Halloween platters 2011

I mentioned in Monday's Junk Finds post that I did something fun and Halloweeny with the Fire King peach lustre bowl that I bought at the thrift store.

Fire King peach lustre spider bowl

And here it is! I knew when I saw it that the orange color would be perfect for Halloween crafting. I spookified it with a big black spider. Although I'm always on the lookout for Fire King dishes, I've never collected peach lustre because it didn't fit in with my color scheme. Now I see how perfect it is for Halloween decorating, so I might just give it a second look!

Trick or Treat antique plate

The mark on this amazing ironstone plate gives it a manufacture date from sometime between 1867 and 1878! It has some really great crazing and staining that definitely adds to the distressed, spooky look.

Yellow moon with bats platter

When I found this vintage yellow platter, I realized it looked just like a big golden full moon, so of course I had to add some bats flying across. I love how it turned out!

Happy Halloween large oval Coronet platter

I think this is my favorite of this year's Halloween plates. This gorgeous platter is from the Coronet line by Homer Laughlin, which was produced in the mid-1930s. The Coronet line had all of the same forms, but there were dozens and dozens of different versions based on the way the design was painted. This platter is unpainted, and it was the absolute perfect size for the Happy Halloween image! It's huge and heavy and a great statement piece. I absolutely love it.

Orange crow or raven platter

This platter is not necessarily vintage, but the terra cotta orange color made it perfect for Halloween, and the big crow was just the right size for it! I added a red jewel for his eye, just for fun.

These three plates are from my 2010 collection and are still available:

Spider silhouette plate

Spooky spider plate

Pair of spiders square plate

All of these are available right now in my Etsy shop!

It's coming...

...Halloween, that is! And I couldn't be more excited. I ventured to Target yesterday to check out the Halloween goodies. Only about half of the decor was out and no costumes, but I did find this very cool  plate.

It's part of their collection of plastic serveware, which features images of wrapped candies and these cute, almost vintage-looking jack-o'-lanterns. The colors sucked me in immediately! Two of my favorite things: Halloween and turquoise. It can be used to hold a pile of the Fall-colored mini Reese's peanut butter cups, so I guess now we're up to three of my favorite things.

I can't wait to go back and see if they've put out the rest of the Halloween things. I might need to pick up a few more of these plates before they disappear...

Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today

My hair's still green. Three days straight of going to bed with green hair will do that to bleached blonde highlights I guess, even if you use lots of shampoo. Wanna know why my hair was green for four days?

I'm finally living out my fantasy of having group Halloween costumes! It helps to have a husband who's willing to go along with just about anything and kids who are still young enough that I can talk them into dressing up the way I want. :) We decided a few months ago that for Halloween this year, we would dress up as characters from our family's favorite TV show, Phineas and Ferb.

The Mister was evil genius Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

complete with a Nerf gun  "-inator"

I was Ferb

with green hair courtesy of a can of green hair spray paint (I looked forever for a wig but never could find one)

Maren was Isabella

in a dress made from one of my tank tops, a spray-painted vintage buckle, a wig and a homemade pink bow headband

And Porter was Perry the Platypus

in a costume that I conjured from thin air! Well, not so much thin air as polar fleece, felt, and a ping pong ball.

I actually made Porter's costume all by myself with no pattern and I don't mind telling you that I'm a little bit proud of it. I used an existing shirt and pants of his to get the size and drew my own pattern. I sewed a matching hood and attached two halves of a painted ping pong ball with painted eyeballs that pointed in opposite directions for authenticity. I used tan felt to make his tail and sewed across it in a crosshatch pattern with brown thread and pinned it to the back of his pants. The bill and feet were made from yellow felt and the bill was stuffed with batting. It was pretty darn hilarious and anyone who has seen the show knew exactly who he was supposed to be!

We got good mileage out of our costumes, wearing them for what felt like three days straight but was actually five separate occasions over four days. The only things we had to buy were my green hair spray, The Mister's lab coat (something we can probably use again or resell), a $6 Wal Mart wig and $5 white turtleneck for Maren (which she can wear this winter), the Phineas doll (since we ran out of family members) and the materials for Porter's costume (the hood & tail are detachable so he can wear the fleece suit this winter). It all turned out just exactly like I pictured it in my head and we got so many fun comments from people who knew who we were supposed to be!

Maren already told me who she wants to be next year, so I have a whole year to keep an eye out for the right pieces at the thrift stores--it should be fun!

Halloween 2009
Halloween 2008

House of 3 Halloween banner

I know we're in the final stretch toward Halloween, but I still have things to show you that I've made--this October has been almost unmatched on the level of crafting I've managed to squeeze in. One of my favorite projects was this cute Happy Haunting banner.

The banner pieces are actually a printable purchased from House of 3. The printable pdf file is only $4.00 and you get the images for both the small banner (seen here, the letters are about 2.5" tall) and the large banner (letters a bit larger than a playing card). And the bonus is that you can print as many of them as your little heart desires--use them for gifts, send them in swap packages (that's what I did), so it's really an economical little project.

To make my banner, I printed the letters on white cardstock and cut them out (I think this banner would look really neat printed on fabric too!). The original letters had a bit of brown shading around the edges but I wanted them to be a bit darker, so I used brown craft chalk around each letter. I hauled out my sewing machine and stitched them together along the tops, spacing them evenly. When they were all done I thought it needed a something more, so I sprayed the whole thing with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Pearl. The moisture did make my letters curl a bit but I don't mind and I like how it's a bit blotchy. You can see a bit of the shimmer at the top of the N in this photo; it's subtle, but really pretty. If you wanted more sparkle, you could use glass glitter or Stickles glitter glue to accent each letter.

I punched holes in the end letters and hung them with black seam binding lace on the mirror in my entryway. I like how the colors of the banner match the colors on my antique oyster plates, silhouette coaster plates and the vintage group photo. It was a fun, easy project and this definitely won't be the last printable I purchase from House of 3!

Gummy Candy Kabobs

Dear friends, there are a few things you should know about me.
I love:
1. Candy
2. Festively colored candy that matches the upcoming holiday
3. Gummy candy
4. Food on a stick

So when I opened up the October Better Homes & Gardens magazine and saw this page, I about passed out. (I can't save the photo to show here and my scanner's on the blink, so click the link and go check it our for yourself. I'll wait!)

See what I mean? The gummy candy kabobs checked every box on my list up there, so I knew I had to make some for myself.

The best part for a candy freak like me was shopping for the candy, of course.

Sources: Wal-Mart for the orange slices, caterpillars, and peach rings, Target for all other candy. Blackberries and sour jelly pumpkins from bulk bins in Target candy aisle. Lollies and pretzel bags from Michael's. Not shown: Peeps ghosts, also from Target. (I tried to stay away from black licorice-flavored candies which made finding black treats a lot trickier.)

Some tips:

• If you use the pretzel bags, keep in mind how low you can push the bottom candy and still have it fit in the bag.
• Spray the skewers with non-stick cooking spray first; it helps the candy slide a bit easier
• Gummies with a layer of white marshmallow on the bottom (rings, frogs, caterpillars) are tougher to poke through. The worms were easier.
• The licorice I used was the Australian-style, which comes in all kinds of flavors (and hence, colors)
• For the top gummy, only poke the skewer halfway through so the pointy end doesn't come out the top.
• Peeps ghosts were darling on the skewers but just a smidge too wide for the pretzel bags to fit over easily, so it was a struggle to get them bagged neatly.

Aren't they cute? The bright colors and shapes are so fun and festive. Maren helped me pick out the candy for each skewer but she was a bit too young to make the kabobs herself. I would recommend this project for kids a bit older who a) have stronger hands and b) won't stab themselves accidentally with the skewer. Maren did help in checking the candies for freshness and quality by sampling them liberally.

