Monday, January 23rd, 2012 in How-To

Put these one your mantel along with your Valentine’s Day garland. You’ll hardly be able to stand all the love.

Grab a couple of the “Words of Love” cylinder vases from Dollar Tree. A steal for a dollar each.

You could put anything in these. I opted for some shredded foil and some adorable plastic glittery heart picks purchased at DT.

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Tags: DIY, mantel, Valentines Day

Friday, January 20th, 2012 in How-To

I love a well decorated mantel. It sets the mood for an entire room, and you can really do it up.

Today I’m going to show you how I made a very cheap garland. Everything was purchased from Dollar Tree and cost about ONE DOLLAR AND SIX CENTS TO MAKE. Yup, $1.06!

I purchased:

Doilies – $2 (I used 8 out of 60)… 14¢
Ribbon – $1 (I used about 6 feet out of 9)… 67¢
Table Scatter – $1 (I used 7 out of a zillion or so pieces)… negligible
Glitter Stickers – $1 (I used 8 out of 32)… 25¢
Gluesticks (a negligible amount)

I made this garland to sit straight across the front of the mantel mostly due to the flimsy nature of the paper doilies. I’m sure you could double or triple them if you wanted something a bit more heavy.

I measured how much ribbon I needed, left a bit extra just in case.

Next I pulled out 8 doilies, 4 in white and 4 in red. I marked my center of the ribbon and just threaded the hearts on through the lacey edges. I had to fold the ribbon in half to get it thin enough. They went on really easy, actually.

At this point I attached the garland to the mantel to finish off the detail work. Affix both ends and move the doily hearts as needed. Then put 8 of the glitter stickers onto the doily hearts!

Now get your glue stick ready cause we’re gonna add the table scatter.

I pulled out a few different ones and just carefully glued them onto the ribbon, in between each doily.

Yes, and that’s all. A tiny bit of creativity and a trip to Dollar Tree and you’re set. I hope this will at least provide you with a little inspiration for your own Valentine’s mantel. I’ll be adding a couple other Valentine’s themed crafts in the next few days, too!

1 Ghouslish Gasp

Tags: DIY, mantel, Valentines Day

Friday, October 14th, 2011 in How-To, Pumpkin Carving

Below is a great list of pumpkin carving resources that I have found. All of these are free, no CC info, no liking on Facebook (unless you want to, you always were such a social butterfly), just click, print and get to carving!

I’ll be adding to this list as I find other sites to add, so come back often!

The Internet’s Premier Pumpkin Pattern Site
Traditional, classic jacks, movies, superheroes, sports, video games, words

DLTK’s pumpkin carving patterns
Aliens, Angry Birds, ghosts, cats, cartoons as well as classics

Martha Stewart Halloween pumpkin-carving patterns
Leaves, spiders, cats, many unique faces, words, Victorian and Gothic

The Pumpkin Wizard*
Traditional, cartoon, monsters, movies, tv, music, celebs, politicians, sports

Better Homes and Gardens free printable stencils
Traditional, designer, TXT, fall, cat, dog breed, paint accented

Disney Family Fun Pumpkin-Carving Ideas
Faces, animals, skeleton, evil fish, pumpkin on pumpkin

Celebratinghalloween.com free stencils
Faces, words, scene, Angry Birds, Transformers, fairies

Paper Pumpkins stencils
LOTS of faces, dog breeds, Japanese and cultural, tiki, snowflake

Extreme Pumpkins free stencils
Faces, Batman, Jason, Obama, McCain, Skellinton, flaming, Che, Satan, mummy

Hershey’s stencils arranged by difficulty
Dracula, pirate, Reese’s, cauldorn, tree, BOO, grim reaper

Colonial Williamsburg themed pumpkin carving patterns
Windmill, Cresset, cannon, Washington, Jefferson, Capitol, Liberty or Death Gallows

Feeling particular ambitious? Make your photo into a pumpkin carving stencil.

