A professional pumpkin carver who brings “terrifying people” like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to life has said his Halloween side hustle makes him thousands a year for two weeks’ work.
Jamie Jones, 41, who lives in Chester with his wife, Gemma, 39, and their two daughters, Penny, six, and Alice, eight, discovered his passion for pumpkin carving at age 30, honing his skill by practising on 30 to 40 pumpkins each year “until his fingers bled”.
Rather than cutting shapes out of the pumpkins, Jamie uses a unique shading technique, shaving layers off the pumpkin’s surface to create a three-dimensional effect.
After winning a pumpkin carving competition at York Maze in 2018, and winning £300, he launched his carving business, Pumpkin Freak, in 2019, creating commissions including logos for big-name brands such as Warner Brothers.
Each October Jamie takes two weeks of annual leave from his full-time job as an events and media sales manager to craft around 75 pumpkins – with designs featuring horror icons like Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, the Terrifier and even notorious figures such as Jeffrey Dahmer.
His business’ annual turnover is between £10,000 to £20,000 with £4,500 covering costs and £5,000 going to him this year, which is the first time he has taken a cut – because of this, he has been able to cover the costs of his Christmas.
Jamie told PA Real Life: “This year I wanted to practise carving a face and, quite frankly, I found them both, Putin and Trump, terrifying people so I thought ‘I’m going to stick them on a pumpkin’.
“It was a bit of a trend a couple of years ago, the Trump-kin, so when I realised he was running again this year, I thought: ‘This is the year’.
“My main goal, though, is for this not to feel like a chore and a job.
“Moving forward I want to do fewer commissions but higher value ones that I can get passionate about and put a lot of effort into, instead of just churning out company logos.”
Jamie has always “been into drawing and painting” but he didn’t discover his love for pumpkin carving until he was 30.
While hosting a family Halloween party, he decided to carve a few pumpkins for decoration and was instantly captivated, quickly realising “how creative you can be”.
Over the years, Jamie’s designs have grown more intricate, inspired by the American TV show Halloween Wars – where teams of cake sculptors, sugar artists, and pumpkin carvers compete to create the ultimate Halloween displays.
He explained: “I start with a stencil from something I’ve drawn or an image.
“I’ll print that out and use transfer paper or draw over it, and then the tools I’m using are lino cutters primarily in a few different sizes and hand wood carving chisels, and micro chisels, which have very fine points.
“And then the principle behind it is quite a simple one – you’re not cutting all the way through the pumpkin, you’re just shaving to different depths.
“So the brighter areas are cut deeper into the pumpkin, and I often use cross hatching to scrape away at the pumpkin, and it’s all about going slowly.”
To practise, Jamie would carve 30 to 40 pumpkins each year, “until his fingers bled”.
In 2018, a friend asked him to carve a pumpkin with his company’s logo for £50, sparking the idea to turn his passion into a business.
That same year, Jamie won a pumpkin carving competition at York Maze, where he carved Beetlejuice onto a pumpkin, receiving £300.
He used this prize to launch his business, Pumpkin Freak, in 2019, creating a website to promote his work.
Within the business’s first year, Jamie was “amazed” to partner with brands like Warner Brothers and Pets at Home, carving pumpkins with their logos for them to use at events and on their social media pages.
Since 2019, he has taken two weeks of annual leave every October to focus on carving, with his colleagues and loved ones being “very supportive”.
Jamie said: “My wife is suffering – I couldn’t do it without her, because they take so long to carve, she has to pick up more childcare.
“My kids are a bit numb to it, they’ve grown up with it happening every year so I think they thought everyone was this crazy about pumpkins!”
He now sells around 75 pumpkins each season, which he gets gifted from a local farm.
His business’ annual turnover is between £10,000 to £20,000, and he has previously put some money back into the business – this year £4,500 has gone towards covering costs such as hiring people to help him carve, and £5,000 has gone to him.
He said: “I can pay for Christmas with that, which is amazing, and I always said if I could pay for Christmas by carving a few pumpkins then I’ll be happy.”
Jamie has also recruited four other carvers, who he met through a Facebook group for carving enthusiasts, as designs can take between seven and 27 hours to complete, depending on complexity.
To date, his favourite carvings include Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT, and this year, he has created pumpkins featuring political figures like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
“I’ve done Pennywise four times now; I started in 2016 and I’ve done one this year so looking at the progression of all four of those, the improvement year on year has been quite satisfying for me,” he explained.
“I’ve also been practising portraits a lot this year – I’m fairly pleased with the Penguin one that I did, and also the Putin one was okay.
“I was really unhappy with the Trump one that I did; I think it looked like a weird hybrid of Trump and Kim Jong Un, so that’s probably my least favourite, I definitely want to get better at that.”
His creations receive a lot of praise online, and he displays around eight pumpkins on his front lawn, attracting locals who often stop to take photos.
For those wanting to try their hand at pumpkin carving, Jamie recommends a lino cutter for detailed work, and said “the most important thing is patience”.
To preserve his pumpkins, he washes them in a water and bleach solution; once they begin to rot, he leaves them at the bottom of his garden for local wildlife to enjoy, setting out the seeds for squirrels.
To find out more about Jamie’s creations, visit: www.instagram.com/pumpkinfreakart and www.pumpkinfreak.co.uk.
