For the last couple of years, I've posted photos of our annual Breyer Halloween Horse Jack O' Lantern. This year, I thought it would be fun to look back over the ones I've done. Enjoy!
This is the guy that kicked it all off. I made it several years after he was released, but fittingly, the first Halloween Horse was my first Halloween Horse pumpkin. Still one of my favorites!
Here he is, lit up at night:
I started out just making them as decorations for our home, and I'm partial to the rearing molds, so my second one was Ichabod in 2016. Trying to carve around all those tiny skulls gave me fits! By the time I finished them, I was too tired to do much with a background, but the horse was the important part, and this is the one that made me decide to keep on making them annually.
In 2018, I took our Halloween Pumpkin to our store for the first time, and silly me, I didn't keep any closeup pictures of it... But here's Nevermore, snuggled in among some little pumpkins in front our store. She's looking back at a raven cawing at her from a spooky tree behind her. She was the first of our pumpkins that Breyer posted photos of to their social media pages... What an honor!
2019 brought another of my favorite Halloween Horses, Samhain! I picked out a big, wide pumpkin to show her off in all her big, drafty glory. It was about 22 pounds, after the guts were out of it! She got a harvest scene with a barn in the background, corn stalks, and a banner.
In 2020, Apparition was a challenge. Rather than try to carve all those tiny faces (remembering Ichabod with a shudder), I painted the horse and carved out a laughing, toothy face behind him, flanked by ghosts and bats. His pearly paint caught the light and mimicked the model pretty well.
We've just harvested this year's pumpkins and will be choosing the perfect one to become Thriller. What will it look like? Stay tuned to find out!
Want to make your own? I made a step-by-step tutorial here last year.
Have fun!