Funny Face Pumpkin Carving: The Silly Stencil Trend Taking Over Pinterest

If your Pinterest feed has looked a little different this year, you are not imagining it. The classic triangle eyed jack o lantern is taking a back seat to something much sillier: pumpkins with big goofy teeth, braces, tongues sticking out, and even tiny articulated arms and legs made from toothpicks. Pumpkin carving and stencils are up 100 percent month over month in the DIY and Crafts category on Pinterest right now, and it is easy to see why. These designs are funnier, more forgiving of a wobbly hand, and honestly more fun to make than another spooky face.

I tried five of the trendiest funny face pumpkin designs myself this week, from a beginner friendly big toothed grin all the way up to a tiny pumpkin person with jointed limbs that looks like it wandered off a craft table and started walking. None of these require fancy tools or carving experience. If you can trace a stencil and wiggle a small saw, you can make every single one of these.

What You Will Need

Here is everything I used across all five projects. You likely already have some of this on hand, and the rest is inexpensive and reusable year after year.

• A pumpkin carving tool kit: small serrated saws, a poking tool, and a scoop, all sized for detail work instead of a kitchen knife. Shuttle Art pumpkin carving kit
• A sturdy metal scoop: the flimsy plastic scoop that comes in most kits struggles with a full sized pumpkin. A real metal scoop clears the inside in a fraction of the time. stainless steel pumpkin scooper
• A fine tip dry erase marker: draw your design directly onto the pumpkin skin. If you mess up, just wipe it off with a damp cloth and start again. white fine tip dry erase markers
• Pre made stencil patterns: a printable stencil pack gives you a library of faces and shapes to trace instead of freehanding every design from scratch. reusable pumpkin carving stencils
• A poke tool or thumbtack set: used to transfer a paper stencil onto the pumpkin by poking small holes along the outline before you start cutting.
• An apple corer: the easiest way to punch clean, evenly spaced round holes for a jail bar mouth or polka dot texture. stainless steel apple corer
• Flameless LED tea lights: safer than real candles, especially once kids or pets are anywhere near your finished pumpkins, and they will not cook your carving from the inside out over a few days. flameless LED tea lights
• Extra long wooden toothpicks or skewers: these become the jointed arms and legs for the pumpkin person project. 6 inch bamboo skewers
• A multi pack of small faux pumpkins and gourds: faux ones hold their shape and color for the whole season and can be reused next year, which makes them perfect for hands, feet, and small accent pieces. mini faux pumpkins and gourds set
• A canvas drop cloth or table cover: pumpkin guts are messy. Protect your table or work outside on top of this. canvas drop cloth

Project 1: The Big Grin

This is the easiest project in the bunch and the one I would start with if you have never carved a pumpkin beyond a basic face.

1. Cut a small lid around the stem, angling your knife inward so the lid does not fall through later, and scoop out the inside with your metal scoop until the walls are about an inch thick.
2. Use your dry erase marker to draw two simple oval eyes and a wide open mouth shape, low and wide like a cartoon grin.
3. Inside the mouth shape, draw four to six tall rectangles for teeth, leaving a thin strip of pumpkin skin between each one so they stay attached.
4. Carve the eyes first with your detail saw, then carve around the outside of the mouth shape, and finally cut between each tooth rectangle, removing the small triangles between them so the teeth stand out on their own.
5. Push the teeth gently outward from the inside so they angle forward slightly, giving the grin some depth and personality.
6. Drop in an LED tea light and set it somewhere it will be seen after dark. The teeth catch the light beautifully and read from across the yard.

Project 2: The Braces Mouth

This one gets the most compliments of anything I made this week, and it looks far more complicated than it actually is.

1. Carve your lid and hollow out the pumpkin the same way as Project 1.
2. Draw two round eyes and a wide rectangular mouth opening that spans most of the lower half of the face.
3. Inside the mouth rectangle, draw a row of evenly spaced small squares along the top and bottom edges, like a row of tiny teeth, leaving skin between each one.
4. Use your poke tool to mark two horizontal lines running straight across the mouth opening, one about a third of the way down and one about two thirds of the way down. These become the metal wire lines of the braces.
5. Carve the eyes and the outer mouth shape, then carefully cut along your two poked horizontal lines just deep enough to remove the top layer of skin without cutting all the way through, so the lines show up as light colored bands against the darker orange.
6. Carve the small tooth squares the same way you carved the teeth in Project 1, leaving thin strips of skin between each one.
7. Light it from inside once it gets dark. The shallow horizontal lines glow softly instead of showing as harsh cut lines, which is exactly what gives this one its braces look.

