Jack-o-lantern pumpkin carving patterns

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 13 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

12 Oct 2009

Time for my annual list of jack-o-lantern carving patterns and resources.

Zombie Pumpkins is one of the better sets of patterns out there. 207 high quality patterns ranging from original designs to pop culture. There’s the requisite freebies, or $2 gets you any two patterns, or for $10 get access to all of them.
Pumpkin Lady has some great patterns, including some that are simple designs suitable for kids. Most patterns sell for $1-$3 each, with quantity discounts available. Free patterns change weekly.

Stoneykins offers thousands of patterns for sale, with 550 new for this year. They have 100 of their patterns for free, or you can join the site for as little as $5 and get them all.
No list is complete without Pumpkin Masters, the company who made carving patterns popular. Four free patterns this year, or buy their books for more.
DLTK Crafts for Kids has some simple kid-friendly patterns for free.
Pumpkin Wizard has nearly 400 patterns, with over 100 new this year. Many are celebrity photos converted to a pattern. These tend to be much harder to carve. Your $7.95 membership gets you access to all of them.
Spookmasters has 250 downloadable patterns for $5.95. In addition to your standard "faces and scenes" patterns, they have a few dozen college team logos. Their free patterns include a daily freebie. The mystery pattern changes daily.
Pumpkin Glow specializes in "un-halloween" patterns—no monsters and demons here. Perfect for those that don’t do the traditional Halloween thing but still want to get in on some carving fun.
Extreme Pumpkins has 48 over-the-top patterns for free. There’s photos and videos of jack-o-lanterns that go way beyond simple carving. We’re talking props, guts, and explosives.

Now that you have the pattern of your dreams, how do you carve it? While you can use a pushpin to transfer the pattern and kitchen tools to carve your pumpkin, you’ll find it faster, safer, and easier to use tools designed for the job.

Pumpkin Masters has a variety of tool kits available. Their flagship "Pumpkin Carving Kit" includes a tool with a transfer wheel. Just roll the wheel along your pattern to score your pumpkin’s skin.
Want something more elegant than a collection of plastic tools? Martha Stewart has a line of wood-handled tools designed for pumpkin carving. $35 at Macy’s.
What carving session is complete without power tools? Get the Dremel pumpkin carver, a battery-operated rotary tool that includes some patterns and bits designed to make your carving go quickly.

(Image via Wikipedia)

Recently Written

The Trap of The Sales-Led Product (Dec 10): It’s not a winning way to build a product company.
The Hidden Cost of Custom Customer Features (Dec 7): One-off features will cost you more than you think and make your customers unhappy.
Domain expertise in Product Management (Nov 16): When you're hiring software product managers, hire for product management skills. Looking for domain experts will reduce the pool of people you can hire and might just be worse for your product.
Strategy Means Saying No (Oct 27): An oft-overlooked aspect of strategy is to define what you are not doing. There are lots of adjacent problems you can attack. Strategy means defining which ones you will ignore.
Understanding vision, strategy, and execution (Oct 24): Vision is what you're trying to do. Strategy is broad strokes on how you'll get there. Execution is the tasks you complete to complete the strategy.
How to advance your Product Market Fit KPI (Oct 21): Finding the gaps in your product that will unlock the next round of growth.
Developer Relations as Developer Success (Oct 19): Outreach, marketing, and developer evangelism are a part of Developer Relations. But the companies that are most successful with developers spend most of their time on something else.
Developer Experience Principle 6: Easy to Maintain (Oct 17): Keeping your product Easy to Maintain will improve the lives of your team and your customers. It will help keep your docs up to date. Your SDKs and APIs will be released in sync. Your tooling and overall experience will shine.