I recently posted an article about carved pumpkin lanterns made to celebrate Halloween. In it, I show a bunch of carved pumpkins with movie and cartoon themes. One thing that these carved pumpkin lanterns all have in common is that they use varying thickness of the pumpkin to create varying shades of light and dark.

In order to help you carve your own carved pumpkin lanterns, I’ve made a free video to illustrate the concept of carving varying thicknesses to make differing shades of light and dark. Take a look and you will see what I mean. You will find it useful the next time you carve a pumpkin lantern. And the same concept works well when you carve lanterns from melons.

Take a look. continue reading…

Today is November 20 and I still have on display a carved white pumpkin lantern that I made on Halloween. That was October 31. So this pumpkin is now 21 days old! I’m finally about ready to throw it out. Amazingly, it is only now starting to get a little bit moldy on the inside. I’ve been keeping in on the table unrefrigerated all this time!

This is a huge contrast to the common orange pumpkins that I carved on the same day. Those got really black with mold on the inside within only 3 or 4 days.

Watch the video to see how this white pumpkin lantern has changed from day 1 to day 18. continue reading…