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.

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.

My Wicked New Potion Book

I have been so looking forward to sharing this project with you guys! Months back, I ran across a spooky book tutorial on Pinterest. The project originated from the Dave Lowe Design blog. His Making Creepy Books post showed how with a hard cover book, some cardboard scraps, and a little Mod Podged paper towel, you can get what looks like a leathery antique.

I was excited to give the project a try the minute I saw it and happened to have an old book on hand:

As you can see, this book wasn't in the best of shape. The spine was falling apart and there were water stains.

So as much as I'd regularly hate to mess with an old book, this one could go. Plus, I already know how to swim.

In addition to the old book, I also had some old cardboard. The thin sheet was once the back of a notebook.

As in the tutorial, I began by choosing some shapes to make into 3D elements. After drawing those out, I cut the shapes from the cardboard.

Next, I painted over the shapes to give them a little dimension. I used tempera paint, but I would think any type of paint could work.

Then came the mummy phase. I Mod Podged some paper towel over the whole book. I also added some cardboard "hinges" on the side.

Once the paper towel was dry, it felt really hard and crusty.

I painted over the paper towel with a mixture of black and metallic craft paint until I had a leathery look going. The bright metallic touches were added with gold craft paint and a bronze Sharpie.

I printed out the "Potions" title on my printer and ripped the edges around it before gluing it on the book. The font I used is appropriately enough named Witches Magic. For anyone who'd like to download that font: Witches Magic Font

 

I wanted to create a fancy antique look with the pages, so I decided to paint over them with gold paint. Just a note - if you do this you might not get those pages apart too easily in the future.

The back of the book:

I am so happy with how this project turned out! I plan to prop this book up with the potion bottle collection this year. I think it will look like the perfect little cookbook of sorts near all those spooky little bottled ingredients!

If you guys have made any spooky books or plan to, I'd love to see the results!

Sugar Skulls, CD Shards, and Super Bargains!

This past month I've been busy crafting and learning new things. There's been a lot of experimentation with craft materials and new products. This is going to be kind of a different blog post than usual, because I'm going to be sharing a few things I made and a few things I bought. It's a little like one of those monthly favorites blog posts or videos some people make. Just random fun stuff I made and bought during March.

I finally got around to decorating the little foam skulls I bought during my My After Halloween Target and Michaels Haul in 2012! These two foam skulls were from Michaels. Looking back at that blog post, it would appear these cost 20 or 30 cents.

The little skulls can hang from the ribbon at the top of them. Here's one demonstrating this on a doorknob:

I decided to make them into sugar skulls for Day of the Dead. I painted them, bejeweled them, and then "sugared" them with some heavyweight glitter.

I'm really happy with how these two turned out! They're like little girly sister skulls. I like decorations that look related but not identical.

It will be nice to have some little sugar skulls sitting around. I'll probably keep them out year-round. They're about the size of an actual sugar skull and they won't attract ants, unlike the real deal. Grossly enough, I know of what I speak with that!

I also learned of a cool use for old CDs. I happened to have a few with some documents on them that I didn't feel safe throwing out. Yet I didn't need more old CDs sitting around. So I saw online that if you bust up old CDs with a hammer you end up with some beautiful shards. Some people use scissors too, but that didn't work for me. I don't know what kind of scissors these people have, but mine weren't going to cut a CD! That only worked for trimming the tiniest of edges.

So after having some fun whacking CDs with a hammer, I needed to find something cool to glue them to. As it happened, I ran into a candle holder at Dollar Tree that was just what I wanted. It had a religious quote on the back but if you turn it around you have a nice black surface to work with. So I glued my shards to that with some regular Elmer's glue and let it dry an hour or two. Then I put a candle in it and enjoyed watching the colors move around in the dark.

I was so happy with my results that I'm looking for more things to glue CD shards to! Just a few words of caution if you want to try this.

1. Wear some protective eye wear. The shards like to fly while you're hammering them. One got me in the face, but luckily I wasn't cut.

2. Wrap some paper towel around your CD before hammering. You don't want random little sharp things laying around uncollected. Some people use a kitchen towel, but paper towel worked fine for me.

3. Pick where you want to glue these wisely because they like to slide around. Just put some glue on the back of your shard, place it down, and call it good.

Other than these two crafts, I wanted to share two more random things with you guys. Not that either of these are related to anything. It's just that I wanted to pass along some good finds. They're pretty inexpensive too.

Sticking with the Dollar Tree theme, I'd heard some reviews of this Dermasil lotion on YouTube. I have bored moments where I watch videos of people talking about their Dollar Tree hauls on YouTube. This is where I heard people raving about how great this lotion is, and they're right!

I was looking for a nearly scentless lotion because I wanted to mellow out some way too fragranced lotion I already had. So I picked some of this up. 10 oz for $1.00! I mixed it in with the too strong stuff and it worked to make it tolerable. Turns out I love this stuff on its own too. So I went back and bought more of it. It has a very light rosewater scent, if you're familiar with that. It has a nice consistency too; this lotion is not at all watery. I like this much more than a lot of higher priced lotions. And what isn't higher priced?

My other fun find is this "Sambal Oelek" pepper sauce. Look for the rooster label. It's a simple recipe of fiery red chilis, vinegar, and salt. It's hot and soooo good. You will want to put this on everything. This cost $1.99 at Woodman's.

Let me know if you guys try any of these craft projects or products!

Happy Hearts Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! To celebrate this year's Valentine's Day, I decided to make a craft I'd seen done in a variety of ways online. I made a garland out of the heart cards in a regular deck of playing cards.

It was a pretty inexpensive and quick project, but I really like how it turned out! I bought some playing cards at Dollar Tree (two decks for one dollar!) and separated out the hearts. Then I punched two holes in the top of each card and ran some ribbon through the holes. After I tied a few loops at each end of the garland, it was ready to hang!

I added some rhinestone heart stickers to a few random cards as a finishing touch. I like the way it looks on this wrought iron tray. I think there's something classic about the combination of red, white, and black.

Now I just need to figure out a way to use those leftover cards in the deck. Any ideas? Maybe some of the spades could work well for a Halloween craft project.

After finishing my garland, I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland. Remember those marching cards?

You might enjoy this trip down memory lane:

I should have that song in my head for the rest of the day!

I also have to share this Queen of Hearts makeup tutorial! I've watched many different videos of women who showed how to look like this character, but I've never seen a look like this. This one looks like she's straight off the card!

Her end result actually freaks me out a little because it's like watching a giant playing card talk. Wouldn't it be a neat group costume if several people all dressed as different court cards?

I hope you all have a fun day, however you plan to celebrate!