Cutting Out A Swan Centerpiece Design

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Karen for Expert Village. Now, we're going to cut out our melon swan. First, I want to take a little bit off the bottom with our large knife so that we won't be rolling around. Right now the melon is kind of rolling. If we try to fill it after we hollow it out, it's possible it'll roll around. You want to just find where the bottom of that is, a good level spot, and just take off about that much to give it flat solid seating. That won't roll around. Next, we'll take our very thin knife. You want to use a nice thin cutting knife. I'm going to start here. You can start anywhere on your design. I like to first cut this round section. I'm going to start here. You want to straight in and out. It'll be perpendicular. Straight in and out. Don't go sideways, this way, that way. Straight in and out and curve and follow your lines. If you don't follow your line exactly don't worry about it. Just cut around and then remove that section. If you have a garbage bucket, we'll just trim off the seedy middle and then later we'll be cutting that fruit. That's what the first section looks like. Now, we're going to cut the outside of our neck. I'll turn it upside down so you can see better. Again, straight in and out and curve around. You don't want to make this next section to thin because it will become weak and it won't hold up for the display. If you notice, I have a serrated knife. I'm cutting with a short sawing motion and going slowly following my design. If you don't follow it exactly it's fine. You outline there is to just guide you as you're cutting out. It doesn't have to be exactly. If the knife goes a little this way or that way it's fine. As you come to the point, you can change the direction of the knife, just go nice, and slowly, take the curves. You want a smooth, wavy motion. We'll roll the fruit as we go around. Okay. Now we'll finish it up here. It's nice to make like a little circle coming around into the head section. This should lift right off. You want to be careful that you don't break anything that you've cut. This is what we have now."