Boo-tiful Crafts to Make

With Halloween just a week away, pumpkin carving projects came to my mind as a perfect treat to make for celebrating this holiday. 

I challenged my art students to come up with their own twist on creating jack-o-lanterns. As usual, they met the summons with gusto and, before long, we had a table filled with beautiful achievements!

Alicia was very excited about this project - or perhaps it was the wine and tangerine margarita's working?!

Here's how we made decorative vases: 

SUPPLIES

• Hollow, styrofoam pumpkin (I found a 6 inch size at a dollar store)
• Serrated knife
• Various fall-colored artificial flowers and Halloween related items
• Hot glue gun (optional)

HOW TO MAKE IT

• Carefully make a circle cut at the top of the pumpkin using the knife, at least big enough to put your hand inside (shown at the right is the cut-out I made on the side of a pumpkin to prepare it for a diorama)
  

Option 1:

• Place artificial floral stems inside the pumpkin allowing the blooms and greenery to pop from the top 

Rosa's Fall Floral Vase - with a touch of bones

Option 2:

• Hot glue objects to the pumpkin so that they're peeking out of the top (I rummaged through my stash of Halloween decorations and put them out for the group to find clever ways to reuse them - styrofoam skulls and bones, plastic witches and spiders, leaves, etc.) 
  
  

  

  Carol's Witchy Vase

Option 3:

• Place a glass cup inside the pumpkin, tall enough to reach the rim, and fill with potting soil and a succulent or other live plant.

The floral vases make pretty tabletop displays or hostess gifts, perfect for this holiday and through the Thanksgiving season.

To make a diorama:

SUPPLIES

• Hollow, styrofoam pumpkin, any size
• Serrated knife
• Various fall-colored artificial flowers, moss, vegetable netting, and Halloween related items
• Hot glue gun
• Battery operated tea lights (optional)

HOW TO MAKE IT

• Carefully make an oval cut at the side of the pumpkin using the knife
• Fill the pumpkin with whatever suits your fancy! 
• We hot glued moss, florals, and spooky objects inside and outside the pumpkins. I cut up a bit of netting from a vegetable bag and hot glued that to the inside back of a pumpkin and then glued a spider to the "web". In another pumpkin, I placed a plastic skull from a dollar store that I painted in a sugar skull fashion on top of a bed of moss. I put a battery operated tea light on either side of the skull so that they would flicker inside the pumpkin and show off the skull. As you can see from the picture at the top of this page, it turned out quite booo-tiful!

Sandy's Floral Diorama with Skeleton Pair

Carol's Fright Night Scene

Alicia and Nicole's Spooky Creations

Don't be afraid to create your own frighteningly beautiful art!

Spray Paint Whatever Doesn't Move!

     My hardware store was having a moving sale. Wanting to help the local economy, I went nuts in the paint department! Spray paint adds an impressive impact to just about anything. Grab your favorite color, a pair of plastic gloves, painters tape, a drop cloth or box to catch the over spray, and your object of desire. Here are examples of what I've done so far:

    A plastic dollar store skull and some seashells went from plain to pizzazz! I hot glued some artificial flowers onto the spray painted skull for a Dia de los Muertos celebration.

All those plain glass vases hiding in cabinets are now gleaming eye candy!

Pinecones anyone? Nature never looked so good!

With wood slices, I used painters tape to mask the bark where I didn't want the spray paint to show. I used black chalkboard paint to spray the tops of the slices.

Tah Dah!

I used a gel medium called molding paste to stencil a design on top of one piece of wood.

On this piece, I've hand written a quote with a gold paint pen. 

PROJECT TIP! Wear gloves, long ones if you can, or long sleeves. Uh, I did not have full protection, as you can see. It took a long time to scrap the paint off of my poor skin. ow.

Oh what fun, oh what next? Picture frames, plastic patio chairs, plant pots, lamp bases...yeeehaaa!