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How to Carve a Funkin + Pumpkinpalooza Contest!

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To celebrate our Pumpkinpalooza contest, we’re bringing you the best flameless candle and pumpkin projects from all of our crafty friends! Scroll down to the bottom of this post to find out how you can win $1000 in cash and prizes just by decorating a pumpkin!

 

This post comes from Angie of The Country Chic Cottage.
Learn more about Angie and check out all of her projects on AllFreeHolidayCrafts.

 

Carving a Funkin is a great activity with any child this Halloween.  Funkin?  Yes that is right!  Funkins are artificial pumpkins that are carvable.  Carve them just like a regular pumpkin but they will last forever.  Plus they are so much fun and you can get a little silly with them….

 

The Funkin looks like any other pumpkin…except there is a hole in the bottom and no seeds.  Not even any of that slime to clean on the inside.  You can just jump right into the fun part.

 

To carve your Funkin you will need:

  • Funkin
  • Knife or pumpkin carving kit
  • Pencil with eraser
  • Battery operated candle
  • Imagination (or a 7 year old that has one)

1.  We started by sketching on a face (designed by a 7 year old) with a pencil.  My 7 year old wants to put our Jack-o-lantern in his room every year.  Now with the Funkin that is possible!

2.  We then just used a knife (no special tools) to cut out our face.  It really was just as easy as carving a real pumpkin.

Now you can see that the inside of the Funkin is similar to styrofoam.

I even let my son carve some (supervised of course).

We had one mishap but a little glue fixed this area right up.  I would say if you can make these thin areas of your design a little thicker they will work better with the Funkin.

3.  After you have made your cuts, you can actually erase all of the extra pencil marks.  They just came right off!

This is the only mess we were left with.  A few bits to throw away and a little dust.  So simple, easy and fun!

4.  You just add a light to the inside and you are ready for some Halloween fun.  I just added a battery operated tea light and it was perfect.

My son loves the new addition to his room.  And now the Jack-o-lantern can stay outside where he belongs.

 

Enter our Pumpkinpalooza Contest!

How creative can you get this Halloween? Enter our Pumpkinpalooza contest and show off your creative skills! You don’t have to get out a knife for this contest – show us what you can do with Mod Podge, paint, paper and more! Entries will be judged by Mark Montano, Margot Potter and the Crafty Chica, Kathy Cano-Murillo. If that wasn’t cool enough, the winner will received $1000 in cash and prizes!

 

 

How To Enter

  • Submit you photo of your decorated pumpkin at FaveCrafts.com.
  • Contest submissions will be accepted September 24th through October 21st. Only one submission per person please, so use your best pumpkin decorating ideas.
  • You must use a pumpkin. You can decorate the pumpkin any way you like, but there must be a pumpkin, real or artificial. We recommend using a Funkin, so your creation can be displayed year after year!
  • Craft-lebrity voting will be from October 22nd to October 24th.
  • The judges picks will then be opened to reader voting from October 25th to October 30th.
  • Winner will be announced on the Halloween, October31st!

Official Rules

  • Contest open to US and Canada residents 18+
  • One entry per person, duplicates will be deleted.
  • Contest entries close October 21, 2012 at 11:59p CST.
  • Entries must be submitted at FaveCrafts.com.
  • Entries must be an original design by you.
  • Winners will be posted on this blog Wednesday, October 31st and notified by email.

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Pumpkin Carving Patterns: Free?!

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It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to start thinking about what you want your pumpkins to look like this year! I used to enter my pumpkins in pumpkin carving contests when I was a kid, so I was always on the lookout for unique pumpkin carving patterns. Free ones were hard to come by back then though! I scoured the web for you (thanks, Google!) and found a ton–and I mean a ton–of pumpkin carving patterns, free to download, print out, and start using!

You gotta mention Martha first because she’s the best. Check out her Halloween Pumpkin Carving Patterns and Pumpkin Templates slideshow to find instructions and printable templates for 45 different pumpkin designs, like this night owl:

If you click over to DLTK’s Crafts for Kids, you’ll see even more printable templates, including instructions for how to use them. They’ve got a good mixture of scary and silly. I didn’t include the scary clown pattern in the photo in case you guys are scared of clowns! But check it out at DLTK.

I had to include this dragon pumpkin in this round-up, from Not Just a Housewife. There’s not a full tutorial, but if you found the right pumpkin I bet you could recreate this easily.

All of you Star Wars nerds out there will appreciate this pumpkin carved into the Death Star! The designer even includes a tutorial for how to make your own. Check out the rest of his site for even more pumpkin carving patterns, free for the taking.

And in case these aren’t enough for you, you can get even more pumpkin carving patterns free from HGTV, Family Fun, and The Pumpkin Lady.

Are you a pumpkin connoisseur? What’s the most ingenious pumpkin carving idea you’ve ever tried?

 

 

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How to Carve a Pumpkin

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We have 18 days until Halloween is finally here! Are you excited like I am? When I drive around I’ve been seeing more and more Halloween decorations that just make me so happy. I’ve even been scared of a few of them. I saw this really large blow-up spider on someone’s lawn that I wasn’t prepared for. There was also this really creepy face on someone’s front door, it had green eyes and was lit up in the background. People are getting very creative this year.

I still haven’t gone to a pumpkin patch this season but I’m hoping to this weekend. Now that I think about it I really haven’t seen many carved pumpkins either. I think it’s still a bit too soon to have your pumpkins out, only because they go bad so quickly. It is really fun to carve pumpkins though, especially when you have other people to do it with you.

There are many ways to carve a pumpkin, but I’m not very creative or artistic so I do it the cheater’s way. I usually buy one of those sketch books so I can just poke small holes in the pumpkin outlining the design. Once the holes are there you can just use a knife to cut it out. Of course you have to cut the top off first and gut it. The ewy gooey inside is so weird but you can use the seeds for baking purposes. Of course before you start carving your pumpkin or tracing designs you have to pick out the perfect pumpkin, either from the store or a pumpkin patch. Patches are more fun.

Aside from tracing a pattern and taking the easy way out, you can draw up your own design. The original pumpkin face with two triangle eyes and nose is always an easy one. If you’re very artistic then you can come up with a fabulous design. Some ideas I can share with you are the Cubs logo, the Hawks logo, very popular right now, your dog, or even a spooky Halloween scene with a moon and trees, those are very neat. Cats and witches are always fun to carve too. Have you ever carved a spider? It’s only difficult to do because the legs have to be so thinly cut.

You can also decorate your pumpkin without carving it. You can draw faces on it, use craft supplies like glitter and glue or turn it into something amazing. Some of my favorite decorative pumpkins are:

  1. Boo Pumpkin
  2. Bug Pumpkin
  3. Frankenstein Pumpkin
  4. Mod Pumpkin
  5. Owl Pumpkin

What’s your favorite design to carve?

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