DAYS 16, 17, & 18!

Slowly but surely making my way through October.

In today’s post, I’ve got three crafts for you, including one I’ve been working on as part of my Halloween costume!

The first was inspired by this post, and reminded me greatly of a decoration my parents used to have for their house. I bought some simple styrofoam spheres from a crafts store, some small “eye” screws from a hardware store, and ended up getting white mesh instead of cheesecloth. That last part wasn’t the greatest idea, but I made it work.

After drawing some sets of eyes on the styrofoam balls, it was as simple as layering the mesh on top, screwing in the “eye” screw, and cutting and tearing the bottom of the mesh until it looked rough and messy.

As you can see, the mesh was much firmer than expected (and also much more transparent than the cheesecloth would have been) so I tied the layers with some white thread.

It ended up looking pretty cute, I think. But I’m definitely going for the cheesecloth next time.

The second craft came from this blog, and was really fun to do. I got some orange flannel fabric and got to work.

It was pretty easy to eyeball the measurements and adjust accordingly. And I had leftover black fabric from last year’s Halloween costume so I made the face from that.

Super cute! And I have enough fabric to do this for at least one more of our couch pillows, and possibly two. I love this because it’s themed and festive but still totally practical and usable. (The flannel material is so soft and comfy!)

Last but not least, I’ve been working on my Halloween costume, one step at a time. I bought a mask from Amazon that’s the perfect style and size, but the color was a little off. So I’ve been coloring it in with a metallic silver sharpie to give it a more shiny silver look to match the fabric I bought to make the dress out of. The next step is to go in with a pencil or another darker silver/grey color and fill in the shading it originally had.

The rest of this weekend will be spent (hopefully) working on the dress part of my costume, as well as making a couple more recipes on my list.

DAYS 14 & 15!

One craft and one recipe for you today! Finally changing things up a bit.

So I finally finished the table runner I started making a week or so ago. It wasn’t complicated, but there was a lot of tedious cutting involved. Because I like to reuse/recycle materials, I used some scrap fabric for this one so it isn’t exactly perfect around the edges. But regardless, I still think it looks pretty cool.

As for the recipe, I decided on this candy corn Halloween bark (even though I don’t really like candy corn and technically shouldn’t be eating it because it contains gelatin). I had never made bark before, but the website made it seem that all that was involved was throwing a bunch of yummy stuff together and binding it all with candy melts or melted chocolate.

I used some white chocolate M&Ms (that were white, orange, and yellow) and left out the sprinkles because I couldn’t find any at the nearest grocery stores.

I ran out of the white candy melts, but had some orange left over from a different recipe, so I used that as well.

The end result was pretty tasty (but EXTREMELY sweet). But it looked pretty cool! I don’t think I messed anything up too badly. 🙂 I did learn, however, that next time I need to make sure the candy melts really melt into the candies so that it all binds together super well.

Bonus picture of candy corn in candy corn:

DAYS 12 & 13!

Another two simple crafts are covered in today’s post, found from here and here, respectively. Dillon mentioned to me that our apartment is getting a little more decked out in Halloween decorations each day. I think he likes them, but I also think I need to start watching some movies and making some recipes because otherwise our whole place will soon be swallowed up by spiderwebs and skeletons.

The first one is a take on connected paper dolls. I wasn’t sure I’d have any paper long enough, but then I realized I still had an old page from my wall calendar lying around as scrap paper!

So I cut and folded the paper into the right size, and then traced a spider drawing from the template found on the page mentioned above.

The next step is easy! Just cut through all the layers after you’ve folded it like an accordion.

I did this another time with a skull and crossbone design because it’s so stinkin’ easy to do.

The second project is another easy one, but I felt bad having to use new materials. When I can, I reuse old scrap paper, fabrics, etc. But I couldn’t exactly use an old, already used garbage bag for this one… so. You gotta pick your battles.

Cut a square, fold the bag, draw a design, and cut!

Cuuuuuuuute.

