Google Chrome Pumpkin

Last weekend I went up Monroe with some friends for her family’s annual pumpkin carving tradition. After the long drive out of Seattle (and past Paradise Lake, which is a great mountain biking destination) we arrived at her grandfather’s house. The day involved a hay ride at a quaint farm and hunting for pumpkins in the rain. Most of them were rotted out from the weather, but there were still some good ones to be found.

Once I found a suitable pumpkin, it was time to get carving! Being that I recently started a new job at a large dot com, I figured I would carve something appropriate. Here’s what I came up with:

The Google Chrome logo! It was carved twice as fast as the Internet Explorer and Firefox guys, who were still scooping out their pumpkins as I was finishing up. Here it is lit up in the dark:


I carved this pumpkin in a few steps:

1. Find a suitable pattern. I couldn’t find anything good on the Internet, so ended up drawing one by hand.
2. Tape the pattern to the pumpkin, then use a tack to poke through the pattern to transfer the design to the pumpkin.
3. For the first pass, use a sharp knife to cut out the edges of the pattern as a v-cut. This defines the edges of the pattern. Peel away the rest the rind and even out the depth of the inner areas.
4. For the second pass, use a spoon or scraper to shave away the areas where you want the light to shine the brightest. I didn’t actually cut any holes through the pumpkin, but still wanted areas of the pattern to be lit up.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a good SLR for these photos and just used the iPhone. Apart from these blog-friendly photos, I have some higher-resolution photos here and here.