When I was waiting in the checkout line to buy the pretzel bags at Michael's, I noticed these lollipops with long skinny plastic sticks and thought perhaps I could make candy kabobs on those as well. They were only 39¢ each so I grabbed three to give it a try. They actually worked really well because the candy slid easily over the slick plastic stick, and they already have the cute lollipop at the top. The ends aren't sharp, so for some of the tougher candies I poked a starter hole with a skewer.

Gummy candy kabobs would make a cute centerpiece for a party! For my photos I poked mine into a piece of floral foam in a crock that totally doesn't match--I was in a hurry and it already had the foam inside, so I grabbed it--but if I were doing it for a real party, I'd use a cuter container and hide the top of the floral foam under a layer of something like crinkled shredded paper. The BHG article suggests using a vase with jelly beans to anchor the skewers. The lollipop kabobs didn't work well for this application because after a little while the plastic sticks bent and they splayed out to the sides of the arrangement.

I'm kind of obsessed with this idea now and I want to make gummy candy kabobs for every occasion! Gummy and chewy candies are available in all sorts of colors, flavors and shapes and they make those Peeps for just about every holiday now. I'm having visions of an arrangement of skewers made solely of those great big gumdrops (last year's gumdrop craft) and I'm obsessed with the idea of making rainbow kabobs with a giant marshmallow at the bottom to act as the cloud. I have no occasion to make them for but I just think they'd be so pretty!

What occasion would you make gummy candy kabobs for? What kind of gummy or chewy candy is your favorite? Would it be wrong of me to plan an entire party around my rainbow gummy kabob idea? ;)

Halloween craftiness: Candy Corn Wreath

I don't often pay full price for magazines on principle--I either find a super-cheap subscription or I use a 40% off coupon at JoAnns, but when I saw the cover of the October Woman's Day magazine at the grocery store I threw it in my cart without a second thought and happily paid full price.

image copyright Woman's Day magazine

The cover image is of this great candy corn wreath and I thought it would make a fun project for Maren and I to do together. The step-by-step instructions are here on the Woman's Day website, so I won't go through those in detail.

I used a 16" green foam wreath from JoAnn's--it was $7.99, less my 40% off coupon. I got the kind of wreath form that has rounded edges on the front, but the back is flat. I love my Dollar Tree $1 green wreath forms but for this project I wanted a wreath that had some flat space so the candy corn didn't slide off when I laid it out. The instructions suggest to cover your wreath form in black duct tape but I didn't want to waste my good Gorilla Tape, so instead I covered the wreath form with strips of black fabric like I did for my paperback book wreath.

 I used approximately two 22-ounce bags of Brach's candy corn. It's hard to tell exactly how much I used because I let Maren eat some before I started the wreath, and then you have to pick out the wonky corns as well. I did end up opening a third bag but I was only short by about 20 corns, so I know if we hadn't eaten any beforehand two bags would have been plenty.

I did place out my candy corns before gluing like the instructions suggested, but I only did one ring at a time. I put my hot glue on the candy itself rather than the wreath so that it wouldn't show. It was really quite easy--Maren helped me lay out the corns, then I glued them down.

I had one big issue that makes my wreath look different from the one on the magazine cover. On the WD version, all of the orange middles of the candy line up, giving it a really symmetrical look, kind of like spokes radiating out from the center. The corns aren't necessarily touching head-to-toe; there are some gaps between them so that the orange middles will line up but the gaps are pretty small, which means that all the candy corns were just about the same size.

When I laid out my first ring (and I started from the center out), I put them head-to-toe. When I laid out the second ring, I put them head-to-toe going the other direction, but because of the bigger ring and the variation in the size of the corns, the oranges didn't necessarily line up. By the third ring I realized that my wreath didn't look as neat as the WD version, and I tried to do a better job of lining up the oranges rather than having the corns touch. That worked at first, but after a while it resulted in some pretty big gaps where the black showed through, and that bugged me. So then I went back to doing the head-to-toe again. In some place the oranges line up, and in some places they don't.

