If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): geeky pumpkins

Although I think using a pumpkin carving 'stencil' or 'pattern' is cheating, it's what most people use these days if they want a better-than-ordinary jack-o-lantern sitting on their front porch. Before I share with you links for pumpkin-carving stencils and patterns, I first want to share with you some of my most interesting posts on cool pumpkins from years past.

The Sculpted Pumpkins of Scott Cummins

Pumpkin Carving Grows Even Geekier

The Amazing Pumpkins by Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

One of the more popular this year are the AKC Dog Breed stencils featured on the Better Homes & Garden site. But rather than show you those formal images, the photo outtakes from the shoot are far more fun to look at:

Printable and download-able pumpkin carving stencils and patterns:

Zombie Pumpkins Stencils

Patterns from Pumpkin Lady

Better Homes & Gardens large selection of pumpkin stencils

More free carving stencils and patterns

For you dog lovers, here's a bunch of breed stencils

Now, you have no excuses for a lame pumpkin, Get carving!

Above, clockwise from upper left: nerd pumpkins include a nod to Mac OS, Mario of Mario Brothers video games, The Pi symbol, and a Space Invader from the video game of the same name.

All Hallow's Eve (aka Halloween) always brings out the geek in everyone, especially when it comes to carving pumpkins. Being a geek myself, I carve my pumpkins each year in the shape of my dog (without a stencil), and turn them into Halloween cards, two of which are shown below.

More and more carving pumpkins seem to be inspired by technology and sci-fi. Each year tons of pictures are uploaded to flickr, sent to Wired magazine and blogged about by tech nerds everywhere.

Below is an impressive collection 'Star Wars' inspired pumpkins from 2007 (you really should click on the image to enlarge it):

And , of course, the Death Star pumpkin:

Wanna carve your own death star pumpkin? here's a tutorial for you.

I was sent a round up of carved jack o' lanterns that would appeal to the tech set, sci-fans or just plain 'geeks' from reader Eran Abramson that are worth taking a peek at. It's clear he found several from last year's WIRED magazines "show us your geeky pumpkins" contest (which, by the way, received over 2000 entries).

Why people are carving internet browsers and feed reader icons into pumpkins, I'll never know, but they clearly are:

Above: RSS, internet explorer logo and firefox logo's carved into pumpkins

Wanna see more? Read the full post of Eran's 34 Geeky Pumpkins here.

Like carving pumpkins? check out these ongoing carving pumpkin contests:

Yanko Design and Lubix: