Carve A Monogram Halloween Pumpkin, step by step

Looking for a unique and chic design to carve into your pumpkin this year? Try these two patterns we made with homemade stencils – a couples’ monogram jack-o-lantern and an intricate damask design.

Choosing The Right Pumpkin

Rather than grab the traditional orange variety, we picked up (this should not surprise you) white pumpkins instead. They lent themselves to some more modern, unexpected designs versus your traditional orange jack-o-lanters. And these non-traditional pumpkins called for non-traditional designs courtesy of some homemade stencils.

Creating A Homemade Pumpkin Stencil

I hoped to flex my pumpkin carving muscles so I located an intricate damask pattern online and used Photoshop to turn it into a black & white line drawing that we could use as a stencil. After sizing it to fit my pumpkin, I simply printed it out on regular office paper.

Transferring Your Stencil To The Pumpkin

To transfer the stencil onto the pumpkin, we used a trick Sherry picked up in art school. We flipped the paper over and rubbed graphite all over the back of it using a regular pencil. It is like makeshift carbon paper.

Then we taped the design in place on the pumpkin (graphite side down) and used the pencil (and some decent pressure) to trace over the damask outline. This transferred a faint outline onto the pumpkin, which we then went over with a thin Sharpie to make sure that the design did not smudge away during the carving process:

Carefully Carve Your Damask Pattern

From there we got down to slicing and dicing, using a $2 four-in-one pumpkin carving tool we picked up from Michael’s. I will spare you from most of the photos of this process, since everything after the initial pumpkin gutting involved a lot of strained grimaces and “man, this thing is thick!” faces. White pumpkins are a rare (and fairly thick-skinned) bunch.

But in the end, I was pleasantly surprised with the final result… since there were multiple moments in the process when I was sure it was ruined. Not the easiest design to read from the road (but I do like getting guesses as to what it is – a butterfly? a monster?). And I lived to tell the tale. With all ten fingers intact no less.

Carving A Couples’ Monogram

We took things a little bit easier with the pumpkin Sherry carved. We used the same homemade pattern process, this time to transfer a J&S monogram onto her pumpkin. This pumpkin had some balance issues so we chose to try carving it on its side (cutting out the back, instead of the top). It is in fact a lot more interesting that way. Gotta enjoy a glad accident. Here it is before the carve job:

We designed the ampersand to overlap our initials knowing that it would not be possible to fully cut it out. Instead, we simply scraped off a couple of layers to expose the orange rind inside. It is a good ol’ trick sure to give your pumpkin a bit of the layered look. Here is the final result of Sherry’s handiwork:

We enjoyed how this one turned out, which gave us the idea of carving out our house numbers – one digit per pumpkin. Perhaps we will tackle that another weekend once my hands have recovered…

Got any unexpected pumpkin carving tricks or designs up your sleeves? We wanna hear ’em so spill the beans- er, pumpkin seeds.