The Impatient Crafter : halloween crafts

Showing posts with label halloween crafts. Show all posts

iLoveToCreate Retrofabulous Glitterville Inspired Chick or Tweet Display

iLoveToCreate Retrofabulous Crafts
Glitterville's Handmade Halloween Inspired Chick or Tweet Display
Margot Potter
"These are your grandmother's crafts, ya gotta problem with that?!"

Er mah gerd, this project was EPIC! Yes, I started yesterday and did not finish until this afternoon! I did sleep, eat and drive my daughter to school, which was an expletive filled epic adventure this morning. Forgotten school event pass, back up mountain, slowest old person EVER in front of us on the way back down the mountain, miss turn, u-turn, drive-up ATM closed, out of gas...what?! Ergh. Tiny baby spiders covering gas pump, leap back into car and go to next pump, walk of shame into gas station cafe in dog hair covered pajamas to second ATM, miss bus, dog leaps in lap while driving, extract dog from lap, drive daughter to school with teen age boy riding our rear and stuck directly behind slow moving school bus the entire ride...HEY KIDS! YUP! WE MISSED IT!

Return home to one minor craftastrophe after another...have I mentioned I'm impatient?!

MANY hours later...SUCCESS!

This lovely Hallowe'en project is inspired by the RETROFABULOUS new book by Craft Wars' judge and Glitterville mastermind Stephen Brown Glitterville's Handmade Halloween. This is the most luscious, scrumptious, stunning visual feast of a craft book created, photographed, designed and edited entirely by Stephen and his Head Studio Elf Chico. Stephen shares his secrets for making 20 exquisite projects inspired by his wildly successful Glitterville line.

So Madge, being the brave and crafty fool that she is, decided to make her own project inspired by the book, rather than, say, making one actually in the book. I suggest, you follow Stephen's exacting directions and not veer off the garden path into chicken town. But hey, Stephen has a pet chicken named Dolly Poulet, Tori has a pet chicken named Coco and Madge used to have 30 pet chickens...so what could be more apropos than a Hallowe'en Chicken? Meet Hen-rietta Henpeckt and her pecky chicks! This project is made of inexpensive materials easily found at your local craft store and Aleene's Tacky Glue brings it all together perfectly. So here's how to make one!

Materials

2 Styrofoam Balls (1/5", 2")

Paperclay

3 Standard Wooden Toothpicks

2 5" Wooden Toothpicks

2 12" Long Wooden Skewers (cut to 8")

4" Square Cardboard Box

20 Gauge Silver Plated Craft Wire

3mm Jet, Black Diamond SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS rounds

4mm Hyacinth SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS bicones

5 Small Chenille Baby Chicks

1" Wide Felt Flower Trim cut to 4" (or other 1" wide trim thick enough to showcase letters)

4.25" Segment Krienik Orange Metallic Thread

Orange and Pink Cardstock
Creative Paperclay

Printed Letters in Century Font 36pt. c h i c k or tweet!

Orange Krinkle Shredded Paper (I cut my on using a paper trimmer and orange tissue paper)

Aleene's Super Thick Tacky Glue
Tulip Beads in a Bottle Pink Glitter

Tulip Black Fashion Glitter

Crafty Chica Little Paints (I mixed pink, orange and used yellow and black)

Micron or Other Fine Tip Pen

Tools

Round nose pliers

Chain nose pliers

Flush cutters
Fiskars Shape Templates Frames
Fiskars Shape Template Cutter

Scissors

Paintbrushes

Foam brush

Bowl for glitter

Spoon for glitter

Cover Styrofoam balls with clay. Keep clay sealed and use small amounts at a time, use fingers to smooth, keep water nearby to help with this process.

Use a toothpick to connect two balls, add clay around neck and smooth, use small cut toothpick segments as armitures, add clay to form beads. Use the end of a marker to create eyes. Create wings and attach to sides by wetting and smoothing clay. Repeat for comb, waddle and tail. Go back over bird with wet fingers until smoothed. Insert a dowel into bird and allow to dry overnight.

Sand bird to smooth using a fine grit sandpaper. Mix paints and use small brushes to paint bird. Start by making bird all one color, pink. Allow this to dry, then add orange on the comb and waddle, yellow on the beak, pink inside of the beak, white black and white for eyes and allow these to dry. (Use Micron to add small details to bird's eyes and mouth.)

Use Tulip Beads in a Bottle in pink to add dots. Let dots dry for ten minutes. Use a flat wide brush to flatten dots and spread extra medium across bird. This adds a little sparkle and keeps bird from looking too bumpy!

Cut a piece of floral foam to fit a 4x4" cardboard box, I used a saw to cut a little off of the top of my foam block. Leave some space for bedding and bird.

Make a necklace using 20 gauge wire and 3-4mm crystals in black, orange and grey. Loop one end, bend the opposite end at a 90 degree angle, slide on bird, thread bent wire into loop, use round nose pliers to loop bent wire and secure closed.

Make a tiara using 20 gauge wire. Thread 9 crystals on center of a 4" segment of wire, grasp and twist forming loop, add 11 4mm crystals to each end, loop on end, bend the other leaving a 1/4" tail. Add glue to tail, use chain nose pliers to insert tail into top of chicken's head behind comb. Adjust.

Paint box black and allow to dry. Paint inside and outside! Use a flat wide brush to paint a layer of Tacky Glue on all exterior sides of back. Pour glitter into bowl, use spoon to add to box edges, gently spread with fingertips and tap off excess glitter.

