaster. It looks NOTHING like the correct inscription. However, to it's credit, it does look rather mystical and such, and I doubt anyone will be able to notice that it is in fact complete and utter crap.

I also made a second pumpkin. A Shivan Dragon from M:tG. This one also turned out to be crap. I basically just carved out the outline of the pumpkin, but this left me with a huge dragon-shaped hole with no detail. I took some pumpkin shavings and pinned them into the inside of the pattern to give it a slight amount of detail, but it still looks like crap.

Oh well, so much for this year. I should have just stuck with my first idea of the Eye of Sauron. I got a lot of compliments on the Archon pumpkin and the Eye is pretty much the same thing. Edited by: Pedric Cuf at: 10/31/03 10:30 am

[EZ_Synrax]

Pics, we need pics!

[EZ_Swipey]

Instead of just plain old carving, why not trace out your design in felt tip, then cut very carefully along the lines with an exacto knife (just deep enough to break the skin) followed by going at it with a dremel tool to remove most of the material? The pre-cutting of the skin should keep your edges fairly crisp.

I dont know if it would work, but it sould save you from "wide knife" syndrome. Edited by: Swipey at: 10/31/03 3:27 pm

[EZ_nekoken]

Rotozip. That's what I used last year.

Narsse Nekoken

[EZ_Gaav]

Actually a bit easier way to do something similiar (and you'll see a ton of this if you goto a cullinary school)

Is use decent quality zesters/melon ballers so cut through the orange and into the meat of the pumpkin.

The key is to hollow out the inside of the pumpkin as much as you can. Scrape it as thin as possible, so that the light will still shine through the remaining flesh.

[EZ_Pedric Cuf]

Ooo, thanks for the ideas, guys. Next year I think I'll follow them. And I'd get pics up, but my scanner is broken and I don't have a digital camera. Sorry. =\