Happy Halloween!

It's been years since I carved a pumpkin but this year I was so excited for this that I carved two.

Both patterns are from www.pumpkinglow.com. I highly recommend this site--excellent patterns (and they're free!). The only downside is that they're specifically not themed for Halloween.

Now on with the goods!

My panther pumpkin:

A dragon pumpkin I bought and carved on a whim for Eric:
Technically this pumpkin is supposed to be a lot brighter, but once he saw it like this he wouldn't let me punch out the rest of the pieces. I'll admit the whole outline this is pretty cool (and it saved me the trouble of poking out the more complicated pieces around the face).

And photos of them not lit:

Both carvings include scraping the skin (my choice, the patterns weren't actually designed that way). It was my first year scraping and I scraped too much. Everything on Eric's pumpkin that isn't an outline is actually scraped, it's just so thin that it looks about as bright as if I'd just cut through. Doesn't make much of a difference for his anyway since the parts that were supposed to be brighter stayed in the pumpkin for an outline effect anyway.

My panther pumpkin shows off the shading a bit better, but this pumpkin was older and drier after sitting out on the porch for a couple weeks. It was much harder to scrape than the other pumpkin so I ended up poking holes in it while trying to scrape.

Live 'n' learn.

I still love my pumpkins anyway.

...so much so, I was even allowed my picture to be taken while carving one:

Have a safe & happy Halloween!