Paint your dowels black, allow to dry. Insert into foam at front left and right side of box. Place bedding into box, cut off any stragglers. Insert a longer toothpick into bottom of bird, insert into foam using chain nose pliers. Attach felt trim to front tops of dowels using Tacky Glue.

Cut all words and letters out. C h i c k is cut into separate letters, or is cut into a small flag and tweet! is cut into a rectangle. Tie metallic thread to dowels, leaving room for your flag. Attach flag with Tacky Glue to thread. Cut card stock frame (I used my Fiskars Shape Templates and Cutter), adhere to front of box, add pink card stock behind the word 'tweet!' and the letters to center of flowers on felt trim using Tacky Glue.

Try your best not to make a mess this epic in the process. This is what happens when you take the side road to Chicken Town...HELP!

Halloween FaBOOlosity Day Eight: Halloween Hootenanny Card

It's Day 8 of Halloween FaBOOlosity at The Impatient Crafter Blog. Today's offering is a fun little invitation that can easily be customized to suit your style. Owls have become so iconic over the past few years they seem to be staying around. Woot woot! Or is that hoot hoot? Wah, wah. This could easily be made into a cat if you aren't an owl person.

You could use any variety of papers to make this an every day card. Follow this link for the instructions!

Day Five of Halloween Faboolosity! Morticia Invites Miss Havisham to Tea Invitation

It's day five of Halloween Fabulosity...and only yesterday afternoon did it occur to me that it should have been Halloween FabOOlosity. Duh. Oh well, you get the point either way. This is part two of the Morticia project (I ran part one two days ago.) I have a particular affinity for narrative design, because I'm a writer and I love telling stories.

Follow this link for the instructions to make this tombstone inspired invitation. Join me tomorrow for Day Six! You will be able to click on the image in the original post to see it in close up detail.

Hautingly Yours,
Madge

ILoveToCreate Teen Crafts: Spooktacular Party Invitation

Spooktacular Party Invitation by Avalon Potter for ILoveToCreate Teen Crafts

Avalon has another fab teen craft for you this week. She made a gorgeous Halloween pop up party invitation that is perfect for the season. Pop up cards are surprisingly easy and fun to make and this design could easily be modified for any number of holidays and special occasions. Avalon loves working with paper to make dimensional projects and this one really rocks!

Spooktacular Party Invitation
Avalon Potter for ILoveToCreate
“Teen crafted, mom approved”

With September coming to an end I thought it was time to do a Halloween craft. At my age more of us go to parties then trick or treat so I decided to create a Halloween party invitation. This is fun to make and then a few weeks later you will have even more fun at your party! Making cards is simple, enjoyable, and a great way to kick off October.

Materials
Decorative black and white scrapbook paper
Orange cardstock
Halloween themed ribbon
Martha Stewart rickety fence edge punch (or other decorative Halloween themed edge punch)
Googly eyes
Aleene’s Tacky Glue
Aleene’s Tacky Glue Stick

Tools
Computer
Printer
Paper cutter
Craft Knife
Paper Scissors
Bone Folder

Step one: Once you have all of your materials cut your decorative scrapbook paper to 11 ¼” x53/8” inches. Fold your cut cardstock in half, the card fold is in the center of the 11 ¼” length. Make sure there is some of the decorative cardstock left over you will need it later. Use a bone folder to crease the card.

Step Two: Punch the fence from the orange cardstock. Make sure you have punched a little over 5 3/8 inches so if by accident you trim a little more paper off of your fence it won’t be a problem.

Step three: Cut the fence to fit the bottom edge of your card, attach with Aleene’s Tacky Glue stick. Any excess fence can be trimmed with your scissors.

Step four: Now get your ribbon, Aleene’s Tacky Glue, and scissors. Cut your ribbon so it won’t overlap your rickety fence, around 5 inches long. Apply it to your card by putting Aleenes tacky glue on the back then sticking on the left hand side of the card.

Step five: Take your orange cardstock and scissors. You will cut a piece of cardstock about 4 ½ inches long and 4 ¾ inches wide and then the paper about ¼ of an inch long on both sides so that you can use those flaps to attach the paper to the card

Step six: Now take the flap from and bend the ends into flaps. Bend a 1” fold and a 2.5” fold. This becomes the base for your pop up element. Use the glue stick to attach one flap on the bottom of the card and one on top so that when the card is open it makes a rectangle. See photo. Make sure when the card closes it bends with the card.

Step seven: Now take your remaining orange card stock and cut out a pumpkin to about 3 ¼”x4 ¼”. You could switch the pumpkin to a skull, spider, or black cat. This is the part where you can feel free to be creative.

Step eight: Use your craft knife to cut out a jack-o-lantern mouth with a small tooth at the top. You could also add a nose if you want to.

Step nine: Adhere the googly eyes to the pumpkin using Tacky Glue. Allow to dry.

Step ten: Using a fancy font (I used King and Queen font from dafont) write You are cordially invited... in 16 pt.. Then write the date, the address, the time span of the party and the R.S.V.P date in 8 pt.. Print. Don’t feel obligated to use black as the font color try red or maybe orange.

Step eleven: Use your paper cutter to cut out the printed material. The larger front element is 4.5”x1.25”. The invitation information is 3”x2.5”. Use the glue stick and glue the invitation into the pumpkins mouth with the tooth overlapping at an angle. Glue the pumpkin onto the front of the pop out piece of paper you glued to the card in step six, the invitation should almost rest on the bottom of the card when fully opened.

Step twelve: Apply the greeting on the front of the card with your glue stick. Glue it on an angle to give it a creepy affect.

Step thirteen: Punch a second fence element using the decorative scrapbook paper. Glue this to the inside of the card at the bottom.