Carve a foam pumpkin you can pick it up at any craft
store.
There nice to have because you can reuse them every year.
You don't have to get rid of them.
If there's one that you did that you love, we don't have
to throw it out okay we can keep it.
For the kids, cause we have a two year old now,
she doesn't know how to carve yet but she can pick out her
own eyes, her own nose, her own mouth.
So you can put a bunch on table, you can have your kids
pick up any eyes they want.
They can put them on, you can trace them, and then you
can cut them out.
They own it.
And they feel like its there pumpkin.
Correct.
A lot of people use different knives at the house.
The best that I have is a box cutter.
It actually cuts really.
For a foam pumpkin its a smoother cut and its easier.
Its much stronger than those little pumpkin knives that
you get from the grocery stores.
Yep.
Like that one yeah.
These are much tougher.
This is tougher.
These are good to use for like the detailed work exactly.
And the good thing about using the fake pumpkins is that
you don't have a big mess.
Can I show them some of these?
Yeah!
This would be our product of the finished pumpkin that we
just carved.
These are amazing! And then how are we gonna illuminate
them?
So you can take one and your gonna crack that and shake it
up.
Glowstick!!!
You can throw it in there.
Woo!!
(laughter and clapping)
And the nice thing about this is that you can put whatever
color you want.
Mine fell out.
(clapping)
You can change it.
What are you gonna show us?
All right, so I came up with this idea.
I wanted my house to really look like a haunted house.
So I mean looking at a haunted house, what's the first thing
you'll see?
The boards on the windows.
This is what I did.
I went to my local hardware store and I picked up insulation
foam.
The pink or the blue stuff.
Which is what we have right here.
That's this stuff.
Okay. Right here.
Super cheap and cheerful. And it'll keep you warm in a
pinch. (laughter)
Exactly.
Now you can get thinner stuff. It doesn't have to be this
thick. It can be a little thinner.
No it looks good thick. Get the thick stuff.
But it does, it does look good.
All right so now what I did here was we painted it a base
color. What were gonna do is, were gonna do a dry brush
technique.
So were gonna go with some grays and some lighter colors
right now.
And were gonna actually create the affect of wood grain.
So the best brush to use would be this.
Its a dragon. Its called a dragon brush.
(Growls)
So this is what were gonna do.
Kay.
We'll go to a medium tone, like a gray and we'll slowly
drag it across.
Like you drag bodies through the dirt.
(laughter)
Exactly.
Well were gonna put more on. Were gonna put more on.
(both laughing)
Now by wiggling it, when you wiggle the brush that's also
gonna help create the wood graining affect.
Now were gonna actually dip with another color, were gonna
use the same brush.
Oh the same brush. I wanna do something!
Perfect. Perfect.
A little bit right?
Bring it from this side.
A little wiggly.
A little bit.
A little wiggly.
Yeah a little bit.
Right. It a one hour show Joe! (laughter)
Now what were gonna do is were gonna dry brush real
quick over. Just gonna blend some of this together.
I got a good hold on it sucker.
(laughter)
All right there we go. Wait! One more thing!
What?
One more thing we forgot. Nail heads.
Oh just the nails cause your not gonna make holes in the
side of your house.
Exactly, yeah your not gonna do that.
So your just gonna do a couple of nail heads over here.
As though if it was put in. Now its wet so when we put it on
just grab the edges.
And then we stick it on the doodad.
Right there like that.
(crowd cheering and clapping)
There you go.
So here were gonna start with a portrait and what were
gonna do, this is my dad as you notice from the intro,
I wanna include him because this is really his tip.
Were gonna make his eyes follow you using and optical
illusion.
Its really really simple and I believe all of you folks
can do this at home.
Okay.
So what were gonna start by doing is were gonna cut out
the eyes right here.
Okay.
And I actually have a precut, the eyes are gone here.
Were gonna cut a ping pong ball in half.
Okay.
And were gonna use the ping pong ball for eyes.
What do we cut it with?
So were gonna take this exacto knife right here.
Okay.
Any knife can do. You can even use a kitchen knife if
you have one.
Not my kitchen knife. You use the exacto knife.
I have a Rachel Ray kitchen set.
Aww thank you!
So were gonna cut this real quick.
Now you always wanna cut away from you of course because
you don't want to hurt yourself.
Right.
Once you get about three quarters of the way done you can
just stop and it will snap open on its own.
Gotcha.
Like so.
Now you got two eye balls and you'll notice that they are
concave on the inside. This is going to be what creates our
illusion.
Okay.
Now my eyes are green and my dads eyes are also green so
were gonna use this green marker.
But if you wanna go for a demonic affect you can use a red
marker.
Alright so now we got some green for the iris and were gonna
use the pupil its gonna be black.
Kay.
So were gonna put that in there.
Were doing dads other eyeball.
Yeah thank you Rachel. Were just gonna put the eyeballs
right here and tape them on.
Tape them on, I can handle tape.
Or not soo much! (crowds laughing)
Or you can put it in a frame like this.
Doesn't it look good!
(clapping and cheering)