David A. Claerr

13 Free Pumpkin Carving Patterns for Halloween. While we can all admire the elaborately textured and layered pumpkin sculptures by the pros, real-life pumpkin carving with children (or fumble-fingered grownups) needs simpler, more forgiving patterns.

I like these simple printable stencils by David A. Claerr -- they have few fussy details to ruin with a slip of the knife. There are 13 in all, including an owl, spider, ghost, skull, two bats and some movie characters.

Right-click on the larger images you choose from the thumbnails at the site and save them to your hard drive (choose Save Image As in Firefox, Save Picture As in IE) They all print at about 6.5 inches wide; the more vertical moon and stars is eight inches tall, should you have a larger or more vertical pumpkin, while the toothy jack-o'-lantern face is about five inches tall and squatter. You can enlarge these with an image-editing program if you like. You might also want to set your printer properties to grayscale before printing so you don't use up all your yellow ink.

The instructions for each are the same:

Print out the pattern and cut out the yellow areas. Hollow out your pumpkin and trace along the inside the of the cut-outs with a pointed marker onto your pumpkin. Cut out the traced areas starting with the smallest areas first. For small round holes it is easier if you use a drill with a large bit or borer.