It’s the age-old question. Is it better to carve your pumpkin or paint it? There are lots of considerations for each choice, but we’re here to help answer this most-pressing of questions.’ We’ll be going over all the ups and downs for both options so that you can make the decision that will work for you and your family.
Are You Carving with other Adults or with Kids?
This will be one of the primary factors you’ll want to consider when deciding whether you want to paint or carve your pumpkin. If you’re making your Jack-o-Lanterns with other adults, carving is likely the choice you’ll want to go with. It’s the classic way to celebrate Halloween, as the flickering light of candles from behind your Jack-o-Lantern’s crooked smile will create that perfect spooky ambiance.
The one downside of choosing to carve your pumpkin with kids around is that they will want to help and be a part of the fun (and rightly so). The biggest factor to consider here is that it is generally unsafe to allow kids to carve a pumpkin when they could so easily slip while holding the knife and potentially hurt themselves or others. If you still opt for the carving option even in this case, we recommend letting the kids have complete control over the drawing portion of the exercise (prior to the actual carving) and then having the adults perform the hallowed act of doing the actual carving.
Painting is generally the preferred option to decorate your Jack-o-Lantern if kids are in the mix. Any marks or colours that don’t work at first can be easily wiped away with a damp cloth or non-toxic paint remover. And it allows the kids to make their Jack-o-Lantern with their full, unbridled creativity.
How Many Jack-o-Lanterns are You Creating?
If you’ve got a high volume of orange gourds that you need to turn into spooky facsimiles of their former selves, than this is going to influence whether you choose painting over carving.
As we all well know, carving a pumpkin includes the unceremonious task of ripping out the cold, slimy insides of the pumpkin before the actual work of carving the face can begin. While this task is one that is generally reviled by some adults, kids tend to love the fun, messy nature of it all and are likely to be your eager slime-removers. This is also another way that they can help in the creation of a carved Jack-o-Lantern over a painted one. But, the problem with a high volume of pumpkins that need to be prepared is that carving them will take a lot more time to complete than just painting them.
Painting all of your pumpkins will take less time than carving, and will also be somewhat easier as it won’t involve removing all of the pumpkin’s insides. Plus, if you’ve got a cohort of children looking to help bring their Jack-o-Lantern creations to life, the work of painting multiple pumpkins will go that much faster.
What Supplies are Available to You?
If All Hallows Eve is quickly approaching and you find yourself having to create one or more Jack-o-Lanterns in quick succession, you may be limited by the tools and supplies you have around you. If you planned to paint but are without the proper painting supplies, it may be that the decision to carve will be made for you--and likewise if you find yourself with an abundance of paints but no knives suited for the purpose of carving.
If you or you family have your hearts set on one method over the other, it would be a good idea to gather what you would need ahead of time so that expectations may remain pleasantly un-dashed.