Pumpkin Decorating contest!

So, I love a lot of things about my job (I'm in marketing), but one of the things I love most is working with so many creative people. Our department has a pumpkin decorating contest every Halloween. Ours was today and it was really amazing to see what people came up with. I was blown away by the amount of thought everyone put into it.

We worked in teams, and we had 3 or 4 weeks to come up with an idea and implement it. My group decided to make little baby pumpkins into the space aliens from Toy Story. They are so cute, and the pumpkins worked pretty well. But we couldn't stop there, we had to make a claw machine to hold them. Ladies and Gentelman, I present "The Claw":

Here's a closer picture so you can see what it looks like inside:

See that 'push me' button? Well I tore apart a recordable greeting card from Hallmark and recorded the claw scene from YouTube. Then I taped most of the guts of the card underneath the control panel and just ran the button part up to the top. When you push the button it says "THE CLAW!!!! The claw is our master. It chooses who will go and who will stay."

Ours wasn't the only one inspired by a childhood favorite:

Here is the first Mario entry:

I love the blocks hanging in the air and the bomb wit little feet and a fuse. The bomb is a pumpkin as well as the flower and Mario's head. The paint bucket turned into a pipe tube is pretty genius as well.

Here is the second Mario entry:

My favorite part of this one is the score at the top. So cute!

And then there was Yoshi:

They sprayed it with something that made it all shiny after they painted it. The head and body are both pumpkins. They even had the games music playing in the background.

One more video game, Pac-Man:

The dots on the floor are made from glow in the dark clay, the game directions are on the front and the eyes on the ghosts even look 8 bit! The details are amazing. And we couldn't have Pac-Man without Mrs. Pac-Man close by:

Next up is a blast from the past, the California Raisins:

I loved these guys when I was little.


Betty Boop was there as well:

In her classic bubble bath pose, bubble machine and everything.

There was a Tiki themed entry:

It had music and look at the detail they put into the masks on the pumpkins:


The most elaborate by far was the Frankenweenie:

The body of the dog and head of each person are pumpkins while the rest of them is modeling clay. There was dry ice and a laptop playing the preview. Oh, the front section isn't a movie poster, it's hand drawn with chalk. The guy who did it even drew his name into the cred its (see the drawn by Carlose?).

Aren't they all amazing?!?! Love it!

That was just our own department's contest, today is the big corporate one, stay tuned for photos of the big pumpkin contest and costume contest. I'm pretty dang excited, first price for the costume contest is an all expense paid weekend in Vegas, so you know people will go all out!