

If you don’t have a specific picture of your pet you want to try and emulate, you could instead try creating a more simple or generic outline of your favorite type of animal or breed. In our step-by-step guide you’ll see how it’s done, but essentially, the clearer or simpler the picture, the better. You can be very creative when it comes to carving pet shapes into pumpkins, but those with bolder or easily definable outlines tend to work best.

What kind of pet outlines work well for pumpkin carving? You can carve all the way through to the inside, or you can carve a little more shallowly into the flesh to give different intensities of light across the pumpkin. Using a sharp knife (make sure you supervise kids at this point, or take over for tricky parts) carve the outline of the pet into the pumpkin. If you don’t have a printer, you could try freehand drawing an outline onto the pumpkin using marker pens. Next, using something sharp like a toothpick or a drawing pin, make dots around the outline of your pet’s face / body so you’ll be able to see where you need to make carvings. Transfer the outlineĪttach the picture of your pet to the pumpkin’s surface using masking tape. Print out the picture at roughly the same size as the surface area of the pumpkin.
Easy cat jack o lantern software#
A good tip is to convert it to black and white and ramp up the contrast in software such as Photoshop first, this will make it easier to see the outline when using it as a stencil. It’s best if you have a good, clear photo of your pet that you can use to create your stencil. This will give you easier access to whatever light source you place inside it too. Or, arguably a better or easier method is to create a sort of “door” at the back of the pumpkin, from which you remove the inside. You can slice the top off and scoop the flesh out from the inside, replacing the top afterwards. There’s a couple of ways to do this, depending on your preference. When looking for a pumpkin in the store (or at a pick-your-own place), then try to look for ones that have a large, flat(ish) surface area that will accommodate your outline or drawing as best as possible.
Easy cat jack o lantern how to#
How to carve your pet’s face on a pumpkinįollow our step-by-step guide to carving your pet’s face on a pumpkin: 1. Using different depths of carving when cutting out your pet’s face creates a beautiful effect. (Image credit: Instagram / tonippoochgrooming)
