31 Days of Halloween--Day 31

The final project of the Halloween Challenge is pumpkin balloons. I found these pumpkin carving templates on Martha Stewart Halloween templates.  What makes this last project simple is that they are made out of latex balloons. I took the empty balloons to the local florist shop and they filled them with helium for 25 cents each. I then cut out the templates to make a stencil. I took a Sharpie marker and filled in the pattern on the balloon. The leftover parts of the stencil were glued to the opposite side of the balloon although this is really optional.

Face #1--Sharpie

Face #2--Sharpie

Face #1--Cutouts

Face #2--Cutouts

This project took a total of 30 minutes and most of that time was taking the balloons to the florist to get them filled with helium.

Happy Halloween everyone and thanks for following along.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 30

Don't forget to decorate the bathroom. A 2 minute project today. Take a new shower liner. Add leftover wall decals and Voila--bathroom Halloween decorations. It took me longer to remove the old shower liner than it did to make this.

Hitchcock's Pyscho anyone?

31 Days of Halloween--Day 29

Today I wanted to make a simple banner/bunting for an easy project. For the easier of the two projects, I cut card stock that was 4 inches (width) by 6 inches (height). I purchase packaged poster letters that were 4 inches in height. The letters already had glue on the reverse side of the letters. I scored the top edge at 1 inch and folded it down. The folded edge was folded backwards and was taped down around a piece of baker's twine. I used a 1/2 inch spacer to evenly space out the letters on the twine. Once in place, I mounted the letters on the card stock. This project took five minutes to complete.

Pre-packaged letter bunting

For the second sample, I cut out 3 inch letters out of black card stock. I used an Old English font and repeated the steps above. The letters were applied to the card stock using spray adhesive. This version of the project took about 1.5 hours to complete.

Hand cut letter bunting

31 Days of Halloween--Day 28; Week 42

This is the last card for the October challenge and I wanted to finish with something that was a little more challenging. This design, as were the last two cards, was from a pumpkin carving book. This card has a horizontal fold (opens top to bottom) rather than a vertical fold (opens right to left). Because of this, I chose this image to cut. While the image is a little more delicate to cut, I was able to complete the card without severing any fingers or knuckles.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 27

Another fast project. Glass Jar Mummies. Take any glass jar with a lid. I used an old pickle jar. Turn the jar upside down (this is so you can have a flat surface and easy access to the light source). Wrap the jar with rolled gauze. I taped mine down in the back. Place googly eyes on the front. Place a battery operated tea light on the lid. Place the wrapped jar on top of the lid and screw it on the base.

Top View

Front View

This project took 2 minutes to complete. You can make a bunch of these and place them as a centerpiece or use them as luminarias for outside.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 26

Today starts the last 7 days of the 31 Days of Halloween challenge and these last projects will be fast and easy, last minute projects that can be used for those procrastinators out there. Today's project is called "Fireflies in a Jar."

Take any lidded jar. Take a piece of plastic that will fit inside the jar. Take glow in the dark paint and paint dots on the plastic (I used a piece of Mylar that I had around the studio). Roll the plastic so that it fits into the jar, place the lid on, set some light on it and then turn off the lights.

Fireflies in the light

Fireflies in the dark

This project took about 5 minutes to assemble. I used a craft heat gun to speed up the drying process.

On My Bookshelf--31 Days of Halloween--Day 25

In keeping with this week's theme of last minute Halloween, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite resource books for Halloween--Spooky Halloween Silhouettes by Jeffery Rudell. There isn't anything extraordinary about this book other than there are actual perforated die cut silhouettes that you can remove from the book and simply place in your window for instant decorations. The book is oversized at 12 inches (width) by 15 inches (height).

A must have for any Halloween decorating addict.

Front Cover

List of available silhouettes

Full Disclosure: Neither Amazon., nor the author, have provided any compensation for this review. This book was purchased online without a personal perusal before purchase.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 24

Add caption

Today, I wanted to do another treat bag and to offer something other than candy as a gift. Today's gifts are handmade crayons. I melted down crayon stubs in waxed paper cups that were placed in a water bath. Once melted, the wax was poured into candy silicon molds. The molds were placed in the freezer for 5 minutes to harden.

Handmade crayons

Crayon details

Bagged crayons

When handing out these bags be sure to let the kids know that they are not candies. This project took about two hours to complete. Most of that time was removing the paper wrappers from the crayons.

UPDATE: Once you use the molds for making crayons, they become unusable for any food related project. Do NOT reuse the molds for anything other than wax projects--crayons, candles, etc.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 23

Today's post is sponsored by FOOD. Yesterday, I used waterslide decals for my Iron Craft Challenge and since the paper is a little expensive, I didn't want to waste any of the available space on the decal sheet. I knew that I wanted to do a children's dessert and the first thing that popped into my mind was--dirt pie. And, what goes along with dirt? Bugs.

I decided to do a cute bug and a gross bug. I adhered the decal to the bottom of the custard dishes so that it would be food safe.

Bugs under glass

I wanted one bug to be gross so I did this roach and it will be covered with orange Jello so that the bug appears through the dessert.

Roach anyone?

The earthworm will be covered with the dirt pie. I cheated and simply used my blender to chop up some Oreo cookies so that it assembles dirt. I then took Jello Pudding Snack cups and emptied the contents into the custard cups and covered with the Oreo mixture. If you want to make a real pudding or a real dirt pie, there are plenty of recipes online.

Look at this cute earthworm.

Dessert anyone?

