CREATIVE CRAFTING

Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’

Making mini designs for the dollhouse for any holiday is fun for the whole family, and with a little imagination you will come up with a wide variety of craft ideas for these miniatures The following paragraphs will talk about methods to create 3 mini Halloween dollhouse decorations created by using polymer clay.

Pumpkins are a vital dollhouse mini decor for Halloween, plus they are very easily made from polymer clay plus a knife. You’ll need orange clay and green clay. Basically begin by creating a rounded ball from orange clay. Crunch the ball a little bit to create an dimple on opposite sides of the ball. Now create a little tube of green polymer clay for the mini dollhouse Halloween decor.

Include depth on your dollhouse miniature Halloween design by developing portions within the pumpkin. Work with a knife and begin near the top of the pumpkin and rotate the knife straight down the side of your pumpkin and continue around the pumpkin. Repeat this many times to make segments in the pumpkin and crunch again. Use the green tube as the stalk and push the stalk into the pumpkin using the knife. You can decorate this pumpkin the same way you would a real pumpkin using paint. This one of a kind mini dollhouse Halloween design is fun for the whole family to make.

I found this fun Halloween  Haunted House at my favorite site Sculpty.com. They have tons of fresh ideas for Halloween and I couldn’t resist this little house. It has a battery-operated “flame” making it safe for even small children to use. I only made one for now, but plan on making a few more for around the house and yard.

Here is what you will need to get started:
Clays:

Sculpey® III: Black – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Chocolate – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Elephant Gray – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Emerald – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Just Orange – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Pottery – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Spring Lilac – 2 oz — 1 block
Sculpey® III: Tan – 2 oz — 1 block

Tools:
8” Acrylic Roller
Clay Knife
Etch ‘n Pearl
Super Slicer
Additional Supplies:
Glass tealight holder and tealight or battery operated tealight
Super Glue gel

To get started with your Halloween House preheat your oven to 275 °F. Test temperature with oven thermometer for perfectly cured clay. Make sure you condition all clay by kneading until it’s soft and smooth or running it through the Clay Conditioning Machine for several passes on the widest setting. Do this until the clay is soft and plyable.

Step 1
Use acrylic roller or clay roller to roll Black clay to ½” thickness. Roll Elephant Gray to ¼” thickness. Roll Spring Lilac and Tan clay into ⅛”-thick sheets.

It is cold and rainy here in Michigan; a typical Halloween day for the Midwest. I have been trying to find a fun recipe for cupcakes this morning and I ran across these.
You are probably wondering what this have to do with crafting.

Look at this picture. These would be so easy to make out of Polymer Clay. All you would need is a small clay pot. You can purchase them at your craft store for pennies on the dollar. Then you would take the clay color of choice and drape them over the upside down pot. Add eyes, noses, hats, even card holders which can be made out of wire, and you have the perfect, inexpensive Halloween table decoration. You could even blend the clay to make varied color combination.

Why not carry this idea into the next season. Use the pot, some green clay and make a Christmas tree with ornaments. Oh! the ideas keep flowing!

Happy Halloween everyone!

I recently returned from a short visit to Pennsylvania. While there I noticed in a magazine these pumpkins. So naturally (for me anyway) I looked them up when I got home. I decided to try it and it was not only fun, but easy and fast. I used acrylic paints that I had on hand. I put them out on my porch yesterday, and the neighbors love them! Give it a try and see if you agree!

Give orange a rest -- a coat of blue paint makes no-carve pumpkins jump out of the shadows.

Decorating your house for Halloween does not have to be expensive. Most of the materials you need are laying around the house anyway, so why not “recycle” them. I never thought of doing this, but will this year.

CRAFT MATERIALS:
Corrugated cardboard
Pencils or markers
Craft knife
Glue stick
Orange tissue paper
Painter’s or masking tape
Lamp

Time needed: Under 1 Hour
1. Measure the inside of an appropriate window and cut corrugated cardboard to fit tightly. Draw a face on the cardboard, then cut out the pieces with a craft knife (a parent’s job).

2. On the interior side of the cardboard, use a glue stick to cover the openings with orange tissue paper.

3. Set the cardboard in the window and use painter’s or masking tape to hold it in place. Place a lamp near the window to light your house-o’-lantern.

Decorating can’t be easier than this…so why not start thinking up ideas for the holidays, that the kids can do.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

When illuminated, these votive holders cast an eyeful of moody shadows on the walls.
CRAFT MATERIALS:
Glass votive holders
Black construction paper
Hole punch
Mod Podge
Paintbrush
Black paint

Time needed: Under 1 Hour
1. Tear a sheet of black construction paper into about a dozen small rectangles that measure roughly 1¼ inch by ½ inch. Use a hole punch to add two eyes to each piece.

Step 2  Brush a portion of a plain, glass votive holder with Mod Podge, affix a paper rectangle, then paint more Mod Podge over it. Add the other pieces the same way, making sure the edges overlap.

3. When the candleholder is dry, use a tiny paintbrush and black paint to add little round pupils inside the eyes.

I found this little craft at Family Fun, which is a great source for crafts for kids.  But when I saw it I thought how this doesn’t necessarily have to be only for Halloween.  Using different colored construction paper you can adapt it to Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentines Day or any gift giving time.  You could even get different colored tissue papers glue them to the back of the construction paper and then proceed as usual.  Hint:   I  found that using marker for the “eyes” was easier than trying to paint little dots!

Since seasonal jewelry often has a whimsical sense of fun, try experimenting a little by mixing and matching. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about with these candy corn and pumpkin lampwork beads , which were used for making earrings for Halloween. Wear a matching pair or mix them up and wear one of each.

A friend found these earring and used 24 gauge round gold-filled wire that she curled on the end to form a wire coil head pin, then added the beads, and finished the top of the earrings by using the wire wrapped loop technique. Once the dangle part of the earrings were assembled, she just added a gold-filled ear hook.

I will admit though that I am not one to wear jewelry, but I did make several pairs of these and sold them at my yard sale this past summer.   The only difference was I made the candy corn, pumpkins, bats, even witches out of polymer clay.   I sold most of them so fast I didn’t have time to take pictures of them to show you…so stay tuned I will make more and post.

So have some fun and mix it up this Halloween season!

Bats can add some spooky fun to your Halloween jewelry collection.  A couple of years ago a friend gave me these to use as a decoration for Halloween. With a little wire and some ear hooks, I quickly turned them into a pair of spooky Halloween earrings.  Which after I made them, remembered I didn’t have pierced ears!  So I gave them to my daughter in law, who turned them into a necklace.  (she doesn’t have pierced ears either).

So this summer during a boring, rainy afternoon, I got out my polymer clay and make a dozen or so bats!  I made them into earrings, necklaces and pins and sold them all at a garage sale.

I have a small bat cookie cutter that I used to cut out the bat shape and the rest was just filling in the texture and putting in a pair of orange eyes.   They were very fun to make, and a hit at my garage sale!