Last week I was invited to California by Walt Disney Studios (Disclosure: The Trip was All Expenses Paid). While I was in California last week I had the unique and incredible experience of learning how to carve pumpkins from a Master Pumpkin Carver, Joseph Yakovetic. This was part of a celebration for the launch of Finding Dory on Bluray (November 15) and Digital HD (Today!). I was particularly excited for this part of the trip because Andrew’s birthday party theme is Finding Dory. I’ve been going crazy raiding the dollar spot at Target to get items for the gift bags for the guests. If the kids weren’t four and five year-olds I may have thought to do Finding Dory pumpkins like the one I did on the trip, but I don’t think anyone at the house has the patience to do that.

Carving the Finding Dory pumpkin was really fun. We got to the Walt Disney Studios Lot and went to an Atrium in one of the buildings. There were perfect looking pumpkins set up on each table. There were also pieces of graphite paper, a Finding Dory stencil, Finding Dory tablecloths and plates to keep things clean and for color reference. Then there were packs of tools for each person to use for tracing, carving and painting. On top of that there were some really nice gift bags and stuffed animals from the movie. I was lucky enough to get a Dory one for Andrew. He’s going to love it.

Joseph gave us great tips on how to prepare a pumpkin for carving. He also gave us tips for keeping pumpkins in great shape longer. I never knew that you shouldn’t cut the top off the pumpkin because the stem keeps the pumpkin alive a little longer. Instead you should cut the back of the pumpkin and use a CD to scrape out the insides. I would never have thought of using a CD but it is strong enough to do the scraping and it is curved for the curved inside of a pumpkin. He had his scraped out in no time at all.

Learning how to carve these pumpkins was very useful and I am not as intimidated to try something new the next time I have to make a pumpkin for Halloween. First I pinned the graphite paper and the Finding Dory template onto the pumpkin. It can be a little difficult because a pumpkin is not smooth and so often when you are tracing the template you will hit the ridges. Don’t worry too much about it. I was getting frustrated with myself and was sure that my overall image was not going to look anything like Dory when I was done. I was wrong, it came out pretty decent.

Once the template was traced onto the pumpkin then you go over it with permanent marker. The marker will get gunked up by the graphite but you simply have to rub the sides of the marker on paper to clean it off and then keep going. When you are finished then take a cleaning wipe and clean off all the remaining graphite. This will not take off the marker, you will need some rubbing alcohol to do that. When the template is on and in marker it is time to do some painting.

You won’t need a lot of paint because what we are looking for is a thin layer of paint because light will be shining through the pumpkin and if the paint it too thick then it won’t work very well. After painting came time to carve a bit of the pumpkin. I carved an outline around Dory and then carved out the eyes and the teeth. In the end I think I did a pretty good job with mine. Here is the finished pumpkin.

And the coolest part of this whole experience was that Disney Shipped The Pumpkins Home To Us!

I may not be making pumpkins with the kids for Halloween but the activity pages below have some other great ideas that we can use to have fun. We can use the print outs to make Finding Dory luminaries and even Finding Dory themed treat bags. I may have to print out packets to send home with each of the kids at the party. You can download the activity pages by clicking the image below.

Today you can get your own copy of Finding Dory on Digital through Disney Movies Anywhere or if you would like to wait for a physical Bluray then you can get it on November 15.