I do like how tidy the rows of candy corn on the WD wreath are, but I'm sure WD has editorial assistants who get paid to make sure all 435 candy corn are exactly the same size, and I'm trying to glue on candy corns in between cooking dinner and shoving snacks at my 13-month-old to keep him from screaming. So my wreath is imperfect, and that's just how it's going to have to be.

I hung my wreath with wide black satin ribbon and I think it's pretty darn cute! I like the bright festive colors but the shape itself is very unfussy; from a distance it makes a really cool pattern and almost looks like it is beaded.

On the Woman's Day website there's an additional page of instructions on how to preserve your candy corn so your wreath will last longer and not end up as insect food. Those weren't in the magazine and involve letting your candy corn dry out for several days, then spraying them on both sides with clear preserving spray. Honestly, that sounds like a giant pain in the bum so I'm glad I skipped it! I might give my wreath a coat or two of clear Krylon spray to make it shinier, but that's only if I can find my spray--I'm not going to go out any buy any specifically for this project. I live in a very dry climate so I don't have to worry about my candy becoming sticky and bugs aren't really an issue for us.

There are some other really cute candy corn craft ideas in that magazine that I'd love to try, like a candy corn garland and cool candy corn balls but I'm not sure if I'll get to those this year--they might have to be on the crafting list for Halloween 2011.

Halloween roundup

I love Halloween, but every year I'm glad when it's over. Whew! On Friday night we had our annual Halloween party. This year's theme was the Haunted Library and we asked our guests to come in costume as someone from a book. They complied and came up with the most clever costumes! We had:

the Princess and the Pea (two of these actually--one princess and her baby as the pea, and one princess and her husband wearing a big green letter P),

Little Red Riding Hood & Robert E. Lee, Curious George & the Man in the Yellow Hat, Hester Prynne & Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter, the Evil Queen from Snow White & her poisoned apple, Where's Waldo & Wanda, Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy & Mother Goose, two characters from a Terry Pratchett series, and not pictured is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Here's The Mister and me:The Mister is dressed as Greg Mortenson from Three Cups of Tea (he's missing his tea cup), and I'm Waldo. With all the books out there, what are the chances that we'd have two Waldos? My first idea was to be Nancy Drew, but I didn't come up with that plan until Tuesday morning and I knew with the impending snowstorm that I wouldn't be able to put together a costume in time, so I went with Waldo instead--I already had the striped shirt in my closet. The party was fun and I'm so glad everyone came and dressed up!

It was so nice to have Halloween on a Saturday this year. Somehow it felt less rushed--that is, up until 4:00 pm, where we rushed around like maniacs for 90 minutes trying to put together costumes before heading out the door to our church's Trunk or Treat party!
I will fully admit that dressing up as the characters from Alice in Wonderland is something I've wanted to do for years, but I'm brunette and I never could convince anyone to be Alice to my Queen of Hearts. I think this may have been the last year that I could suggest to Maren what she was going to dress as, so I had to take advantage of it and make her be my Alice! Originally I purchased a pattern at a thrift and was going to sew her an Alice dress myself. That brilliant idea lasted about five minutes, until I remembered that I don't sew, especially when putting in gathered sleeves and a zipper are involved. Thank goodness for eBay and the Disney store.I couldn't decide if I wanted Porter to be the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat. It would likely have been easier to find him a ready-made bunny costume, but I have a thing for the Cheshire Cat so that won. I had to get creative for this one, as they don't sell a ready-made C.C. costume for infants. Instead I bought a pink kitty cat costume (thanks again, eBay) and a roll of purple duct tape from the craft store and I made my own stripes!Okay, so it's not perfect but you get the idea, right? And at least he was warm!The Mister and I whipped our costumes together pretty much at the last minute. I had planned to be the Queen of Hearts and borrowed the foofy red dress from a friend. I used a tiara from Maren's 2008 costume and a red sequined heart from my craft stash for the crown and made a heart scepter with Maren's fairy princess wand, red cardstock and red glass glitter. I wore a black wig and made the white collar out of white posterboard that The Mister taped to the inside of my shirt collar as we were walking out the door.

