How to Carve Video Game Characters in Your Pumpkin Lanterns
We have made ordinary lanterns with triangular eyes and a toothy grin many times in my house. We carved pumpkins, we drew pumpkins, we even made this year for some reason:
We’re ready for another challenge, so this year we’re letting my son’s passions guide us as we decide what to cut: we take inspiration from video games.
The idea came when I stumbled upon this tutorial on how to create a pumpkin lantern in Minecraft. There is no printable version of the pattern in the publication, but the instructions are simple enough that you can create one yourself. (Or you can download and print this creeper and follow its instructions.)
An important note about Minecraft lanterns: To create an authentic Minecraft look, Instructables author Dammo3 says it’s important to keep the edges sharp. Rounded corners spoil the pixel effect.
My son loves Minecraft but is now more into Pokemon and Mario, so my search for other video game inspired pumpkin lantern templates continued. Pumpkin Pile has several dozen pumpkin carving templates for video games, mostly from Minecraft, Angry Birds, and Mario, but there are several other options as well, including Pac-Man, Fortnite, and Sonic. Here are some particularly good ones:
There are also 12 impressive Star Wars templates (classic choices are Darth Vader and Yoda ). And I know that emojis don’t quite fit into the video game genre, but cutting out emojis from poop will be a kid’s favorite every time. (Right-click and select Save As, or drag and drop to your desktop to save and print.)
If you’re new to carving – or, like me, you’re just not particularly good at it – Pumpkin Pile has detailed instructions with a pushpin technique that I’ve somehow never heard of and will try this year.