Looking to carve something more exciting than the usual lopsided jack-o-lantern smile into that pumpkin you carted back from Lyman Orchards?
Tom Nardone, creator of ExtremePumpkins.com, is an expert at the staple Halloween activity. He creates innovative masterpieces using power tools, road flares, and a little elbow grease.
Nardone’s favorite pumpkin featured on his website is the “Pimple Face Booger Eater” made from a blotchy, rugged pumpkin with a turned-in face. Nardone uses expandable foam insulation as boogers that extend from the pumpkin’s nose to its mouth.
“I thought it was pure genius, but no one else seems to like it other then my friend’s three-year-old,” Nardone said.
The “Drowning in a Bag” pumpkin is just what it sounds like—a pseudo-decapitated head inside of a bag full of water secured by a rope. According to Nardone, it’s a harder one to make because the trash bags have to be extremely strong.
“It’s a 10-out-of-10 on the creepy scale,” he said.
Another clever showpiece, the Cannibal pumpkin, features a larger pumpkin eating a smaller one.
For his building blocks, Nardone likes to get the least desirable picks of the patch.
“If they’re ugly from the get-go, they have more personality,” he said.
He noted that there is an exceptional growing season this year, but the quality is posing some difficulties for his projects because he seeks pumpkins that are half-green and deformed.
For carving, Nardone uses a reciprocating saw to take off the top, a jigsaw to carve the face, and a router to take off the skin, if necessary.
As one might expect, the typical candle will not suffice in lighting Nardone’s extreme pumpkins.
“Sometimes I use a road flare, which lasts about 15 minutes, but you can see it from a mile away,” he explained. “Or I use a roll of toilet paper soaked in kerosene, which shoots out flames that are three-feet-tall, for about a half-an-hour.”
Of course, Nardone’s house is decked out displaying new and old creations.
“On the stoop I have the ‘Conjoined Twins’ pumpkin, and on one half of the front yard I have the ‘Territorial’ pumpkin, which is kind of like a snowman,” he said. “It’s three pumpkins with sticks for arms and it’s eating and destroying other pumpkins. There are some smashed at its feet and it has the face of another pumpkin in its hand. It’s pretty impressive-looking.”
Also positioned on his lawn is the “Plush Crusher,” a pumpkin with a stuffed animal in its mouth. Nardone said that he ran out of space on his own property, so he expanded his endeavors to his neighbor’s front lawn.
Nardone’s artwork has not gone unnoticed. The Fox Morning show and ABC Sports college football broadcast have featured some of his pieces, and his work will be put on the shelves in a book to be released by Penguin Publishing next fall.
His website contains advice, patterns, photos, and annual contests for the Halloween enthusiast.
Nardone currently resides in southeast Michigan with his wife and 18-month-old son. He remembers the impact that Halloween had upon him when he was younger.
“When I was a kid, this guy in my neighborhood used to wear a gorilla suit and he would hide in the bushes on Halloween and scare the heck out of you,” Nardone recalled. “I bought a house in 1994, and so then I started to scare the kids. One year my friend Matt and I worked out some cool ways to carve pumpkins and in 1999 I started a website. It was a huge hit right away.”
Nardone is the president of Isdera Corp., an online company that specializes in providing embarrassing products to customers seeking the private shopping experience offered via the Internet. Isdera’s most popular website, ShopInPrivate.com, sells drug store items ranging from toothpaste to back hair shavers. SexToyParty.com, another Isdera page, is a discreet way to buy personal pleasure items.
ExtremePumpkins.com, however, is one of Nardone’s most rewarding ventures.
“Despite the fact that Halloween is a commercial holiday, nobody really contributes to its culture,” he said. “No one wants to invent anything, and I have nothing to sell around Halloween, so I like to participate in this sort of way.”
Leave a Reply