Thursday, October 13, 2016

My four recent Halloween crafts

Have you guys been working on any Halloween craft projects lately? I've been pretty busy cutting, spraying, and gluing the past few weeks. This first project was a quick one, but I love the effect. I bought a pack of 8 little rubber snakes from Dollar Tree and spray-painted them gold. That simple, and I love them!


These squiggly little gold snakes will make nice table scatters on the black tablecloth for the party. I could also imagine that they'd make a neat addition to a Cleopatra or Medusa costume.

Dollar Tree is selling their classic foam pumpkins again, but this year a helpful change has been made to them. See that crease on the side of the pumpkin? The pumpkin is made from two foam halves put together. The mold used to fit together in a way where the line ran horizontally around the middle of the pumpkin. If you were trying to craft with these in the past, you'll know what I mean because it was an issue!


Now with the line going down the side instead, there's nothing to interfere with the design on the front of the pumpkin. So, good job Dollar Tree!

These little pumpkins are carvable. So I drew a face with a pencil and then cut it out with a craft knife. You know one of those knives where you can knock out the blade and there are a bunch of blades behind it? I just looked that up "utility knives" with retractable or snap-off blades. They're super cheap. In fact they're three for $1.00 at Dollar Tree! Can't beat that.


So the knife worked great. I had to score over my design a few times, but since the pumpkin was hollow, the pieces popped right out. I cut that hole in the bottom so I could place this over a candle.


I wanted to go for a vintage vibe, like those old paper mache pumpkins. So I drew some eyes and a smile on paper and taped those inside the cut-out parts. It was a little challenging getting them in there, but I managed.


Lit up, this doesn't look all that different from a real pumpkin! Especially, if I took out the paper inserts. Even the parts of foam that were roughly cut look like pumpkin goop.


I plan to put this little jack-o-lantern on the porch for The Witch Party.

I was really excited to work on this next project! This little wood house was a birthday gift. There's a small light inside that is very bright and changes colors rapidly.


Using some old photos I'd collected of Victorian houses for reference, I painted the little house.


I added a little fence and some pumpkins outside the front door.


Here's the house sitting in a dimly lit room, with its lights on.


This little house gives quite the light show. Here with the lights out, I'll show you most of the colors the lights change to. Any favorites? It becomes kind of a sinister looking house if you use your imagination. I'm reminded of that spoof The Simpsons did years back of The Amityville Horror. Remember the end, when all those colored lights are shooting out of the house?






The last project I worked on was a new hat band for my witch hat. I wanted to do something really bright and fun this time. This year, what's inspired me most in the stores is the Day of the Dead stuff. So I was thinking about the Catrinas you see with the floral headbands.


Each of these bunches of flowers came from Dollar Tree. As it turned out, I only needed five of them. They're super big! I hot glued the flowers to a piece of ribbon and tied it around the hat.


I had the perfect hat model.


The back:


A close-up of the ribbon:


A fun surprise for me was that this ribbon glows in the dark, all the white parts anyway. I realized this when I carried the hat into a dark room and got to see some glowing skeletons.


Something neat about having leftover flowers is that I got to use them in a Halloween floral arrangement. I'll get pics of that arrangement when I have it out for The Witch Party.

Also, I wanted to be sure to share the new Halloween stamps available at the post office! At least I hope they're still available for all of you. I'm not sure how fast they'll move.


I was really excited about these, in part because these are the first purely Halloween stamps we've ever had! The closest we'd come to Halloween stamps were those classic movie monster stamps in the 90s. So yay! These looked great on the Witch Party invite envelopes.

Speaking of The Witch Party, that's coming up this Saturday! So I'll have pictures to share soon.

http://www.picgifs.com/graphics/w/witches/graphics-witches-173740.gif

And I'd also like to do the Halloween Blog Party again this year! So, if you'd like to be a part of that, just send me of a costumed photo of yourself from any time in your life. You can email it here: justineshalloween@gmail.com or to the regular email where you write me. I plan to put up the party post on the weekend before Halloween.

9 comments:

  1. Fun craft Justine - love that little house. I think I am partial to the green light.

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    1. Lady M ~ Thanks! I'm really happy with how that house turned out. That might be my favorite of these crafts. The green light is a favorite of mine too! I'm probably wavering between the green and magenta as favorite light colors.

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  2. You are so clever! I'm afraid I'm gonna have to steal your snake idea, though. Muahahahaha!

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  3. You've been busy, Justine!
    Love them all. I like the green light in the Victorian house, but purple is my color.
    Cute hat. Love what you did with it. Nice touch.
    Today I just made ghosts out of the white plastic bags I'd accumulated. Not sure what else I might do for outside.

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    1. Lorelei ~ I sure have! I've been busier than usual lately, and yet I'm getting more crafting done. I guess it's just one of those things where you find yourself magically doing more while already having a lot going on? Maybe being busy is making me schedule things.

      Anyway, thanks! I'm looking forward to wearing that hat tomorrow night. Are you going to hang those little ghosties from the trees outside?

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  4. Justine, you never know what I might do! Trying to decide how to carve my little pumpkin. Have ideas. Love Pinterest!

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    1. Lorelei ~ Oh, I know! Pinterest is endlessly useful. I had a whole secret board set aside on there for ideas for this year's party. Seeing all those collected images together gave me color inspiration for this year's theme. Do you have a little pumpkin like the one I showed here or are you carving a real one?

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  5. It all turned out real good! The snakes and the house looks great. There's nothing more satisfying than Holloween Arts! Ha! Ha! :) Your witches party is so fun I wish I could have one every night!

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    1. Matt ~ Thank you! Oh, the party is a lot of fun and a lot of work! So... I wish I could attend one of these more than once a year but not so much prepare for parties year-round. I should have the actual party pics up either this evening or tomorrow. I don't know, because I took so many photos this time! There's a lot to sift through. The snakes worked well, by the way. They showed up nicely on the black tablecloth as expected!

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