Fall and Halloween Crafts

[Kris10]

Last week (on one of two Michaels visits) I noticed that fall craft supplies are already stocked! Have you started your fall crafting yet? I've not done a thing, I feel so behind! Halloween and fall crafts are my favorite.

Do you have any favorite crafts for fall or Halloween? Post them here!

[AJE]

yep the moment its Sep 1, we will be redecorating for Oct-Nov. their just is't a point to one month holidays :!:

[Kris10]

I can see holiday crafting supplies being out early, Lord knows I never get my holiday crafts done on time! It makes sense to start Christmas crafting in June if you're doing something elaborate. What makes me feel inadequate is holiday decor being out so soon. I took the Christmas snowman off my porch in April and now I have to get him out again!

[sjm746]

Hello!
I came up with a great idea last Fall for Halloween Decorating outside, I purchased a bunch of the plastic trick or treat buckets from thrift stores, about 25 cents each. I hung them on branches on the trees in our front yard. It worked and looked great!

[Kris10]

Plastic trick or treat buckets can work wonders if you need to fill space in your yard. I've seen them filled with Christmas lights and used to light a path. Very cute.

I got a Halloween craft magazine the other day and saw a great project with gourds. The gourds were spray painted white and ghost faces were painted on. Hung up in trees, they look really spooky in the dark. Unfortunately we forgot to plant gourds in the garden this year!

I'm looking at getting one of those foam craft pumpkins to carve this year. Has anyone worked with them?

[AJE]

:arrow: I think your talking about Birdhouse Gourds and they will found at any flee market or farmers stands at this time of the year. You might want to check out to see if the retail Menards, Fleet Farm, Farm & Fleet and Steins might carry them in stock. :lol:


:wink: The year before last I used 3 large gourds to create GHOSTS. What I did was to tip them upside down then where the crook of the neck is I used old white bed sheet flats and tied them. Then I used a small scissors to create a hanging hole on the very top from which I strung them up. The last step I did was to create my ghouls expression. Very eerie! The reason why I didn't paint the gourd faces is because I later used them as birdhouse. (Song sparrows love them)

[pk]

I came up with a great idea last Fall for Halloween Decorating outside, I purchased a bunch of the plastic trick or treat buckets from thrift stores, about 25 cents each. I hung them on branches on the trees in our front yard. It worked and looked great!

This seem to be a great time to bring this past post back up.

I also thought this idea for buckets sounded like a good idea. Just thinking though that maybe a few very small holes punched in the bottom of each may help move any rain water out that could collect when hanging?

pk

[CarolsCritterCare]

Coffee Filter Bats

1 basket type coffee filter
Purple and black watercolor paints
Paintbrush
1 miniature wooden clothespin
Black or purple acrylic paint
2 small wiggle eyes
White scrap of paper
Scissors
White craft glue

How to make it:
Paint the clothespin either black or purple acrylic paint and set aside to dry.

Cut coffee filter in half.

Paint one half of the filter with black watercolor paint and the other half with purple watercolor paint. Let dry.

When filters are dry, place the purple half on top of the black half so that they line up. Pinch the filter with your fingers, gathering the paper in the center of the straight edge.

Open the clothespin and clamp the gathered end of the filter inside the clothespin. Add a dab of white glue in the clamp.

Use scissors to cut half circles from the rounded wings to resemble a bat’s wings. Use the color differentiation between the black and purple sides of the coffee filter as a guide.

Cut jagged edges along the circular side of the half circle to further define the shape of the bat wings.

Glue two wiggle eyes to the front of the clothespin.

Cut two small triangular fangs from white paper and glue to the clothespin “jaws”.

You Can now Attach these cute bats to curtains, plants, anywhere they will grab onto.

Suspend these bats from the ceiling by tying a piece of fishing line to the clothespin and pushing a thumbtack into the ceiling.

Instead of purple, try red for a different look!

[CarolsCritterCare]

Plastic or paper cups, bathroom sized
An old white t-shirt
Medium wiggle eyes
Felt, any Halloween color
Scissors
Glue stick
White craft glue

How to make it:
Cut a small section from the t-shirt, depending on how many treat cups you will be making. Start with a section about 6” x 6”. Cut that section into strips.

Use the glue stick to line one side of a t-shirt strip, then starting at the bottom of the cup, wrap around and press in place. Repeat until entire cup is covered.

Cut a simple bow from felt. For a “boy” cup, use white craft glue to attach the bow tie to the bottom of the cup. For a “girl” cup, glue the bow to the top of the cup.

Use white craft glue to attach wiggle eyes.

Fill with fun treats!

