A few years ago I discovered that with careful dissection you could discover the secret anatomy of a Jack-O-Lantern. This year I decided to try another experiment and low-and-behold it turns out that if you cut it just right you can reveal the hidden brain of a pumpkin!...
I thought it would be fun to give you a step-by-step guide if you wanted to give this a try yourself...
1. Get two pumpkins, one orange that's larger and one white that's smaller. You'll have to guess how much smaller the 2nd one needs to be, but figure the walls of the larger will probably be 1-2 inches thick. The bonus is you can always carve away more if you need to adjust the fit.
2. Mark off a line about 1/3 of the way down on the larger pumpkin to allow for a large enough opening to insert the 2nd pumpkin. Then draw your design on each pumpkin. The orange one can be a fairly traditional Jack-O-Lantern, I just made mine a skull since it's my thing. For the brain I printed off reference images from the internet so that I could it make it look more realistic. It only needs to cover the 1st 1/3 of pumpkin, since the rest will be hidden. NOTE: use a marking tool that can easily wiped off (china marker works well). I made the mistake of using a metallic sharpie that only came off with the use of nail polish remover!
3. Carve & gut the 1st pumpkin like you normally would. Be sure to keep the top since it makes a nice display element later.
4. For the brain pumpkin carve the lines first, by incising them with V-shaped cuts that only go about 1/4 of an inch deep.
5. Cut off the bottom of the brain pumpkin and gut it from below. Then cut out a shape that will allow the design of your larger pumpkin to be uncovered and allow candle light to come through! You will end up with a sort of helmet shape. Sadly it didn't fit on anyone's head when I made it, but it would be an amazing kid's costume if you've got a willing volunteer! The trickiest part is adjusting this to fit inside the 2nd, so you may have to carve away at both the inside of the orange pumpkin and the outside of the white to get it to sit properly.
Good luck! And of course if you make your own please send us pictures to share!
I thought it would be fun to give you a step-by-step guide if you wanted to give this a try yourself...
1. Get two pumpkins, one orange that's larger and one white that's smaller. You'll have to guess how much smaller the 2nd one needs to be, but figure the walls of the larger will probably be 1-2 inches thick. The bonus is you can always carve away more if you need to adjust the fit.
2. Mark off a line about 1/3 of the way down on the larger pumpkin to allow for a large enough opening to insert the 2nd pumpkin. Then draw your design on each pumpkin. The orange one can be a fairly traditional Jack-O-Lantern, I just made mine a skull since it's my thing. For the brain I printed off reference images from the internet so that I could it make it look more realistic. It only needs to cover the 1st 1/3 of pumpkin, since the rest will be hidden. NOTE: use a marking tool that can easily wiped off (china marker works well). I made the mistake of using a metallic sharpie that only came off with the use of nail polish remover!
3. Carve & gut the 1st pumpkin like you normally would. Be sure to keep the top since it makes a nice display element later.
4. For the brain pumpkin carve the lines first, by incising them with V-shaped cuts that only go about 1/4 of an inch deep.
5. Cut off the bottom of the brain pumpkin and gut it from below. Then cut out a shape that will allow the design of your larger pumpkin to be uncovered and allow candle light to come through! You will end up with a sort of helmet shape. Sadly it didn't fit on anyone's head when I made it, but it would be an amazing kid's costume if you've got a willing volunteer! The trickiest part is adjusting this to fit inside the 2nd, so you may have to carve away at both the inside of the orange pumpkin and the outside of the white to get it to sit properly.
Good luck! And of course if you make your own please send us pictures to share!
8 comments:
The tutorial is clearly written. What a good idea! It's so brainy!
Absolutely brilliant!
Hannibel Lecter approves.
Awesome - I am so doing this!
Wonderful, great tutorial, now I have to find the white pumpkin. Thank you.
Hi,
I just thought I would send a quick note of thanks. I came across one of your great Halloween crafts and have used it in my Halloween craft ideas round up (with a link to you of course!)
If you would like to check it out, jump on over and see!
www.creativelycrafting.com/halloween-craft-ideas/
I carved a great one like above for halloween this year. But I can't submit any pics, the link above is broken! :(
Sorry the site has been updated since this post was made, you can now submit images directly to our Facebook Page or by sending an email to skull @ SkullADay.com.
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