Project 3: The Tongue Out Silly Face

A goofy favorite that works well as the centerpiece of a porch display, since the tongue gives it a lot of visual weight and personality from a distance.

1. Hollow out your pumpkin as usual, keeping the walls a bit thicker than the first two projects since this design needs a sturdier base for the tongue piece.
2. Draw two simple closed, happy looking eyes (little upward curves work well) and a wide open mouth shape.
3. Inside the mouth, draw a large tongue shape hanging out and down, rounded at the bottom, with a thin line down the center for definition.
4. Carve the eyes and the mouth opening first. For the tongue, carve around its outline but do not cut it free entirely: leave the top edge attached to the pumpkin at the roof of the mouth so it can fold downward and outward instead of falling into the pumpkin.
5. Gently fold the tongue piece down and out through the mouth opening, using a bit of pressure from the inside to help it hold that curled, hanging position.
6. Add the center line detail with a shallow cut, the same shallow technique used for the braces lines in Project 2, so it glows instead of showing as a deep slit.

Project 4: The Jail Bar Mouth

Perfect if you want something a little more architectural looking without needing to freehand anything.

1. Hollow out your pumpkin and draw two simple round or oval eyes.
2. Draw a wide rectangular mouth opening, then mark five or six evenly spaced vertical lines running from the top of the rectangle to the bottom. These are your bars.
3. Instead of carving these lines as thin cuts, use your apple corer to punch a neat round hole at the top and bottom of each bar line, then connect the two holes with a straight cut down the middle. This gives each bar clean, rounded ends instead of a rough cut edge.
4. Carve out the spaces between the bars, leaving each vertical bar standing on its own, evenly spaced across the mouth opening.
5. Punch a few extra rounded holes scattered elsewhere on the face for texture, above the eyes or along the top of the pumpkin, using the same apple corer for a cohesive look.
6. Light from inside. The rounded corer holes let extra light spill through in soft dots, which contrasts nicely against the straighter jail bar lines.

Project 5: The Little Pumpkin Person

This is the showstopper, and the one directly inspired by the tiny articulated figures trending everywhere on Pinterest right now. It takes the longest of the five, but nothing about it is technically difficult.

1. Choose one small to medium pumpkin for the body and four smaller faux pumpkins or gourds in similar or complementary colors for the hands and feet.
2. Carve a simple funny face onto the body pumpkin using any of the techniques from Projects 1 through 4, a big grin or a silly tongue both work well here.
3. Using your poke tool, mark four points around the body pumpkin where the arms and legs will attach: two near the top on either side for arms, two near the bottom for legs.
4. Push one end of an extra long toothpick or skewer into each marked point on the body, angling the arm toothpicks outward and slightly down, and the leg toothpicks downward and slightly out to the sides for balance.
5. Press a small faux pumpkin onto the free end of each toothpick to form the hands and feet. Adjust the angles until the little figure can stand on its own or lean naturally against a porch step or mantel.
6. Because the limbs are faux pumpkins on toothpicks, this project displays best without a tea light inside, letting it stand as a whimsical little character rather than a lit lantern. Set it alongside your other lit pumpkins for a display that mixes glow with personality.

Tips for a Cleaner Cut

A few things I learned the hard way this week that will save you some frustration.

Work with a pumpkin that has a flat, stable base so it does not rock while you are carving. If yours is a little uneven, shave a thin slice off the bottom before you start.

Chill your dry erase marker mistakes rather than fighting them. A damp paper towel wipes the marker clean off in seconds, so there is no reason to commit to a design until you are happy with how it looks traced on the pumpkin itself.

Carve slowly around small details like teeth and bars. The detail saws in most kits are thin and can snap if you push too hard. Let the saw’s own teeth do the work instead of forcing it through.

If a piece breaks off that you wanted to keep (a tooth, a bar, part of the tongue), a toothpick works as an emergency repair pin. Push it partway into the broken piece and the other half into the pumpkin to hold it in place.

What’s Next

Once you have a whole porch full of funny faces glowing after dark, the fun does not have to stop at pumpkins. If tiny characters with personality are your favorite part of this project, you will love going even smaller with air dry and polymer clay in my clay figure ideas guide, which walks through five more beginner friendly projects in that same playful spirit. And if you want your finished pumpkins to be the centerpiece of a full evening display, my DIY Halloween luminaries post pairs beautifully alongside them for a porch that glows from every angle.

Shop the Supplies

• Pumpkin carving tool kit
• Sturdy metal scoop
• Fine tip dry erase marker
• Pre made pumpkin stencil patterns
• Poke tool or thumbtack set
• Apple corer
• Flameless LED tea lights
• Extra long wooden toothpicks
• Multi pack of small faux pumpkins and gourds
• Canvas drop cloth

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