*These resources also offer paid options, but their selection of free was so good, they deserved a mention.

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Tags: carving templates, jack o lantern, pumpkin

Friday, October 7th, 2011 in How-To

These Autumn pumpkin spice centerpieces are so quick, easy and cheap to make. And they can be put anywhere. I have mine on the dining room table at the moment. They help set the mood even though it’s been 80+ degrees here the last few days. Oh, and they smell great, too.

What you’ll need:

2 vases, about 6 inches tall. My vases are hurricane stem style from Dollar Tree.
4 Fall floral picks taller than your vase. My floral picks also came from Dollar Tree.
1 bag of Pumpkin Spice (or your choice) dried potpourri. Guess where mine came from?

This will make a matching set of pumpkin spice vases. Assembly is pretty easy, as you can guess. Use about half a bag of potpourri in each vase and arrange 2 picks in each vase. We refresh the scent of ours with a little pumpkin spice oil.

Pretty, scented and CHEAP. both vases cost me $5 to make, total. Think of what else you could do, too… a little ribbon always goes a long way.

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Tags: DIY

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 in How-To

Make a Halloween garland to hang anywhere. It has loads of potential, which I love. I’ve seen some really creative executions on this pattern.

We use 3 colors (thick construction paper) and attached it to a neutral colored yarn. I made it 2 sided so we could hang it anywhere. We’ve put it up on the mantel every year for 3 years now and it always looks awesome. I mean we throw it in a bag and every year there it is, unscathed and waiting to be hung.

The original pattern was put out there by Paper Crave. You can find the pattern download for the Halloween garland here.

2 Ghoulish Gasps

Tags: DIY, garland, mantel

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 in How-To

http://www.euclidboo.com/terror-carolers-paper-mache-pumpkins

1 Ghouslish Gasp

Tags: jack o lantern, paper mache, pumpkin

Monday, October 13th, 2008 in How-To

It’s unoriginal to call it a sign, so a directory it is.

Mostly because I don’t want to point to things in an absolute manner that aren’t absolute.

The graveyard might not be to the left next year… you dig? It’s like a mall directory in that respect. If I wanna move The Gap to the other end of the mall, I can do that now. And there won’t be any confused preppy kids ending up not finding The Gap or any gothy/emo Hot Topic bound clutches accidentally entering The Gap.

Anyway, Guy gets the joy of assembling, and he was swell enough to cut the wood for me, and I’m sure I’ll be posting an actual write up in the how-to’s eventually, but just enjoy some pictures in the meantime.

Wood for the Halloween haunt directory @ boo!

Photoshop and scissors. Hardcore.

The Boneyard sign.

A Haunted Carnival? Why not!

Hey, gotta get the name out there somehow.

Guess which way it points.

3 Ghoulish Gasps

Tags: signage

Thursday, October 9th, 2008 in How-To

So we have a very large yard to fence off.  We’re talking 50 feet in length.  Our neighbors have always been unknowingly nice enough to throw away some of that 3′ garden fence, and while we set up in the front yard, that was always plenty.

This year, the Halloween haunt is going in the backyard, and our 3′ garden fence is only long enough to wrap around the front of the cemetery.  This left the whole edge of the yard exposed.

We quick started pricing PVC, figuring we’d make a fence out of that, like so many other haunters have.  It always looks really great, but we don’t really have the time nor the cash to buy all the supplies, paint the PVC, etc.

So I thought, and thought some more, when it finally came to me:  Plastic chain!

We have a couple of pallets in the garage.  We’re gonna pull them apart and place wooden ‘poles’ in the ground every (however many) feet.  From there, we’ll either attach or run chain through them with a little swag on the links.  Think of a chain and concrete pole type deal near a lake or something.  Or just look at the picture here on the left.

The more I thought about it, the more I really liked the idea.  So I went on the hunt for plastic chain.

