How to Carve Your Address into a Pumpkin with a Hot Knife

How to carve a foam pumpkin with your house address using a hot knife that you can place on your front steps or porch on Halloween night. 

I love pumpkins; they are one of my favorite things.   Their bright orange color is so warm and cheery.  I usually don’t carve pumpkins until the end of October to greet the Trick-or-Treaters for Halloween, but this year, I received a few foam pumpkins from Michaels to personalize.  Since they are foam pumpkins – they will last forever.

Last week, I showed you how I carved one of the pumpkins into a Pumpkin Purse.  I also carved one into a Pumpkin Candy Jar. Today I want to show you how I carved the largest pumpkin with a hot knife.

I carved my house number into the foam pumpkin and then placed it on a bed of leaves on an urn.  It is a nice way to decorate the outside of your house for the season that you will be able to reuse for years.

You can’t place a lit candle in foam pumpkins, but you can use the battery operated tea-lights or candles to add a night time glow.

How To Carve a House Address Number into a Pumpkin with a Hot Knife

supplies needed:

To find free fonts to use for the numbers, check out my favorite free fonts: Free Fonts | Free Fonts 2 | Free Fonts 3

• Foam Pumpkin
• Hot Knife – Sold at craft stores or here
• Computer printout of your address numbers.  I fit my numbers into a 6” wide and 4 1/4” tall  square.  I used the font Georgia
• Needle
• Tape

1. Create your address on your word processor and print out.  Center the number printout on the front of the pumpkin.  Secure on pumpkin with tape.

2. Use the tip of a needle to punch holes right along the outer edges of the numbers.

3. Remove the paper to reveal the outline of each number.

4. Plug in hot knife and let it get hot. It will take a few minutes.  Once heated, place the tip of the hot knife along one number to start cutting following the dotted lines.

This photo shows the angle the hot knife goes into the pumpkin.

Pumpkin Carving With a Hot Knife Tips:

The hot knife comes with a metal stand. Use masking tape to secure the stand to a protected work surface. (I tape it to a rubber mat I have on my work table.) This way it won’t move when you place the hot hot knife to rest on it.

Carefully screw in the knife blade. Do not touch the knife blade or metal parts when the knife it heated. It gets hot.

Do not apply excess pressure to the hot knife point. Let the heat from the tool do the cutting.

The tight curves in a design are the hardest to cut. If you have a piece of foam board, practice on that before you start to carve your pumpkin.

• Use long fluid motions for straight lines.
• Draw the knife out so only the tip is in the pumpkin as you go around curved areas.
• Bring the blade all the way out and place back in to cut around corners.
• Once numbers or your design is cut out, use a nail file or piece of sandpaper to smooth the cut edges on the pumpkin.

For more outdoor Fall decorating ideas, check out the Fall Ya’all Link Party over at Southern Hospitality.