Had a great dinner tonight with great friends to the point I’m completely stuffed. Normally I would tie on some running shoes and run off my overindulgence. Alas, I’m laid up for about 7 more days – fall back plan, I’ll be skipping some meals tomorrow. Being as I’m basically just sitting around watching the Illini basketball team figured there was no reason to not be productive in some manner. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do. Oh, I know, how about showing off this year’s addition to the Halloween pumpkin collection.
This is a bit of a departure for me. Normally I tend to play in the darker side of Halloween. Ghouls, goblins, demons and other haunting topics have been the go to choice for my pumpkin slashing. Maybe I am getting soft in my new life phase north of 50. I suspect this is a natural reflex having immersed myself in all things evil for my Haunted Halloween Trail (yes, I’ll be recounting that project soon) – just a karma correcting action to keep myself grounded in sanity. Regardless, it is what it is – my latest offering is for the birds – Hummingbirds to be exact. I wanted something in the birth theme this year. Started out looking at Owls, but then stumbled on a number of nice Hummingbird outlines. It is no secret I hang out in tattoo and stenciling forums to get my creative ideas for pumpkin carving. Before I go any further, DISCLAIMER: the rights to the original templates used for my pumpkin pattern remain with the author. I am only using these for non-profit personal use. Hummingbirds are a very popular theme for tattoos. If you want to waste a day, start googling for bird tattoos and start perusing the massive number of returned hits (warning, expect nudity to be in those returned images). I had already captured a collection of nice Hummers for a project I was considering previous to this. Just went back to that collection and picked out three designs that I thought looked cool and were carve friendly. Only thing missing was a nice flower to tie it all together. Turns out there was a nice flower stencil already in that collection (came as a side decoration to one of the Hummer designs). Key was to have at least three flowers that I could align my bird designs to. Worked them up in Paint Shot Pro, positioned and flipped the birds to align with the available flowers and presto… pumpkin design.
Hit the jump to learn more details about this traditional Halloween project.
