Karrah Youngblood has had far more than the cliched “15 minutes of fame.” In fact, she’s not only had more than 15 minutes, she had it several times over, since she first picked up the art of carving pumpkins over 10 years ago.
The Sapulpa resident has once again gone viral for her skill at carving celebrities into pumpkins. High-profile singers, athletes, and even politicians have all gone under Youngblood’s pumpkin-carving knife…and boy has the world noticed; as of this writing her carving of singer-turned-football-fan Taylor Swift is sitting at 5.1 million plays on TikTok. Her recent carving of up-and-coming singer Chapell Roan is doing almost as well, with 5 million plays.
It’s a skill she’s developed over a lot of years with a lot of pumpkins, starting in 2011 when she carved Pee Wee Herman into a pumpkin and was retweeted by Pee Wee himself, actor Paul Reubens. That was her first taste of pumpkin carving viral fame, and she’s managed to keep it going over the last several years with new characters and new challenges.
“I’ve been doing it a long time,” she told Sapulpa Times in an interview in October. “This was actually the third time I’ve gone viral. I mean, in a pretty global kind of scale—this is the biggest one by far.”
Youngblood said she wanted to do Taylor Swift, because she tried to do it last year, and “I messed her up,” she said. This time, she not only nailed the likeness, but she took it to new heights, getting noticed in several local news outlets, and even going national on NPR. This year, her gourd-given skills landed a commission deal with NYX Cosmetics, which featured her work on their own social media.
Instead of basking in the glow of her latest round of social fame, Youngblood has decided to let others enjoy the fun of pumpkin carving by releasing the pattern for Taylor Swift as a free download on her website.
Part of the reason she has gathered so many new likes, followers and views over the last several weeks is because of her method for introducing a new carving. She begins with the lights on, and the messy shapes on the pumpkin often look confusing and downright amateur. It’s only when she flips the lights off that the likeness in the pumpkin springs to life, illuminating through various shades of carved pumpkin flesh.
Youngblood isn’t originally from here, but she still claims she grew up here: “I was the kid of divorced parents, and my dad lived in Sapulpa, so I was here every weekend. I’m from Liberty Mounds, but I never missed a weekend.” Eventually, she returned to Sapulpa to live here permanently, and she’s called Sapulpa her home for the last 10 years.
Now, she describes herself as a “sandwich kid,” raising her daughter and caring for her aging father. She says it gets stressful sometimes, but she enjoys the feeling of creating and helping others learn pumpkin carving art. “It’s a teachable skill that I think I can teach everyone how to do, eventually.”
Maybe the most surprising thing about the whole ordeal is that despite the fact that millions around the world have seen her pumpkins, Youngblood says she doesn’t use expensive knives or carving tools. “I use a 97-cent knife from Walmart—that’s my number one tool,” she said. She also uses a small wood gouge, and a pushpin, and that’s it.
She says the average project takes her about 2 hours. “It used to be 4 hours, but I’ve got it down to two, because I sometimes do a live feed, and that makes me not get distracted and finish it. That Chapell Roan one I did, that took about 30 minutes.”
Karrah Youngblood’s pumpkin carvings can be found on her social media channels, including Facebook and Instagram. Her templates can be downloaded on her website, pumpkinbrains.com.
