2025 Breyer Halloween Horse Pumpkin

Happy Spooky Season!  It's an annual tradition here to paint and/or carve a pumpkin in tribute to the current Breyer Halloween Horse.  It's always one of my favorite projects of the year.  2025 was a challenge, though.... I am seriously arachnophobic.  I didn't like having even a photo of Arachne on my desk, let alone carving or painting her, but I pushed through.  She managed to jump-scare me at least twice that I'll admit to.

I'm a bit disappointed that her design wraps around enough that we can't capture it all in one single photo, but she is depicted hanging from her intricate web, with the words from the Halloween song "Boris The Spider" along the web edge and under her name... "Creepy... crawly... creepy... crawly... creepy-creepy, crawly-crawly...."

This year, for the very first time, I added something to the pumpkin... It seems Arachne, being a magical sort of spider-horse, has trapped three unicorns!  Three Mini Whinnies unicorns are wrapped up in threads and dangle from different parts of her web.  Each hangs from a single thread, so they seem to wiggle in the breeze when people walk past.  Creepy crawly indeed!

Here are some photos of the creation of this year's pumpkin:

We started with a 20.8-pound (9.4kg) beauty.

Next came the collage of images to create the design, which I put on via carbon transfer:

Then, the painting begins, with pearly paint for that Arachne shimmer:

Then, finally, with her web and shadowing carved, I added the unfortunate unicorns.

And, here we have our 2025 Breyer Halloween Horse Pumpkin display to greet visitors!  She hangs ominously over a model hearse created by Curt Anderson, complete with a coffin inside.  Maybe it's for the Mini Whinnies? Mwuhahahahahaa!

Now that I survived the spider pumpkin, I have a second beautiful gourd just begging for a design.  I may reward myself with a nice Breyer Tabitha tribute!

~~~

And now, my plea to Breyer: 

This is the fifth Halloween model with a spider theme to date:  Merry Widow, Stablemate version Merry Widow, Eek!, Stablemate version Eek!, and Arachne.  Please, can we let that motif go for a while?  I like to enjoy the Halloween Horses in our store display, and get creative with the annual pumpkin.  I think spiders have pretty much been done at this point.  And, okay, I just don't like looking at them.  Please? Thanks a bunch.  :-))