The bark recipe will be made tomorrow, so the blog post about it will come late tomorrow night or Tuesday! Also, I’ll be posting another weekly recap vlog on my YouTube channel on Tuesday, so check that out!

❤

DAYS 10 & 11!

To add to my growing list of Halloween related papercraft decorations, the next two days will be filled with these simple projects. The first was inspired by this post, and the second was taken from here.

The clipart shapes that I used were the same from the original blog I found the idea in, but it would be pretty easy to sketch up different ones. These tend to be more cute-Halloween than spooky-Halloween, which is fun.

Instead of cutting out the features, I used a metallic silver sharpie to make things a little easier.

After that it was as simple as taping them onto pieces of thread in alternating patterns, and hanging them up somewhere cool! The taped thread was a little more obvious than I would have liked, but it was an easy solution so I stuck with it.

The next project already had templates made, but I sketched my own to save time and printer ink. Again, it was as simple as cut and tape! And now our apartment is filled with spooky little mice 😀

Tomorrow’s blog post should be on a few more easy crafts that you can use to decorate your home for the holiday. After that, I’m doing a great recipe for Halloween bark that I’m super excited to try!

Thanks for tuning in! ❤

DAYS 8 & 9!

In my attempt to still have done at least one thing per day in October, I’m going to categorize these blog posts into days, even though that isn’t exactly how they ended up. So this post will contain two different crafts I’ve completed, representing days 8 and 9. 🙂

The first might be my favorite so far. It required some supplies that were slightly harder to find, but I think it was worth it in the end. And it wasn’t necessary to have any fancy skills… just some patience to work on it.

My first step in the process was cutting a rounded shape out of black cardstock and affixing it to this wooden piece using mod podge, and then letting it dry overnight.

Look at that! Already lookin’ pretty neat.

Then I sketched a skull shape based on the one used here, and taped that onto the wooden mount. I also drew some dots around the outline of the skull, the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, but ended up not following them as they were a little too close together for my liking.

The next step took a while because I like doing crafty things at night but can’t when that crafty thing involves a loud thing. Hammering nails into a piece of wood wasn’t exactly an 11pm activity.

Sweet! Looks cool. At this point I tore up the paper sketch, and began wrapping thin white thread around the nails. I first outlined each part (whole skull, each eye, nose, mouth) and then wrapped zig-zagging lines between each part without going inside of the eyes, nose, or mouth. This part was a bit tedious but it was just brainless enough that I could throw on a rerun (or two) of The Walking Dead and just work on it for a couple hours.

It’s not the most perfect skull string art anyone’s ever made, but I’m still really proud of it. It took dedication to spend several hours on it and it ended up looking pretty neat! It’s a great Halloween decoration addition to our bookshelf.

Day 9’s craft was a SUPER easy papercraft. It was as simple as tracing out a certain shape, cutting it out of black cardstock, and taping it onto a toilet!

Spoooooky! Or, kinda cute.

I’m more than halfway done with at least two more projects, so hopefully I’ll have a few more to blog about tomorrow!

DAY 7 – BAT MOBILE

The first time I told Dillon I was doing a “Bat Mobile,” he got really excited, expecting me to replicate a sleek car. Unfortunately, I’m not doing that kind of bat mobile…

Using this website as a guide, I sketched out a shape for half of a bat, and then traced it again a few times.

After cutting them all out, I bent them in the center (where there was already a fold) and then again to create the wings.

After that it was as simple as choosing a method of hanging (I chose thin black thread and scotch tape) as well as choosing a location.

Really easy, right? And yet it happens to be one of my favorite things on the list so far.

Speaking of which, tomorrow’s craft is SUPER awesome and I’m EXTRA excited for it which means there’s a TON of pressure for it to come out okay. I already prepared one of the steps tonight (so that it could dry). I can’t wait to show you guys the end result!

And before I bid you goodnight, here’s a bonus picture of my final product bat mobile above some Walking Dead reruns.