Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE HALLOWEEN?
Artgirlz has such cool stuff anyway but I just fell in love with their special Halloween items. Friday after school Emma and I played with the mixed bag of black and orange felt balls in various sizes. They call them their pumpkin and spider collection. So of course I made a few of each of those! I used the teeny-tiny balls with seed beads to make eyes on the big spiders. Strong thread and a short piece of brown pipe cleaner makes a really cute pumpkin.

The Witch Kits are my favorite. (I also have two similar kits for Christmas, an elf and a tree.)

 
Last week Emma sketched out what she wanted her Halloween costume to look like. She decided she wanted to be a fairy but not a “Disney Princess Fairy”. More like a Woodland Sprite kind of fairy.

She came into the store with me today and on our way we stopped at Joann’s (yes, even I still shop there on occassion!) for materials. We found this metallic stretchy fabric that looked like magical tree bark or something. I added three colors (black,brown and tan) shimmery tulle and some dark olive green cotton knit and we had the makings of a Woodland Fairy costume.

Going by her vision and sketch plus a few ideas of my own this is what we came up with today. The gathered tulle and petals didn’t have enough give to fit over her head so I had to come up with a way to close up an open back. I refuse to put zippers in Halloween costumes so I decided to make loops and lace up the back of the bodice with black satin ribbon. This left the problem of the “hospital gown effect” in the back of the skirt. I solved that by making one more green petal and hand sewing it to one side of the skirt and putting a hook and eye closure on the other side. She also plans to wear a pair of black stretch velvet gymnastic shorts under it on Halloween.

It was a lot of fun working together on this project and coming up with an original design. This will probably be the last Halloween costume I’ll get to make for one of my girls so I had to go out with a bang!

Here is a quick and inexpensive project for making weather proof Halloween bats.
 
Using the same techniques I used to make Recycled Plastic Totes I bonded layers of black plastic garbage bags together to make a heavier “fabric”. Then I just cut out bat shapes and sewed thread through them to hang them from the front porch.

(Click on any of the thumbnail pictures for a larger view.)
Step 1: 
Fold garbage bag in quarters and smooth out wrinkles.
Step 2: 
Place folded bag between layers of paper. I use a large piece of newsprint.
Step 3: 
Set iron to wool/silk setting with no steam. Iron over paper/garbage bag sandwich. Be careful to keep iron moving and apply pressure to get plastic to melt and flatten out. Keep checking progress and flip plastic over periodically to help bond both sides. If the iron is too hot or left in one place too long it can cause holes in the plastic or make it stick to the paper. Gently peal the paper from the plastic if it starts to stick.
 
The end result will be a textured thick plastic “fabric”.

Step 4:   
Cut rectangle of plastic into two smaller rectangles. Using a paper template, and folding plastic in half, cut bat shape from both plastic rectangles. Download Bat Template PDF

Step 5:
Using mono-filament or black thread sew thread onto bat and hang.
 
On one bat I just sewed through the back of the “head” and on the other I sewed through both wings and connected the threads in the middle.