Good enough to eat?

There has been one Halloween craft I wanted to be sure and make during this season. It was a craft I'd seen a few photos of online: a donut pumpkin!

Some of you might know that I've been looking all season for the perfect, donut-shaped pumpkin so I could make this creation. This is easier said than done. There are a lot of different pumpkin shapes out there, and for the most part those shapes are not like that of a donut.

After much searching, I was very lucky to find a little pumpkin at Dollar Tree! I was extra lucky because I think it was accidentally packed in with a shipment of totally different pumpkins. I peeked into an unpacked cardboard box that the Dollar Tree employees hadn't gotten to yet. Inside were plenty of yellow and orange pumpkins with flowers coming out of the top. Floating around with all of them was this little guy:

Looking at the image on the side of the cardboard box, I could see that no green pumpkins were included in this shipment. And I never saw another one through the entire store! So, lucky me!

My first step was to spray paint the pumpkin white. It looked almost like stone or ceramic at that point.

Next, I painted more or less the top half of the pumpkin pink.

Then I coated the pink part with this clear, glittery paint called "Disco Crystal". I thought it gave the pink "frosting" a subtle, glazed look. You can see what the paint looks like here: FolkArt Disco Crystal You can get it cheaper than this with a Michaels coupon, etc. I've used this paint on so many projects! It's great for sticking loose glitter on crafts too.

Which is just what I did! Now things were starting to look yummy.

But I wasn't done yet! Time for sprinkles! The "sprinkles" are actually little lines of puffy paint. Yes, I still have puffy paint like you'd use on clothing back in the day. It stayed good since the early 90s!

Mmm... I know better than anyone that this is plastic, paint, and glitter, but I'm still wanting to eat this donut! Never mind that it also has a stem.

With any luck, I'll find some more donut-shaped pumpkins so I can make a few more of these. I'll have an eye out for more during my After Halloween Hauling!

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!