[CarolsCritterCare]

What you'll need:
8” x 10” piece of cardboard
1 sheet of yellow felt
Felt scraps in black, light green, purple
48” green yarn
36” raffia
12” twig
Scissors
White craft glue
Hot glue gun
12” wooden dowel
30” craft wire
Pencil
Pattern

How to make it:
Lay yellow felt flat on table, place the cardboard in the center and glue it in place with white craft glue. Set aside to dry.

Cut out felt pieces according to pattern: black for dress, hat, and boots; green for arms; purple for legs and hatband.

You will also need a piece of black felt approximately 3” x 3” to make the cone of the hat. There is no pattern for this, simply roll into a cone shape and secure with hot glue. Trim the open end so that it will stand on the table.

Brings the two ends of the piece of raffia together and find center. Now holding that as one piece, fold in half again, and again and again until you have a clump of raffia approximately 3-4” long.

Hold the raffia in the center and cut the loops at each end so that you now have many individual strands. Keep holding the raffia in the middle, carefully remove one piece and wrap it around and tie it at one end, creating your broom bristles.

Insert the twig into the tied end of the raffia; add a dab of hot glue to secure it in place. Set broom aside.

Lay pieces of the witch out onto the yellow felt. Position them before gluing anything down.

First glue the arms in place on to the yellow felt.

Lay the dress on top (do not glue yet) and position the legs. Glue the legs and down, then glue the boots overlapping the legs.

Lift the dress and lay the broom up the center of the felt. The top of the broom will show above the top of your witch and will stick out the bottom.
Place the dress over the top, overlapping the arms and legs. Hot glue the broom and the dress in place.

Gather the yarn as you did the raffia, creating your witch’s hair. Your final strands should be about 3” long each. Lay the hair on top of the dress, do not glue yet.

Position the black hat over the top of the hair, the hat should overlap the top of the dress by about ½”.

Once your hair and hat are where you want them, secure them with hot glue.
Trim hair if needed.

Glue purple hatband and smaller black hat oval to the upper third of the hat. Glue the black felt cone to the top of the small black oval.

Hot glue your dowel to the back of the yellow felt at the top. Curl the yellow felt around the dowel and secure in place.

Wrap craft wire around the pencil. Slide craft wire off the pencil and stretch out, hot gluing each end to the dowel to create your hanger.

Let everything dry completely before hanging.

[CarolsCritterCare]

sorry!! Forgot her cute picture and could not figure out how to add it in the edit feature

Here she is, our Crashed Witch

[dgridley]

Things that go BUMP in the night.. let's resurrect this thread! Lots of good stuff here!

[CarolsCritterCare]

I agree...lots of good crafting ideas in this thread

[CarolsCritterCare]

Fuzzy pompom spiders

You will need:
**pom poms - we used a pompom ball of about 1½ inches diameter
**1 or 2 chenille stems - usually black, for the legs, but we used green to show how the spider goes together (and it looks fine!)
**tacky glue (white glue will work, but takes longer to "hold" and dry; hot glue also works well, but must be done by an adult)
**plastic google eyes
**optional - string for hanging or magnets to attach to the fridge


1. Cut a chenille stem in half, then in half again, so you have four equal sized pieces to use as the legs.

2. Take one of the chenille pieces and bend it at about a 45 degree angle, at the half way point, to make two legs. It should look like a wide "V" shape. You can now put a slight curve on each half of the "V" to shape the legs a little. It will begin to look like a wide "U" shape. Don't worry if they don't look exactly right - you will make final adjustments when all the legs are firmly glued in place. Make three more stems this way.

3. Spread apart some of the fibers on the pompom and smear a small blob of tacky glue in this space (about half the size of a dime). One at a time, begin attaching the legs by pushing each of them into the glue at the midway point, so one leg points outwards on each side. Add a little more tacky glue to the top center of all the legs. Now use your fingers to pinch some of the pom pom fibres together over this glue. Hold together until you can feel the glue start to work. Gently let go and then set the spider upside down (with its legs in the air) to dry.

4. Once the legs are glued on firmly, you can adjust the shape of the legs to suit yourself. You can bend tiny feet at the end of the legs, or push the legs flatter or higher, depending on how you want the finished pom pom spider to look.

5. Place a tiny drop of tacky glue on the back of each plastic goggle eye and press into place on the spider. You might want to experiment without glue first, because you can get all kinds of interesting faces by trying different eye positions.

6. If you like, glue on some invisible thread or black string to hang your spider up. Or glue a magnet to the pom pom to use the spider as a Halloween fridge decoration.

