So, I should probably submit this to the "Pinterest Fail" blog but I'm going to expose it here instead. However, there's one thing you need to know first off before I begin down this storytelling trail: Despite my "Risott-O-Lantern" post, I hate carving pumpkins... Oh come on, don't hate on me for not wanting to spread Halloween cheer. I'm not so opposed to the "scraping out" part as much as the "carving a design" aspect. I've spoken about my perfectionist tendencies on here many a time, so I won't go into all that but basically, pumpkin carving has all the ingredients for a perfectionist's Hallow's Eve nightmare. This is due in part because I find most of the typical pumpkin designs that have tracing sheets, distasteful (no offense to anyone that likes them) thus causing me to go for the seemingly safe bet of just carving out words (for example, "Boo" or "Trick Or Treat", etc). But don't be fooled! It's a classic Halloween trick. On more than one occasion, I have been that lone last carver, sitting in the kitchen at the carving party, carving my Halloween phrase of choice well after everyone has finished. I have to sit, listening to their jubilant chatter oozing with the satisfaction of knowing they're done and enjoying the provided wine and tasty bites while I slave away on a pumpkin that in the end looks like crap and ends up in the dumpster outside the party. It's a recipe for a cauldron of disaster is what it is. So this year, when I got an invite to pumpkin carving, I decided I had had enough and got proactive. I went immediately to Pinterest and searched for "no-carve pumpkins." And let me tell you, what the search returned was a collage of amazingness. There are so many freaking creative people out there! Here are some of my favorites:
Or this smorgasbord:
I stole this from HERE
But I had to choose just one, since the whole point of this venture was to not get overwhelmed + discouraged, so I finally settled on this one:
You can find the tutorial here.
That black and orange one in the back that says "Trick or Treat," to be exact. That "Smell My Feet" one kinds of falls under that "distasteful" label for me... but again, that's just me!
I considered blogging about something different today after my "no-carve pumpkin" showed it's true colors and sucked but then I thought: No! That is not who I am. I am a transparent person. I am not going to let a little pride get in the way of some helpful trial-and-error tips for my readers! So, the ruse (if there ever was one is up), I'm not as "krafty" as I may purport to be!
Here's what it turned out as...
L.A.M.E.
I never intended to just handwrite "Trick or Treat" like a punk on my pumpkin but I did learn three things which I will share with you all if you decide to give it a go:
1. Sidewalk Chalk is NOT the right kind of chalk to use.. You want to get the slender, teacher chalk, if you can.
2. Taping a stencil to your pumpkin with Scotch tape will take off the paint wherever you put the tape (I "conveniently" didn't take a picture of my pumpkin's backside but trust me when I tell you it's covered with splotches of the pumpkin's underside). I would recommend using painters tape or perhaps masking tape and waiting 30 min to take it off as they suggest in the tutorial.
3. Get your stencil in order/read ALL of the tutorial's directions/don't assume you know everything. I'm ashamed to admit I printed out the words "Trick or Treat" that I found somewhere in Google images and thought I would cut it out when I got there... It took me 20 min just to cut out the first "T." Hence the giving up part and just free-handing it. (Now that I'm writing this post, I see that they recommended tracing your stencil with a pen over your pumpkin so that when you remove your uncut stencil, there is an indentation in the pumpkin so that you can see where to trace... That is a very good idea. I only wish I had seen that before now.)
Good intentions...
ALL OF THESE "TIPS" COULD BE CONDENSED UNDER THE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE OF: READING ALL OF THE DIRECTIONS. (Moral of the story).
Sorry if you feel "tricked' by reading this in thinking that this was going to be a post of value no-carve tips but I promise I'll give you a "treat" tomorrow to make up for it.
HAPPY ALMOST HALLOWEEN!
