Man! October just flew by me this year! I got a late start on planning a Beethr'o'Lantern, and just couldn't make it happen this time around. Partially because of all the life-y stuff I've been dealing with, but mostly because I've been frozen in place by the chilling gaze of... The Aumtlich!
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1. The original plan was to do a pumpkin "
sculpting,"
like those seen at pumpkingutter.com , but because of certain attributes of my pumpkin (see point 2), it wasn't possible. So I stuck with the traditional carving.
2. I attempted this year's Lantern using one of those craft store fake pumpkins. It's like a very brittle Styrofoam, hollow, painted to look like a pumpkin. They look almost like real pumpkins from a fair distance, and I figured since it was a lot lighter, it might be easier to work with. It isn't. It's pretty tough to cut through with my pumpkin jigsaws, and the wall of these things is only about a quarter-inch, so when I do saw, any loose bits of pattern need to be held in place so I don't punch them through the pumpkin. Also, the insides are a pale yellow, and not orange, so it doesn't exactly glow the way I'd like it to. The only advantages to these I've found is that because of their light weight and strength, you can have large portions of the pattern supported by a few delicate lines, and it won't cave in. In addition, it's permanent, no pumpkin rot. All in all, though, I'm disappointed with them, and will return to real veggies next year.
3. I'm kinda fond of this pumpkin design though, because even if there were no such thing as DROD (Jeebus forbid), the Aumtlich is still creepy enough to sit on the front porch for Halloween.
4. I've shown some of my previous designs to others outside this forum, and I was asked to do two other pumpkins this year. One for my job at the pet store, and one for my boss to take to his 2nd job. I'll link to those here:
Petco
The King
/dy
.
