Demon pumpkin and vampire queen bee

A KPOP Demon Hunters character was one of six winning pumpkins at a primary school pumpkin carving competition.

Pupils at Valley Road primary carved and designed about 80 pumpkins.

Headteacher Tim Coulson chose the winners, which were lit with candles for the Halloween disco at the school that evening.

The character Rumi from the Netflix film was created by Esmay Dowling, six. She said: “Her face was painted on and then we put the eyes on. We made her hair by braiding yarn.”

Brodie Montgomery, eight, created a tiger using a variety of orange fruits and vegetables.

He said: “My dad forgot to buy paint so we had to do something orange.

“We realised we had a bunch of black sharpies in the house so I said we could do a tiger.

“Dad went on Google and searched up tiger pumpkins and he found this one. We used oranges for the legs and sweet potato ears and claws. My mum was cutting leaves off the indoor tree and she cut some off and taped them on to the board.”

Grace Rogers, seven, took inspiration from a spa day she had with her mum.

She said: “I had a spa day with my mummy and then I remembered that I had a face mask on and I made my mummy and me. I painted the mask and then mum glued the towel on its head.”

Darcie Forrester, five, made Simba and Kiara from The Lion King with help from her mum.

She used red leaves to create a mane and orange pipe cleaners for whiskers.

She said: “My mum drew all of it on her phone and then she cut the lid out and then we put a candle in there and burned it and we all turned the lights off.

“My mum put the whiskers on and then teeth and then we coloured the nose in.”

Mia Mikulski, 10, who is part of the school’s eco group, carved a pumpkin to create a beehive.

She said: “I’m an
eco-warrior in this school and it really inspired me to do a beehive, because if you put a candle in it and then it’s dark it will look really cool like honey.

“My mum did the Queen Bee because it was really hard to put the toothpicks in. It is made out of a smaller pumpkin and my mum also added the crown, a toothpick behind for the stinger and gave it fangs to look like a vampire.”

Leah Welburn, eight, created a black cat out of a butternut squash with black paint, tissue paper and PVA glue. She said: “We made the ears out of some cardboard and just folded it.

“I thought black was very spooky because you can’t really see in the dark. I had aluminium foil and made the shape for the tail and put black tissue paper over.”

Mr Coulson said: “There’s such a creative number of ideas going on that choosing six is virtually impossible.

“It’s an event they really enjoy. I never check the names to keep it as fair as possible.

“I’ve been here 18 years and it was started 25 years ago by one of the teaching assistants who is still here, Karen Allen.”