Thanksgiving Pumpkin Carving with Cornucopia Design

Here is an idea for a beautiful Thanksgiving Pumpkin carving with a cornucopia design that will make an eye catching centerpiece for your Thanksgiving celebration. Your guests will be impressed with your creativity! Even it you are not hosting Thanksgiving this year, imagine how excited your hostess will be when you show up with beautiful pumpkin lantern centerpiece like this!

Sometimes here in the US, we only think about carving pumpkins for Halloween. But why not take advantage of pumpkins to make lovely Thanksgiving pumpkin carvings? See how to make a pumpkin carving like this for Thanksgiving. There are so many different designs that you could use, from graphics of turkeys and pilgrims to something like this cornucopia that symbolizes the abundance of the harvest. The abundance of life giving food that is available to us is only one of the many many things that so many of us have to be thankful for at Thanksgiving time.

So, here is a quick overview of how I made this lovely cornucopia pumpkin carving. You can do the same to carve any other Thanksgiving design of your choice.

If you are a student of my Pumpkin Carving Portraits Course and/or my Carving Letters and Words video lessons, then you are already familiar with the techniques used to carve this Thanksgiving harvest design onto a pumpkin.

Fastest Easiest Way to Transfer the Detailed Cornucopia Design

I started with a pattern that I printed onto some pattern transfer paper. You can get this special transfer pattern paper in my online shop

Then I stuck the pattern transfer paper with the printed pattern onto my pumpkin.

The transfer pattern paper then need to be dampened with a wet towel until the paper layer is saturated.

Once the transfer pattern is wet, you can peel away the paper later leaving the pattern securely stuck to the pumpkin.

Carving the Thanksgiving Pumpkin Carving of the Cornucopia Design

With you pattern is place, you can carve right through the pattern. With this cornucopia design, I carved away all of the black areas and left the skin intact on the clear areas of the pattern.

Being able to carve right through the transferred pattern makes it super easy and accurate to carve this detailed design. Without this special paper, it would be difficult and time consuming to transfer this pattern using old fashioned traditional methods.

Here is how the Thanksgiving pumpkin carving with the cornucopia pattern looked when I was done carving.

 The completed and lit Thanksgiving pumpkin carving

Here is how the Thanksgiving pumpkin with the cornucopia design looked after it was gutted and lit from inside.

Here is a closer look

You can see from the close up below how the scalloped edges were carved using two different sized u-cutters. I used the u-cutters from my 7 Piece Pro Carving Tool Set that you can get in my online shop. These tools make it fast and easy to create these scalloped edges. The smoothing of the areas where the skin was removed was done using the pumpkin carving tools in my online shop.

You can see from the close up how the scalloped edges were carved using u-cutter carving tools. I used the u-cutters from my 7 Piece Pro Set that you can get in my online shop.

Finally, here is how the completed Thanksgiving pumpkin looks when lit from inside at night.

You will notice from the photos above, that a pumpkin carved with this sort of design looks great whether it’s lit or not. And when it’s lit from inside, it’s perfect to display either during the day or at night. When you make something like this for your Thanksgiving get together, your family and friends will marvel that you created it.

Where to get the Carving Tools Used for this Thanksgiving Pumpkin Carving.

You can find the transfer pattern paper and tools that I used to carve this lovely pumpkin in my online shop.

You can get a simplified version of a cornucopia pattern in our online shop. It’s included in our Holidays and Special Occasions Pattern Set. When you order, we’ll send the patterns to you via email so that you can download, print and get started right away.

Perfect for a buffet table or an arrangement of it’s own on a side table, the soft glow from this lovely Thanksgiving pumpkin carving with a cornucopia design will add grace and beauty to any Thanksgiving gathering.