What is on the stencil
A two-story house with a steep gable, a pointed tower on the left with an arched window, and a crooked chimney on the right. The house and the hill it stands on are gray: you shave them. The windows, the round attic window, the arched door, the full moon and the two bats are black: you cut them. The two big windows and the attic window are split into panes by crosses of shaved pumpkin, so they read as real windows.
The summary under the preview counts 17 holes and no bridges. At the default medium size it prints about 6 × 5.1 inches. This is one of the harder designs: many small cuts, and a big shaved area.
Order of work
- Poke the outline of the house, the hill and every cut-out, including both edges of each window cross.
- Cut the moon and the bats first: they are in the plain part of the pumpkin, away from anything fragile.
- Cut the door, then the window panes one by one. Leave the crosses standing.
- Score the outline of the house and the top of the hill, then shave inward, working around the windows without pressing on the crosses.
- Thin the inside wall behind the house so it glows evenly.
Tips
The window crosses are the weak point. Cut the panes with the tip of a small saw and short strokes, and if a cross breaks, the window still reads as a lit window. For more Halloween scenes with a moon, see the witch on a broom, or carve a bat on a second pumpkin.
The design on this page
| Design | Difficulty | Tones | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haunted house | Harder | Cut and shave | Thin parts, many pieces or several bridges |
All designs were drawn for this site. Every other design is one click away under All in the picker, and the pumpkin stencil maker also turns photos into stencils.