Carving Shrek and Gator Pumpkins

Living in apartments for the last 5 years has really limited Amy and I’s exposure to the whole Halloween/Trick-Or-Treating thing, and although I’m not as big a fan of Halloween as Jason Santa Maria, I am excited about giving out candy this year at our new house. We live in a very well-established neighborhood with lots of families, so I’m guessing we’ll have droves of Pirates, Princesses, and… iPods? to treat. We’ve got a long, wooded sidewalk that winds up to our front door that would be great for luminaries, and last night we carved a couple pumpkins to go by the front door:

Shrek and Gators Halloween Pumpkins

You can click on the picture for Amy’s post (and more pictures), or just hover over it to see what they look like in the light. Amy found a pattern for her Shrek Pumpkin online at CarvingPumpkins.com. I decided I wanted to do a Gators pumpkin, but couldn’t find a pattern anywhere, so I made my own using a wallpaper I found online. I had to work with it a bit in Photoshop to get a black and white pattern to go by, so if there’s any Gator fans out there wondering how to make one of these:

  1. Download this image.
  2. Print it out as big as you can.
  3. Clean out your pumpkin and tape the pattern on where you want it.
  4. Poke holes around all the black areas.
  5. Remove the paper pattern.
  6. Cut along the dotted lines with a pumpkin carving saw.

I probably make it sound too easy. It took us both about 3 hours to get our pumpkins carved, but neither of us have done intricate pumpkin carving before…so I’m sure it might take some people less…but it’s really not that hard.

13 comments on “Carving Shrek and Gator Pumpkins

Ray says:

“H” for “Hi”!

Those pumpkins are awesome! The thickness of the pumpkins give the designs perfect shading. I had to look at it a while to realize that that’s all it was. Nice job.

Thanks Ray! Unfortunately, they’ve both been hauled off with the trash (Shrek today, and the Gator last week) as they were a little too “ripe” to make it to halloween. Oh well…they were fun while they lasted.

tnt says:

all i can say is go gators!

Ange says:

Hey! I too carved the Shrek pumpkin last year. This year I went back to carving pumpkins.com, and signed up for a memebership, hoping to carve another great pumpkin. Only to find that they are no longer posting cartoons at that site. Do you have any suggestions on where I could find those types of patterns again? I have found other patterns, but they just aren’t as good. Please help if you can! Thanks.

It does look like some of the copyrighted cartoon patterns are harder to find this year. A quick Google search found this site which has scooby doo, spongebob, and blues clues patterns. I’m sure you could find the pattern you’re looking for if you keep searching.

Katie says:

wow.. those pumkins look better when there in the dark..
they lokk really ugly when there is normaal light! i love shrek just not that one!

Judging from your spelling errors and bitterness toward “that one”, I’d say you must be a Tennessee fan, Katie. 🙂 Go GATORS!

Cindy says:

Like the shrek pumpkin, my daughter wants one like it now! Good job

Donna says:

Hey… Great Gator!! My boys play on a youth football league and their team is the Gators!!! We will definitely be doing this on our pumpkin!!! Thanks

Us in Visalia, CA

marbeth says:

Fantastic! I’ve been looking for a Gator pattern and was working on one. This is fAR better than what I came up with. Thanks so very much! My buds at the Gator alum group will be thrilled, too! Go Gators! mb

Kristen Kiss says:

This is awesome!! Go Gators!! I put in Gator pumpkin stencil and didn’t think anything would come up!! I’m so excited to show my pumpkin to my fellow gators!!

STU says:

GO GATORS.. I AM GOING TO TRY FOR IT!! FL/GA WEEKEND… IT HAS TO HAPPEN

M Jason says:

This is an awesome stencil. I felt soooo smart finding it right away. My son will be very happy. Go Gators

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