Stencil Design
This year I wanted to carve a pumpkin inspired by the Terminator movies. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a stencil that really matched with what I had in mind.
So, I turned to ChatGPT for help and created two versions:
Variant 1: Generate a pumpkin stencil image of the terminator. I want one half to be human, and the other half cyborg
Variant 2 (based on an real image): Can you transform this image in a rather detailed pumpkin stencil?
Both results were impressive, but the first one felt more practical and instantly recognizable. I printed it at the right scale for my pumpkin and got to work.
Carving
This part turned out to be much harder than expected! The fine details required a steady hand and a lot of patience. But slowly, the design started to come to life.
The Red eye
For the iconic cyborg look, I added a red LED for the Terminator’s eye.
As you can see, I definitely need to invest in a proper soldering iron — for now, I just used plastic tape to hold things together. The LED sits inside a plastic straw, making it easy to position inside the pumpkin.
To protect the electronics from pumpkin moisture, I sealed everything in a small Ziploc bag with some silica gel.
The Result
The final result looks fantastic — I’m really proud of how it turned out!
To make the cyborg side stand out even more, I painted the right half of the pumpkin silver. The contrast really brings the design to life.
More pumpkins
If you liked this one, check out some of my other pumpkin creations — each year I try to push things a little further!
Geek stuff 