Free pumpkin carving templates and printable stencils

What is in this set of pumpkin carving templates

The stencil maker has eight original designs, drawn as SVG shapes for this site. Four are faces: Triangle grin, Moon eyes, Round surprise, and Square smile. Four are silhouettes: Friendly ghost, Flying bat, Pointy-ear cat, and Star window. Every design is marked Easy or Medium in the menu, and the four faces are the Easy ones.

These are digital templates. We have not carved them on real pumpkins, so treat each one as a starting pattern and check the paper against your own pumpkin before you cut. The dark shapes on the page are the proposed openings, and the white paper around them stands for the pumpkin shell that stays.

Pumpkin carving templates or stencils?

People search for both words, and on a pumpkin they mean nearly the same thing: a printed outline that shows where to cut. Strictly, a template is the pattern you trace or transfer, and a stencil is a sheet with the openings already cut out so you can draw or paint through it.

These files work either way. Print one at actual size and tape it on to transfer the outline as a template. Or cut the dark shapes out of the paper with scissors, hold the sheet against the pumpkin, and trace inside the holes as you would with a stencil. The second method is handy for the faces, whose openings are large and separate; for the silhouettes, transferring the outline is usually cleaner.

Pick a pumpkin stencil by pumpkin size and skill

Start with the pumpkin, not the pattern. Hold a printed copy against the side you plan to show and look at how much flat, even surface there is. A tall, narrow pumpkin suits the ghost or the cat. A wide, squat one suits the bat or the faces. The star needs room on every side of its points.

Then match the pattern to how much cutting you want to do.

• First time, or a small pumpkin: Round surprise or Triangle grin. The openings are large and the shell between them is wide.
• Comfortable with curves: Moon eyes or Square smile. Moon eyes has more curved edges to trace; Square smile has straight edges and a toothy mouth you can widen or simplify.
• More patience: Friendly ghost, Pointy-ear cat, or Star window. Each is one large shape, so keep a generous margin of shell around it.
• Most fragile: Flying bat. The wing tips are narrow, so round them off on the paper before you transfer the outline.

The cat pumpkin stencil

The Pointy-ear cat is a single sitting-cat silhouette with two pointed ears and a broad base. It is labeled Medium. The dark area is the proposed opening, so on the paper the whole cat shape is the part to remove.

Two things decide whether it works on your pumpkin. First, height: the ears need a clear area above the head, so choose a pumpkin that is a little taller than it is wide, or reduce the printed width. Second, the ear tips: they are the thinnest part of the design. Round them slightly on the paper before you transfer, and leave a wide band of shell around the whole cat so the cut edge is not close to the stem or the bottom.

If you would rather not remove a whole silhouette, you can use the printout as a drawing guide and paint the cat on instead, as described below.

No-carve ways to use a stencil, including for kids

Younger children do not need to cut anything to join in. The same printout works as a drawing guide on an uncarved pumpkin, and an adult can do any cutting separately.

• Trace and paint: tape the paper on, press along the outline with a blunt tool to leave small marks, then fill the shape with paint or a paint marker.
• Draw first: let a child draw the face on the paper copy with crayons, then choose the closest design and copy the main shapes onto the pumpkin.
• Paper pumpkin: print a design on plain paper, color the dark shapes, and tape it inside a window. This works at any width in the 100 to 190 mm range.
• Pick a favorite: print two or three designs at a small width and let each child choose before anything goes near the pumpkin.

Printing a pumpkin stencil at actual size

Set the printed width between 100 and 190 millimeters. The number is the width of the whole page, including its dashed border, not just the cut shapes. The page is about 8 percent taller than it is wide, so the default 180 mm width prints about 194 mm tall and fits both US Letter and A4 paper.

In the print dialog, choose Actual size or 100 percent. Options such as Fit or Shrink to printable area change the scale. After printing, measure the dashed border with a ruler. If it does not match the width you set, change the print scale and try again. You can also download the SVG and open it in a vector editor if you want to annotate it.

A smaller width suits a small pumpkin; the largest width suits a standard carving pumpkin. Hold the paper against the curve before you decide. A flat sheet has to bend over a round surface, so cutting a few small slits in the paper margin, away from the design, helps it lie flat.

Before anyone cuts

An adult should handle the cutting tools. Work on a stable table, keep the printout beside you as a reference, and compare the marked outline with the paper before you start. If a shape looks too small or too fragile on your pumpkin, switch to a simpler design rather than forcing the pattern.