Dirt Pie (upside down)

The second item today was found through my the reading of one of my favorite blogs:--Design Crush. Kelly did a weekly summary post here. This lead me to a post about shadow puppets here. And this lead me to the original shadow puppets designs here. I then downloaded the templates and miniaturized them so they could be used as cupcake toppers. This is a great way to personalize and spruce up store bought cupcakes.

Cupcakes anyone.

These are very easy to make. Simply reduce the patterns on any copier so that they are size appropriate for the cupcakes you are adorning. Make a pair of each one. I used double-sided tape to affix the cutouts to either side of a toothpick (although a skewer would be perfect for larger cupcakes). You can use glue as well as tape to affix the cutouts.I used tape because it was quicker and easier.

Skull Anyone?

Ghostly

A little Batty?

Whooooooo?

I wanted something fun for children and these made my day. Be care of the sharpened point if using a wooden skewer or a toothpick. A pair of kitchen shears would very easily dull either with a straight across cut. These could be used for a miniature puppet show or a miniature shadow puppet show as was explained in the original postings.

Finally, I wanted to do a dessert for the grown ups as well. I have been playing around with this idea for years and finally came up with a recipe that I felt comfortable. These are called Blood Spoons. They are made from plastic spoons that have been covered with white chocolate (that has been dyed with food coloring) and flavored with Grand Marnier. I am not a big fan of white chocolate so I have been developing other flavors. These spoons are designed to be used with your morning coffee. You stir your coffee with the spoon and the chocolate dissolves into the cofee to flavor it.

Blood Spoons

31 Days of Halloween--Day 22; Iron Craft Challenge #21--Halloween Beer Glasses

This Iron Craft Challenge is titled "Cheers" and tasks us to "make something that has to do with beverages or uses something related to beverages (bottle, corks, glasses, cans) as a supply."  Since I am still in the middle of my 31 Days of Halloween blogging challenge, I decided to do something that has a Halloween theme. Also, since I have been asked to provide the decorations for a friend's birthday party that will be Halloween related, I decided to something that will meet all three criteria--31 Days of Halloween Challenge, Iron Craft Challenge, and adult decorating for a birthday/Halloween Party.

I had already done a post about using static clings to decorate glass plates, so I decided to decorate some acrylic glasses that I purchased from a party store so they could be used at the birthday party. The group that will be attending the party will all be adults and primarily beer drinkers so I decided to use these large sized glasses. There are two designs that I will be using for the decorations of the party--the skull motif and a Devils Brew motif.

Two beer glasses

The first design is a skull that wraps around onto each side of the glass. The image came from a Yahoo Images search. The design is applied to the glass using Waterslide Decal Paper for Laser Printers by Lazertran. I simply followed the instructions and applied the decal to the outside of the glass. I purposely left about a 2 inch gap between the top of the decal and the top of the glass so people could feel comfortably drinking from all sides of the glass. Some people might not like pressing their lips against the decal--although it really didn't bother me.

Skull Glass

The second glass is based on a theme of the party--a Devils Brew. The invitations will be using this design and will welcome people to attend in order to try a new "Devils Brew." The invitation is based on a standard wine tasting invitation although the beer is simply bottled beer.

This is another image that I found online through Yahoo Images. The image wraps around to both sides of the glass. The word "Devils" appears on the left side of the glass and the word "brew" appears on the right side of the glass. Since the lettering is on a vertical plane rather than a horizontal plane, we had to do a play on words because the apostrophe -s didn't read on the image. So, at the door of the party, everyone will receive a pair of devil's horns to wear throughout the nights. Therefore, it becomes the brew of a "bunch of devils."

Devils Brew Glass

Left side of glass

Right side of flass

 The text looks a little skewed but it really doesn't look this bad. The sides of the glass are angled so that doesn't read as badly as it photographs.

The final product

Of course, I had to fill them up (and empty them) to make sure they worked. This project is one of the most time intensive so far in the 31 Days of Halloween series in that it took about two hours to design and test all of the products used. Now that the project is designed, I will be able to assembly line the product and turn these out very quickly. I have to make about 50 of these glasses for the party.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 21; Week 41

This week's card is another in the pumpkin carving series. These designs were taken from a pumpkin carving book and was transformed into a greeting card.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 20

OK--so this is the last of the Halloween wreaths. This is another easy wreath but it is a little time consuming. First of all, I hate spiders. Even when they are plastic, they still gave me the willies. There are over 200 plastic spiders on this wreath and I probably could have put more but I was doing this while watching the Dodgers tanking game 6 of the playoffs.

The round sided wreath was purchased at Michaels for $3.99 (with a coupon). The ribbon was on sale for $1 per roll (2 rolls were used). The plastic spiders were purchased at Target for $4 (150 spiders per bag). This is a very simple project. Just wrap the ribbon around the wreath and secure with quilter's pins.

Start attaching the spiders with a hot glue gun. Keep on adding spiders until you are done. I didn't worry about the hot glue strands since they almost looked like spider webs.

Top View

Detail View

This took me about one hour to complete. I promise that this will be the last wreath of the series.

31 Days of Halloween--Day 19

Today's entry is another Halloween wreath. This is a white Styrofoam wreath from Michaels. It has been wrapped in rolled gauze left over from another project. The gauze is held in place with quilter's pens. The wreath is then covered in eyeball bubble gum.

I knew that I wanted to make an eyeball wreath and I was planning on covering a smaller wreath in googly eyes but I realized how many of the googly eyes I would need to complete the wreath. When I was at the dollar store, I found huge bags of these eyeball gumballs on sale for $2.

Top View

Detail View

This project took about five minutes to complete. Another very easy and fast project.