Create Your Own Disney Halloween Pumpkins

Erin Glover

by , Director, Publicity, Walt Disney Animation Studios

One of my favorite things to do during Halloween Time at Disneyland park is to look for all of the carved pumpkins up and down Main Street, U.S.A. Have you ever wished you could create magical Halloween pumpkins of your own? David Caranci, manager of Resort Enhancement at the Disneyland Resort, has given us some not-too-spooky Halloween pumpkin-carving templates featuring some faces you may recognize!

Angry Donald Disney Halloween Pumpkin Dracula Mickey Disney Halloween Pumpkin Minnie Disney Halloween Pumpkin Scared Mickey Disney Halloween Pumpkin

David’s steps to successfully carving your Halloween pumpkin using the Disney character templates:
These instructions work for both artificial and real pumpkins.

  • Chose your Disney character template.
  • Enlarge or shrink your template to fit the size of your pumpkin.
  • Cut around the template, reducing the paper size to include only the features to be sculpted.
  • Tape or pin the template on to your pumpkin.
  • Draw over the template with a pencil, pen or store bought template tool.
  • Remove template from pumpkin.
  • You should see indentation lines on your pumpkin highlighting the features to be sculpted.
  • Using a safe pumpkin sculpting tool, slowly begin to sculpt your Disney character face.
  • As you sculpt, stop and look often to ensure eyes, nose and mouth are in proportion.
  • Remember to sculpt a hole under your pumpkin to insert a LED candle.

Comments

  • The Mickey template was more challenging than I expected. After you transfer the design to the pumpkin, try using a Dremel cutting tool instead of a knife. It made cutting the round shapes & small areas a lot easier. It turned out amazing!

  • The patterns are confusing because for most pumpkin carving patterns, a gray area indicates shaving the skin and leaving some of the rind to give a muted effect when the pumpkin is lit up. You need to watch the video in order to make sense of the patterns. The gray areas are not carved, with the exception of some thin lines for Mickey’s widow’s peak and sideburns. David forms Mickey’s and Minnie’s ears by hot glueing smaller pumpkins to the larger pumpkin. I had to make screencaps from the video to guide me while carving.

  • I tried taping the template onto the pumpkin and tracing it with a pen kind of hard so it would leave an indention on the pumpkin. When that didn’t work I just did it freehand and then I cut it out with some pretty cheap pumpkin carving tools. This was my first pumpkin carving attempt EVER! It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

  • I did it by printing out template, cutting out dark parts with x-acto knife or razor blade knife. Trace to pumpkin using a fine tip magic marker. Then cut from the center of the face out. If you cut from out to in the structure gets too soft and breakable. I followoed these tips from another Disney site.

  • I agree with Debbie…More instructions please! I saw the reply that Erin Glover posted from David. That only confused me more.

  • Love Count Dracula Mickey!

  • More instructions please

  • I have a question! 🙂 Do you carve out the dark lines and just take some skin off the pumpkin on the grey part?

    sorry new to pumpkin carving.

    • Hi Kristi – I asked David, and here’s what he said:

      “Gray parts are only to show where the face and ears line up. Once you place the ears and carve the pumpkin you can (if you want) cut away a few lines to show where Mickey’s triangular ‘side-burns’ are located. I would recommend cutting all the way through the pumpkin, but do it as an outline and keep it only 1/4” thick.”

  • Awesome! I’m definitely going to use the Scared Mickey for my jack o’lantern this year 😀

Comments are closed.