September 26, 2024

How to Carve a Minecraft Pumpkin - [Step by Step Tutorial]

Looking for something new to light your front door for Halloween this year? We have you covered with our unique spin on the Minecraft Pumpkin! With its creepy and cool visage, this Minecraft Halloween pumpkin is sure to catch eyes and stand out.

We created a stencil to use as a guide but feel free to create something entirely your own! The key to capturing that iconic 16-bit style is by using clean straight lines. It seems like an intimidating craft at the start but it only takes a few supplies to make your own Minecraft pumpkin this year.

For this project, you’ll need the following:

K7 Carving Knife
Large Tracing Wheel
Needle Point Awl
Wood Carving Gouges
Minecraft Halloween Pumpkin Stencil*
- *Downloadable stencil

Minecraft Pumpkin Carving Tutorial

Step 1: Cut a hole in the back and scoop out the seeds and guts of the pumpkin. Use tape to hold down your stencil to see where the template fits best.

We want as much interior space as possible to add our lighting! The brighter the light, the better the details will show. Additionally, cutting a hole in the back of the pumpkin will help with maneuverability! Having access from the side is far safer for those who want to use candles in their Minecraft pumpkin.

How to Carve a Minecraft Pumpkin - [Step by Step Guide] - Excel Blades

Medium pumpkin with the Minecraft Jack O'Lantern stencil adhered onto the surface. The stencil is made up of a grid with some areas made of yellow squares to indicate a lighter carving hand.

Step 2: Mark corners of the template with an awl and use a pounce wheel to transfer the rest of your design onto the pumpkin.

Indicating the corners of the designs will give you two points to connect and will help create cleaner and clearer lines. However, the larger the pumpkin, the tougher the surface so you may need to go over the stencil a few times to mark the shapes you need to remove.

We opted to trace just the main shape on our example Minecraft Halloween pumpkin but you can run your pounce wheel over all the grid lines and mark the yellow squares to make it easier to identify the different areas when the template comes off!

A medium pumpkin with a stencil adhered to the surface, a needle point awl is piercing into the surface of the pumpkin to mark the corners of the stencil.

After using a needle point awl to mark the corners of the stencil, use a large pounce wheel (tracing wheel) to follow along the lines of the rest of the stencil.

Step 3: Use a medium duty knife like the K7 Carving Knife to start cutting into your pumpkin.

A saw tooth blade like the #27 blade is perfect for removing a large amount of material! Using a K7 Carving Knife, use a large carving gouge like the #20340 gouge (the V-shape will help you create crisp edges and lines) to work on the rest.

Tip: You only want to remove some of the pumpkin for any of areas marked with yellow blocks so use a lighter hand and go slowly. This is key to capture the 16-bit style that's central for your Minecraft Halloween pumpkin!

The surface of the medium example pumpkin with the marks made from the pounce wheel (tracing wheel). Added on top of the awl markings is a faint opacity dotted line to better indicate where the lines of the stencils were created.

A pumpkin in the middle of being carved with an Excel Blades K7 Carving Knife with a V-shaped wood carving gouge. The depth of the pumpkin is about an inch and a half and the main shape has been removed completely. The areas marked in yellow on the stencil have a thin layer of pumpkin remaining, the carving only goes about half an inch in depth.

Step 4: Light your Minecraft pumpkin up!

You always can use a classic votive or tea light to light your Minecraft Halloween pumpkin, but for maximum effect we recommend string lights or LED lights. The different opacities from leaving a thin layer instead of carving it all out gives your Minecraft pumpkin more interesting details and textures.

The finished carved pumpkin / Minecraft Jack O'Lantern lit up with string lights. The pumpkin is sitting in the dark so the luminosity can capture the way the half carved areas create shadows.

A close up of the carved pumpkin / Minecraft Jack O'Lantern. A majority of the face has been carved all the way through but some areas have a thin layer of the gourd left to create different shadows and different colors due to the uneven opacities.

Now you can leave your Minecraft Jack O’Lantern outside all spooky season long without worry that it’ll go dark. Whether you’re a first time carver or experienced hand at creating Jack O'Lanterns, Excel Blades has curated everything you might need for your projects in our Pumpkin Carving Collection.

Are you planning to make your own Minecraft Halloween pumpkin / Minecraft Jack O'Lantern? Tag us on Instagram or Pinterest @excelblades, we’d love to see your take on this classic Halloween decoration staple!