[CarolsCritterCare]

Salt Dough Creatures



You will need ~~

1 cup salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup water
acrylic paints: orange, yellow, brown, black, white, pink
paintbrush
cookie cutters: ghost, pumpkins, cat, bat
toothpick

Directions ~~

Preheat oven to 250 F. Mix together, salt, flour, and water until a dough is formed. Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour, continue to do so until stickiness is gone. BE CAREFUL. Do not add too much flour, this will dry out the dough and will cause it to crack before you get a chance to bake it.

THIS DOUGH IS NOT EDIBLE, though it won't hurt you or your kids, it just won't taste very good!

Roll dough flat with a rolling pin, about 1/4" - 1/2" thick.

Use cookie cutters to cut out creatures.

Use toothpick to draw lines on pumpkins. Make individual pumpkins or layer then on top of each other for a pumpkin patch look. Be sure to do this step BEFORE baking.

NOTE: If you would like to poke hanger holes in the ornaments, do it now before baking. Do so by poking a toothpick into the spot where you want the hole, then move the toothpick in a circular motion widening the hole as you go.

Bake for approximately 2 - 2 1/2 hours. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. For best results, allow to cool and dry overnight, or for at least 4 hours.

Paint creatures with two coats of paint, allowing to dry in between coats.

Let dry.

[CarolsCritterCare]

SPOOKY BRACELETS



You will need ~~
Fun Foam (White, yellow, black, and green)
Thin ribbon (optional)
Rick Rack
Velcro, positive and negative

How to Create ~~

Cut out a strip from the fun foam to be the bracelet

Cut out spooky shapes from fun foam

The ghost has rick rack in the center of the bracelet band ~ glue the ends of the rick rack under the band. Now glue on your ghost and the center of the band. Give him a little bow and you can use a paper punch to punch out some eyes out of black. Now glue on a small piece of velcro on one side of the bracelet and the opposite velcro piece on the inside of the band.

Glue together the bat the same way. Just put the moon on first and then the bat. Paper punch some yellow eyes. Repeat the instructions given for the ghost

[CarolsCritterCare]

SPIDER POPS



You Need ~~
Black pipe cleaners
Lollipops
Googly eyes
Glue


1. Holding all four pipe cleaners, center them at the base of the pop and wrap them around the stick once so there are four legs on each side.

2. Bend the pipe cleaner ends to form eight feet.

3. Glue on googly eyes.

[CarolsCritterCare]

Brain Surgery Salad



INGREDIENTS ~
2 small or 1 large package of lime gelatin
1 16-oz. can fruit cocktail or 1 1/2 cups grated carrots
2 surgical or rubber gloves


1. Prepare the gelatin according to the package instructions.

2. Transfer to a dome-shaped mold. (A mixing bowl will do.)

3. Drain the fruit cocktail and add it, or the grated carrots, to the gelatin when it's half set.

4. When the salad mold is ready, unmold it onto a platter and drape the surgical gloves on each side. Makes 10 servings

[CarolsCritterCare]

Edibal Eyeballs



INGREDIENTS:
Carrots
Cream cheese
Pitted black olives


Simply slice carrots into 1-inch-thick chunks, top each with a blob of cream cheese and one half of a pitted black olive, and serve.

[CarolsCritterCare]

Monster Hands



You Need ~
Clear plastic gloves
Candy corn
Popcorn
Yarn


Directions:
Begin with washed gloves. Stick one candy corn at the tip of each finger, pointy side up, for fingernails. Fill the glove with popcorn. Use yarn to tie a bow at the wrist.

[dgridley]

Thanks for the additions, Carol! Here's a resource I found for Halloween Paper Crafts.

From the site:

Here you'll find a variety of rather unusual paper toys, all free for you to
print out and enjoy. The toys include a hearse playset, coffin gift boxes
(with occupants), a little cemetery, several unusual board games, a
gloomy little haunted house, a rusty old-style robot, and quite a few
other dark delights. So pick out some toys, print out the pattern pages,
and with a few common supplies like scissors and glue you're ready to
create all these strange little curiosities. I hope you'll enjoy them all.

Haunted Paper Toys

[CarolsCritterCare]

Very interesting....

[dgridley]

Almost forgot about this thread.. anyone have anything to add?

Found this on YouTube:

YouTube - Halloween craft time!!!

YouTube - Halloween craft time!!!

[dgridley]

And more Halloween craft videos:

YouTube - Halloween Crafts with Judy Uson

YouTube - Halloween Crafts with Judy Uson

YouTube - Halloween Crafts - Pumpkin Decorating

YouTube - Halloween Crafts - Pumpkin Decorating

YouTube - Halloween Crafts with Ribbon

YouTube - Halloween Crafts with Ribbon