Felix the Cat Pumpkin

Thought that I would share how I carve my Halloween pumpkins. From start to finish this took a little over 2 hours.

Pictures are taken with either my Sony Cyber-Shot 7.2mp or iPhone. I kept switching for some reason :)

Here are the tools I use: chisels, flat-tip screwdrivers, sharpie, and my awesome X-acto knife kit.

Draw your image. I use coloring book pages and found this one by Googling "felix the cat socialist." Just kidding, that's only half true. Felix is an older fella, he's cute and I figured he may offer some nostalgia...

The black marks represent portions that will stay. That includes the lines of the eyes. The body will remain in tact, I just didn't bother to finish coloring it in black since it is cleaner to color it in at the end. I use my sharpie, although I'm sure paint would work so long as you are careful. Sharpie will only stick to the pumpkin skin.

I cut the top off of the pumpkin at an angle (see the knife) so when I replace the top it will not fall through, even if the pumpkin shrinks a little bit. Also, I keep the hole bigger towards the back of the pumpkin so that I have more room for my image at the front.

Now, clean your pumpkin.

Now cut around the areas you want removed with the x-acto.

You can see where I've already cut and removed some of the tongue. Here I am cutting around the eye area.

Now use either a chisel or screwdriver to peel off the skin. I am using a screwdriver since this was the smallest tool I had, the chisels were 1/4" or 1/8" which were too large for this area.

I needed to add a border around Felix so his body would really pop out. After continuing on, I realize one foot is bigger than the other. Re-cut it with the smaller x-acto and am peeling it off with another x-acto here:

Better :)

Almost finished. It needs to be cleaned - dirt, leftover skin removed, and evened out - then sealed. I normally use Vaseline, but WD-40 works. You need to do this because the skin will dry out and shrivel, distorting especially the fine lines.

And now it is finished :), kind of. You need to put a candle in it to see how much needs to be shaven off. The walls are probably too thick for the light to shine through. In the beginning you can just scrape the inside of the pumpkin where the image is. Then you can start putting a candle in and shave in the areas you need to (remove the candle first :P).

I'll take a picture of it lit up tomorrow night for Halloween.

<3