“Prepare to Be Amazed: 107 Incredible Halloween Pumpkin Carvings That Redefine Spooktacular Art!”

I recently finished this carve of Lisa Marie’s Martian imposter girl character from Mars Attacks! This was hand-carved on a 13” foam pumpkin using X-acto knives, a variety of rotary bits, and a few pointy things.

This model of foam pumpkin is one of the “Time & Place” pumpkins from Joann from a few years back as they were transitioning away from Funkins. These particular pumpkins were honestly kind of bad to carve when I first bought them. The skin would peel off really easily, which made it difficult to get tiny details of high contrast. However, a few years of sitting in my attic seems to have done the trick. These are much better now. Who knew curing foam pumpkins was a thing?

I try to carve 1-2 pumpkins as an annual tradition. This year I carved my sister’s dog Axton (left) and my dog Orvi. They both are Australian Cattle Dogs. They are carved into a 19″ and 15″ diameter Funkin brand foam pumpkin so we can put them out every year. Happy Halloween!

This was carved using various rotary bits, X-ACTO blades, and some light sandpaper. These pumpkins were from the year after Joann stopped selling Funkins and started to make their own similar style. I prefer Funkins due to their wall thickness and more natural-looking shape. These foamkins carve well, but their shape is hard to work with for portraits. Their circumference is oval-shaped, with a wider carved face on the side with the seam running right through it. I misjudged where I placed my reference photo and ended up having that seam run right through it. I think it still looks good, but the lesson is learned.

It’s the largest foamkin I’ve ever done. Minus the stem, it’s about 22” tall.
While the pumpkin shell itself was pretty thick for a foam pumpkin, the texture of this foam was pretty light, similar to Funkin’s “Natiello” models. That means because of the foam’s low density you don’t need to carve very deep to bring out the light. However, it makes it more difficult to get richer and darker shades like you would with something like a Boland model Funkin that is more dense. The foam thickness was also a little inconsistent, like thin in some spots but thicker in others. Thankfully that didn’t interfere with my design too much, but it did make it harder to get more realistic shading in places like her hands.
The whole carving took about maybe 12-16 hours over the course of a week and was carved with various rotary bits, X-ACTO knives, and other pointy things. I hope you like it!