I love The Mister's costume--it was an idea we had that morning and he was able to construct using only what we had in the house. He MacGyver-ed together his card guard suit using a cardboard box, and old sheet, coat hangers, a stapler and duct tape and I think he looks pretty darn good! He was nice and warm too, which is good because he took Maren out trick-or-treating in the snow while I stayed warm with Porter at a neighbor's house.

Now to get it all cleaned up and on to the next big project!

The best idea. Ever.

"The first time you hear the concept of Halloween when you're a kid, your brain cannot even process the idea.
You're like, 'What is this?
What did you say?
Someone's giving out candy?
Who's giving out candy?
EVERYONE WE KNOW is just giving out candy?
I gotta be a part of this!"

--Jerry Seinfeld, Halloween

Hope there's lots of the good stuff in your bag tonight!

Halloween feather wreath, defined

One of my favorite and most versatile Halloween decorations is my black feather wreath. I bought it several years ago on post-Halloween clearance at Target after wanting one for several years but being too cheap to pay full price. You can make your own feather wreath a la Eddie Ross--but mine was cheaper and I didn't have to clean up feathers afterward!
This year I hung it on the back of my door and to dress it up I used tiny orange clothespins to attach some appropriately spooky flash cards that I found in a huge box at the thrift store a while ago.
The cards I used are apparition, ominous, ghoul, cadaverous, grotesque and macabre. It was an easy project--took all of about 2 minutes, including rummaging in my craft room for the clothespins, and neither wreath nor cards are permanently altered so I can use them in a different way next year. I think it's an especially appropriate decoration for my Haunted Library-themed Halloween party this year!

Glamour Gourds

Make your own 'mercury glass' pumpkins? Oh. My. GOSH. Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Sweet & Sinister swap--sent and received

When I told The Mister that I had signed up for a Halloween swap with an Oct. 1 mail-out deadline, he thought I was nuts given my due date (and eventual delivery date) of Sept. 17. I thought I might be crazy too but I had such fun with last year's swap that I just couldn't pass up the opportunity, impending birth or not!

The color guidelines for the Sweet & Sinister swap are black and white with just a touch of orange. I already showed you the blingy black pumpkin I sent to my partner Julie, but I made a few other items for her as well:

--This black and white witch silhouette in the perfect, already-distressed thrifted frame:Want to make a Halloween silhouette of your own? Go here.

--A bouquet of black, white and blingy vintage button flowers:
that I loved so much I had a hard time giving away!

--And a beeswax collage canvas with another cute silhouette:I've been meaning to make another beeswax collage ever since I learned how last November in Phoenix. I bought all the supplies and they've sat in my craft closet ever since! This was a good opportunity to finally dust off my mini-iron and wax pellets and get to work. I had such fun creating things for my partner and I hope she liked them.

My partner Julie sent me a fabulous package. She knew that I am planning a Haunted Library-themed Halloween party this year and that I love crows, so she tailored her package to suit me perfectly!
She included Halloween cupcake mix and the most delightful box of fancy sprinkles & cupcake toppers, a big vintage-style black and orange lollipop decorated with festooning and a sparkly chipboard H, a package of darling party parasols, a very old copy of Poe's "The Raven" (I'd been looking for one of these but had given up!), and the beautiful sparkly table runner that everything is sitting on.

As wonderful as all of those things are, my very favorite thing in the box was this awesome decoration that Julie made for me! She used a box that looks like an old book and decorated it with a crow who is wearing a string of pearls and a sparkly party hat! I absolutely ADORE it and it will be the centerpiece of my party decorations!
Check out the neat detail on the black roses: She took apart the flowers, traced the petals onto the book pages, cut them out, curled the edges and punched a hole in the center. Then she reassembled the flower, layering the book petals with the silk petals. I love the look--perfect for a Haunted Library!

I'm so glad that I signed up for this swap and plan to do it again next year!