About

About the Site

This site celebrates the modern Halloween tradition of carving jack'o'lanterns. I aim to expand the limits of jack'o'lantern art and provide resources and inspiration to Halloween enthusiasts interested in this craft. The site features an image gallery which showcases the jack'o'lantern portfolio of various artists. Where possible, each entry includes a downloadable stencil and comments about the construction of the piece to make it possible for viewers of this site to recreate their own versions. Video tutorials are also under development to help aspiring carvers get started.

About Me

As a kid, I always made those classic jack'o'lanterns with circles, triangles, and jagged curves indicating a spooky face. One year, my mother challenged me to try carving a pattern from a stencil into the pumpkin and I agreed without expecting any spectacular results. This first stencil carving was a simple image of a wolf taken from one of those books that come with carving sets. As simple as it was, I was amazed at the eerie and beautiful result and keep going outside to the porch to stare at it. As the years passed, I attempted more challenging stencils taken from websites that sell them. Eventually, I became frustrated at the limited selection of designs and slowly began to teach myself how to make my own. With more practice over the years, I’ve gained the freedom to carve any subject I fancy. Seeing a freshly-carved Jack'o'lantern light up a dark room still gives me a feeling of wonder all these years later.

Stencil Sourcing

Many of the stencils used to produce the jack'o'lanterns featured in the gallery are based on works by non-affiliated artists. While the final product is neither monetized nor a direct copy of the source it is based on, I still make every reasonable effort to credit the original artist if I can find enough information to do so.

Contributions

I welcome the chance to feature others' jack'o'lanterns in this gallery. If a viewer of this website wishes to submit a picture of one of their creations, they may send it to me via email and include the following information:

• A clear picture of the piece lit in a dark space
• A picture of the stencil used, if applicable
• Piece title
• Your name
• Date finished
• Time required to carve, in hours
• Difficulty (technical challenge, scale 1-10)
• IP (if the image depicts an existing intellectual property)
• Artist credit (if the image depicted on the carving is based on another artist's work)
• A brief description of the piece
• Tips or commentary on the carving process, if any

This information is required to fill the gallery's metadata requirements per entry.

AI Policy

No generative artificial intelligence is used in any part of the production of stencils, images, videos, or text on this website.