Nothing screams ‘seasonal fun’ louder than cutting open vegetables and removing their insides, right? If you want creepy, we’ve got it. In this blog, we’ve pulled together 10 frightfully scary Halloween pumpkin ideas to show off your carving skills.
Carving pumpkins has long been a highlight of the spooky season, but the classic toothy smiles and triangular noses have been done time and time again. So, in recent years, pumpkin carving enthusiasts have been shaking things up a bit with some pretty gruesome designs.
Whether you’re hosting a carving competition, planning a themed party, or simply want to showcase your creative skills, we’ve gathered some easy Halloween pumpkin carving ideas to inspire your next creation. So, sharpen your tools and bring your horror-filled imagination to life with these fright-inducing designs.
1. Hyper realistic zombie brains
Starting off strong, our first gruesome pumpkin uses a clever carving technique to mimic the effect of exposed brains. How delightful. The jagged detailing around the lid gives it a shattered effect and additional materials have been added (like red food coloring on the brain) to heighten the hyperrealism here.
To achieve this design, you’ll need to be dexterous with your carving tools to make sure you scrape away enough flesh around the lid without piercing through and ruining the brain look.
2: Terrifying toothpick teeth
Next on our list, we have a sharp-toothed pumpkin with rows and rows of gnashers to scare the trick-or-treaters away! Although this design requires some additional (low-cost) supplies, the carving is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is carve two holes for the eyes and a large slit for the mouth before filling it with toothpicks at a variety of angles. Once you pop your tealight in, the shadows cast by the toothpicks will extend the eeriness of this pumpkin even further.
3. Gory gaping mouth
One of the challenges of carving a pumpkin is making it look like something else — in shape, size, and texture. In this style, the carver has succeeded in experimenting with visual illusions to make the pumpkin look like it has a gaping mouth oozing with saliva. Sometimes, the scariest pumpkins are the most off-putting, and this design certainly meets that brief. No one wants to be making this into a pumpkin pie any time soon.
4. Wicked witch
If you’ve got about 5 hours to spare, why not try your hand at this grimacing wicked witch design? The outer skin of the pumpkin has been shredded and styled, here, to make hair, while the inner flesh has been carefully shaped into a witch’s face — complete with a warty nose and deep wrinkles. We’d totally forgive you if you couldn’t tell that this one was a pumpkin at first.
5. Bloating and bruising
Imagine if a special effects artist became a pumpkin carver — well here’s the outcome. In this design, makeup, paint, and additional props have been used to create the effect of bloating and bruising for a scary zombie pumpkin. The use of purple shading around the eyes and scars is extremely effective, but our favorite part is undoubtedly the fake hand sticking out of the mouth. Very zombie chic.
6. Behind the mask
In this design, the carver has really thought outside of the box (or, rather, the pumpkin) to make the terrifying effect of a face being removed to reveal the anatomy within. Slicing off the front of the pumpkin’s ‘happy’ mask to show the flesh, eyes, and teeth is hugely effective and extremely unnerving, but pretty simple (if you can get your hands on a pair of eyes that is).
7. Menacing megalodon
As Jaws has taught us, there are few things scarier to the public imagination than a shark. But we think this shark pumpkin might just take the cookie. If you’ve got some time on your hands, this complex layered design is sure to win any pumpkin carving competition with rows upon rows of menacing teeth.
Simply cut out the layered slits for the mouth and then re-use the outer skin by cutting it up into fang-shaped pieces. Remember those toothpicks we mentioned earlier? These could be helpful again here for re-attaching the teeth into the gums to achieve the final look. And for the eyes? Any buttons or candy you have will work fine.
8. Surgery gone wrong…
If you’re not a fan of needles, this isn’t the pumpkin for you. This design cleverly uses string to ‘sew’ the pumpkin’s eyes and mouth up to make it look like a surgeon’s worst nightmare. While a bit fiddly to execute, this carving style is super effective and is sure to keep your porch free from trick-or-treaters — especially when the candle is lit inside and shadows are cast through the sewn holes.
9. Eye explosion
This one might be the worst one yet — and by that, we mean the best. This exploding eye pumpkin is definitely a sight for sore eyes and cleverly re-uses the flesh from the inside the pumpkin to create a nasty eye wound.
Simply carve two circles for eyes and shape some of the hard inner flesh into a sphere for one of them (this will be your eyeball). In this design, the carver has added red veins and a black dot to make it even more realistic. As for the exploding eye, the level of gore is up to you — you could even get creative with some food coloring or pomegranate seeds here…
10. Creepy cannibals
Finishing off our list, this design reveals what happens when pumpkins turn against their own kind in a creepy display of vegetable cannibalism. For this, you’ll need a large and a small pumpkin and a lot of imagination. A bit like a Renaissance painter capturing raw human emotion in a battlefield tableau, you’ll need to translate fear and terror into the face of your smallest pumpkin while it’s being eaten alive in the sharp teeth of the other pumpkin. Good luck with this one!
Pumpkin decor at Displate
Are all these pumpkins making you want to fully commit to your Halloween decor this year? Displate can help you add the finishing touches to your spooky interior design. Choose from an impressive collection of Halloween metal posters with every niche imaginable — from scary movies and ghosts to spooky merch and haunted houses.
And, in the meantime, be sure to keep up with the Displate blog for more design inspiration.
