Get Inspired: Jack-o’-Lanterns That Are Anything but Ordinary

There is absolutely nothing wrong with triangle eyes, a triangle nose and a toothy grin. They’ve served us well for generations. But somewhere along the way, people realized that a pumpkin is essentially a large orange blank canvas, and things got considerably more interesting.

If you’re carving pumpkins this year, consider this your permission to abandon tradition. Your jack-o’-lantern can be creepy, ridiculous, elaborate, barely carved at all, or something that makes the neighbors stop on the sidewalk and stare.

Give Your Pumpkin a Personality

The funniest jack-o’-lanterns aren’t necessarily the most technically impressive. Sometimes it’s all about the expression. Move the eyes closer together, make one eyebrow dramatically higher than the other, or give it an enormous mouth with two tiny teeth.

Try making a pumpkin that looks irritated, confused, terrified or deeply suspicious of the pumpkin sitting beside it. A slightly crooked face often has considerably more personality than a perfectly symmetrical one.

Blue Cottage tip: Sketch a few different expressions on paper before you start cutting. You’ll probably get much more adventurous when you aren’t already holding the carving knife.

Use What’s Around You

This may be our favorite category. Pumpkins don’t have to be decorated with pumpkin alone.

Raid the produce drawer. Carrots can become noses or teeth, peppers can become horns, gourds can become ears, and corn husks make excellent hair. Twigs can become arms, eyebrows or antlers. Suddenly the produce department becomes a box of Mr. Potato Head parts.

The stranger the combination, the better. That slightly deranged pumpkin with an apple stuffed in its mouth? Exactly the kind of energy we’re looking for.

Make the Mouth the Main Event

Forget the little zigzag smile and carve an enormous mouth instead. Add individual teeth, give it fangs, make the mouth take up half the pumpkin or have something unexpected sticking out of it.

A huge expressive mouth also gives you plenty of room to exaggerate without requiring especially intricate carving skills. Uneven teeth are actually an advantage here. This is one project where poor dental work dramatically improves the final result.

Create a Pumpkin Eating Another Pumpkin

This one never gets old. Carve an enormous mouth into a large pumpkin and place a tiny pumpkin or gourd between its teeth. Naturally, the little pumpkin needs a terrified face.

You can take the idea even further by creating an entire scene with miniature pumpkins attempting to escape. At that point you've moved beyond jack-o’-lantern carving and into pumpkin storytelling, which we fully support.

Turn Imperfections Into Features

Found a pumpkin with a giant wart? Excellent nose. A long crooked stem can become part of a witch's face, while an odd indentation might make the perfect mouth.

A pumpkin that would never win a beauty contest may actually make the most interesting jack-o’-lantern. Instead of deciding on a design first and then searching for the perfect pumpkin, try doing the opposite. Look at the pumpkin’s weirdest feature and figure out what it wants to become.

Add Props

Jack-o’-lanterns can wear things, and once you start adding props, the possibilities get ridiculous very quickly. Try glasses, hats, wigs, bows, fake mustaches, costume jewelry or whatever else happens to be lurking in the craft drawer.

You can also group several pumpkins together and give them individual personalities. Create a pumpkin family, a band, a group of monsters or a collection of increasingly annoyed-looking neighbors. This is particularly fun when you have pumpkins in several different shapes and sizes.

Make It Weird

This is where we encourage everyone to stretch a little. Give your pumpkin three eyes. Put the mouth where the eyes should be. Carve a tiny face on an enormous pumpkin or an enormous face on a tiny one. Turn the pumpkin sideways and use the stem as a nose.

And yes, there is also the infamous jack-o’-lantern that appears to be vomiting its own seeds onto the porch. We’re not entirely sure why this continues to be funny, but it does.

Let the Pumpkin Decide

Some of the best jack-o’-lanterns begin without a template. Turn your pumpkin around and look at the stem, shape, bumps and imperfections. Tilt it sideways. Set it next to another pumpkin. Eventually, you may start to see something: a face, an animal, a monster, a grumpy old man or a pumpkin that looks strangely like your uncle.

Once you see it, go with it. The result may not look like any jack-o’-lantern you’ve carved before, and that’s exactly the point.

There Are No Jack-o’-Lantern Rules

Pumpkin carving doesn’t have to be an annual attempt to reproduce the picture printed on a stencil package. The weird pumpkins are often the ones everyone remembers, and you don’t need professional carving skills to make something creative.

So this year, make yours angry. Make it ridiculous. Give it pepper horns, crooked teeth or another pumpkin in its mouth. Use the bumps, scars and strange stems instead of trying to hide them.

Get inspired. Get weird. And give that pumpkin a personality.