Well, turns out, it’s actually harder to find than you’d think.  I checked lowes and home depot and neither had much.  That’s when I stumbled across http://www.mrchain.com/.

I looked around and sure enough, they had chain.  I was a bit nervous to order from them as I’d never heard of them before.  They’ve got chains in every size and color you can think of.  We were almost prepared to buy about 50′ at $.60 a foot when I noticed a “close out” link.

I FOUND PLASTIC CHAIN, 2″, FOR $.15 A FOOT!!

Mind you I was still nervous about ordering from some place I’d never heard of, and I wasn’t sure this chain was by the foot and blah blah blah.  Oh, and it also has no photo, so the color “gold” was left to our imagination.  We joked that it could be anything from kindergarten yellow to super shiny bling.

We placed the order.  They processed and shipped it all in the same day.  It arrived via UPS super fast (from Michigan to where we are in Ohio) and the color is PERFECT!

Click to blow up the image.  It’s like an aged bronze color.  The invoice calls it “Old Gold”, and I’m tickled pink.  60′ of chain cost us $15.50 out the door, shipping and all.

This is a closeout, though, so if you want some, might wanna jump on it now.  Here’s where you can find it:  http://mrchain.com/-close-outs/2-gold-chain-discontinued.

ETA 6/14/2010: Here’s a shot of the chain in action!  Click it, gets heap big.

1 Ghouslish Gasp

Tags: cemetery fence, chain

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 in How-To

Real Vintage Paper Mache

Click any image to view larger

I love those vintage pumpkin lanterns that go for like $50 on eBay.  If I had billions of dollars and thousands of square feet, I’d probably already own all of them like some weird collector that aims to have the last existing whatever.

Lucky for the rest of the world I have neither.  But I do have newspaper, water and flour.

So Guy and I made our own paper mache lanterns, and I gotta tell ya, they were fun and pretty easy to do!

We made 3 small and one large.  We ended up making the glue like 4 times, but it’s not a big deal.  If you wanna do this, I’ll break down the supplies we used.

* Newspaper, ripped into strips about 6″ – 12″ long
* Assorted balloons from the dollar store
* 2 cups hot water
* 2 cups cold water
* 1/2 cup flour
* 3 tablespoons sugar
* White tissue paper

Heat the 2 cups hot water to boiling.  Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup flour into 2 cups cold water.  When hot water reaches boiling, mix your cold water/flour mixture into it.  Bring this all back to a boil.  When it’s done, add in your 3 tablespoons sugar.  Mix, wait for it to cool, and enjoy.

paper mache strips

We learned not to “pre-soak” your strips because it pretty much dissolves into unusable snot.  Dip a strip in, wring out the excess glue with your fingers, and slap it down on your balloon.

We placed ours on wax paper with a phone book pressing down so they had a flat top and bottom.  We stuck them in front of a fan.  They dry pretty quick, the top/bottom taking longer, of course.  We ended up putting 2 layers down when I realized I should have rubber banded either the balloon or the covered ballooon while it was wet to make a pumpkin shape.  I slapped some extra on there, and it looked ok.

The general rule is to really let these things dry.  We made these over the course of a few days.  It was fun to get dirty time and time again.  Really!

Next: Pop the balloon, pull it out.

Carving was fun.  We modeled a couple after the vintage lanterns we found on the internet and a couple we just cut typical jack o lantern faces into.

I looked all over the place trying to find the right thing to paint it with.  I was totally paranoid that we’d screw them up and have a pile of sad goo.

We ended up going with colorful latex house paint we had laying around in the basement.  2 light coats (think unsaturated) and you’re in business.

Mix some water with your paint for an aged effect for both the green base and to fill in areas that would naturally have shadows.

We finished by drawing the eyes and mouth on tissue paper, cutting them to size and taping them in.

1 Ghouslish Gasp

Tags: Guy, jack o lantern, paper mache, pumpkin, vintage