Well, hello my morbid Mutterings!
Welcome to the very first Mutter Crafternoon. I am your demented den
mother, also known as the Curator, Anna Dhody, and I am here today to tell
you how to make a wet specimen pumpkin. Now, what you're going to need for this
is very simple. First of all, a pumpkin. And I cannot stress this strongly enough, you need
a pumpkin that will fit into your jar. So you need a jar. A Sharpie to draw the face that you shall
carve. I guess if you're really bougie, you can use a stencil and go all out, but that is not our
vibe. So you are going to need to get your pumpkin and make a little face on it like that. You
will also need your wet specimen fluid. Now I have been told by HR that I am not allowed
to condone the use of formalin by civilians, so we have an alternate, and that is apple
cider vinegar and a little water that should give you the desired murkiness that you need
for this endeavor. I'd like to stress that our wet specimens are always clear and murk-free! Now,
what you're going to do first is open up your jar, take your pumpkin, and through the miracle of
television, you're going to instantaneously turn that pumpkin into a
wonderfully carved jack-o'-lantern. See what I did there? Yes. Now what you're
going to do next is put your jack-o'-lantern very carefully--probably a good idea to do it
in two stages--very carefully into your bowl like so. And then figure out--there we go. So... Voila! Now this is interesting. This is where
we're going to have a little physics lesson. I'm going to pour the fluid in there and we're going
to see if this actually floats. If it does float, we are going to show you a little
tactic to keep it from floating. So first thing, let's add some vinegar. Now,
again, this is completely to your discretion as to how murky you want it. I guess you could
also use water and food coloring if you wanted to tint it green or something like that. It's
really your choice, but keep in mind that one thing that I definitely want to stress is
when you do the vinegar and water solution, it looks great, but your pumpkin is only
going to last about a day or two before it gets moldy and even more icky, although that
might be what you're going for. So here we go... Mmm... I'm gonna go about here first. You
might notice you'll see some sediment rising, that's totally fine, it'll settle. Again,
also adds to the vibe. Here's some water. Now the key is, of course, just like any good
wet specimen, you need to cover it completely. Oh, this is looking great. That's good enough.
Aha! See what I noticed? All right, it is floating, which is totally fine. Now
what we're going to do is, we've got some jars right here, and what we're going to do is
fill the jars with the fluid, weigh them down, and then hopefully that'll work. If not,
we're going to edit this in post-production. This is why you should never craft on live TV... unless you Martha Stewart, I guess. So, this
goes in like so. That work? Hey, it worked! Okay, it didn't work. Everything's fine! How
come it kind--I got the--uh! This is jarring. Oh, got it. Hey! Look at that. Okay, it's kind of
working to keep it down, the buoyancy down. I just have to remember
which... there we go, okay. That looks good. Oh, it's warm. Nancy
told me she got some warm water. It's somewhat keeping it down. You probably would also want to skim this off the top,
you know, unless you like that kind of authentic sediment, which is in keeping with a wet specimen
you would actually have. But this should settle. Now, as you can see, I have completely and
totally competently, with very little effort, managed to get this wonderful pumpkin,
now a jack-o'-lantern, in the jar. It went absolutely, completely smoothly. So here you have your wet specimen pumpkin. Here
are a few things you can do with it. So like I said, you can do different colored fluid in the
water with dyes. One thing you could also do is take another one of these jars that have a tight
fitting lid and put some string lights in it, some battery-operated string lights, put
that in the jar, and then put the jar into the pumpkin. Another thing I just realized we
probably could have done was put a hole at the bottom of the pumpkin so we wouldn't have to
worry about the buoyancy. Lessons learned. Anyway, keep in mind, like I said, when using
the vinegar you're going to get this wonderful murky color, but it's not going to last very
long. So you want to actually do this maybe the day or maybe the day ahead of when you plan
to show it. You could also, I guess, keep it in the refrigerator. That might inhibit some of the
decomposition that'll happen, but always make sure to keep it front and center in the fridge, and do
not tell your family that you're doing that for the added Halloween surprise. So, another thing we
would love you to do is, if you decide to make a wet specimen pumpkin, please, please, please let
us know. Tag us on social media--you can find all of our links and information below. Maybe use some
of the below hashtags. That would be great! Let's start a trend. #WetSpecimenPumpkins. Show us your
variations, have some fun with it, frighten and disturb your family. Make your whole house smell
like vinegar. Oh, it's not leaking. Everything's fine! So, until next time, whenever that is, enjoy
this very wonderful first Mutter Crafternoon. I'm Anna Dhody, hoping you stay
disturbingly and creatively informed!
