Bit of information overload in today's post, I like to include EVERYTHING I can think of, feel very free to skip that and just look at the pictures, though I have included a few printables here and there.
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| It is that time of year again, the sun is about a metre high in the sky creating very annoying long shadows!!! :D So apologies for the following dullness, as I can't stand extreme shadows in my photos. |
The fireworks were made using cocktail sticks and wood dowel, wrapped with tissue paper first, then resized firework labels. These were sourced mostly from Steve Johnson's fantastic website,
Cyber heritage. I had emailed Stephen to ask if I could use his images for a free printable, but he stated on his site that he receives about one hundred emails a week and I haven't heard back from him yet, so eventually I found a permission of sorts. He allows them to be used for school projects, etc, so hopefully my printable falls into a category like that. So click
here for firework labels! Note: Personal use only! and they are sized for cocktail sticks and 4mm diameter dowel.
The fuses are crochet thread and the launchers are paper covered wire.
The conical fireworks were made using sawn off sharpened pencil tops, with the lead broken off for fuse space.
The catherine wheels are a length of thick thread wrapped with tissue paper and coiled. The round label is then just glued on to the coil.
I made little cone tops for the rockets, using paper punched circles with a slit on the radius and coloured them with felt tips.
I left the sharp end of the cocktail stick on some of the Roman candles, and these were coloured in with a felt tip.
The fireworks were a lot of fun to make, highly, highly recommended!!
The "Cats and Pumpkins" bunting are vintage Luhr decorations, scaled down and glued onto a piece of linen thread. The "Happy Halloween" bunting is a copy I made in MS Paint, of one that I saw online somewhere, unfortunately I can't remember where though.
I find that if I use tape to secure one end of the thread down and run my finger and thumb lightly down the thread, and then secure the other end, it helps your bunting stay flat later on.
The broomstick was made using wood dowel, and Hornby Skale Scenics field grass for the broom. The witches hat was made using paper, and coloured with black ink. I cut a circle out of card, with a smaller circle in the centre for the brim, and with a larger circle of paper I made a rough cone shape for the crown. I applied some glue to the edge of the inner circle of the base, and popped the cone through. Then when it was dry, I trimmed the excess underneath the base. When I painted the black ink onto the hat, it started to go a bit floppy, so I took advantage of that by making it a little less cone shaped.
I used my lathe to turn a candlestick, and candle. I painted the candle turning white, and then to make the wick, I drilled a tiny hole at the top, inserted a piece of white silk thread, with a bit of glue to stick it in place. I then dipped the candle in a small jar of melted wax, to give it a waxy look. You can then trim the wick and add a bit of black paint..or if you feel brave, you can burn it down and blow it out, but work REALLY fast, alight, blow out, done or ruined :D This is the same method I used for the tapered candles in the candelabra, except I used cocktail sticks.
The sun came out, can you tell? :D
The pumpkins were made using fimo, I found a very good tutorial on
CDHM by Sandra K Palesch, though I skipped quite a few steps. For the stem,
Brae from Otterine shared a great idea (from another blogger,
Joann) for making the pumpkin stalks,
grape stalks and they work brilliantly, so I am passing this on! :D
I didn't want to buy grapes for this project, but at the supermarket I saw some grapeless stalks protruding out of the bag, so I ordered my accomplice, who shall remain nameless, to pull them off for me, then we slipped past security who were none the wiser.....this is my first dip into a life of crime! I did buy some cheese before I left though :D
...sun just left again.
The apples are made from fimo, the stalks are painted wire and the lolly pop sticks are tiny strips of veneer cut and sanded into shape. I had a bit of difficulty with the apple colour and the toffee coating. I would have preferred a more translucent glaze, thankfully I thought better than to use nail polish, I hear that makes fimo sticky over time. Here I used watery PVA glue mixed with paint, I think I put too much paint in.
Little mummified sausages, that didn't quite turn out the way I had them in my mind :D The sausages were made with fimo, and I wrapped them in thin strips of Grace Clay. I really rushed doing these, the pastry was painted in less than a minute :D. I won't tell you what my mother thought they were when she saw them, if you have the mind of a sewer you will know, hint, hint. She put me right off them :D
The giant (but rather small to us) spider legs are wire and the abdomen was made with a small ball of grace clay.
I cut 4 lengths of wire and bent them into a light curve as shown, so that they would all meet in the middle, side by side. If you don't bend the wire like this, the solder will flow down the length of all the wires, sticking them together and you will be left with no legs...hence why I bended them the second time around :D
Solder where the red arrow indicates. Once soldered, you can bend the legs into shape with pointed tweezers.
The blue circle is where you glue the abdomen, either there, or on the other side. Just roll a little ball of air drying clay or make a fimo one, and shaped into a slight teardrop, then dry or bake and attach. Then spray or use humbrol paint to colour your spider.
In real life, I wanted Boo Nanas, Sainsburys magazine had the recipe for these, but I ended up just making miniature ones. I also didn't think to "peel" my bananas first, which is why they are so large :D Anyway, I made banana shapes with fimo, baked them, cut them in half, drilled a small hole in the base of each one, painted them white, numerous coats, then used clear glue to give them some shine and applied little faces using paint applied with a sharpened cocktail stick. The grave stone is the top of a coffee stirrer stick and the mound is a piece of shaped polystyrene covered with Model railway flock.
One has a hair stuck to it! Art imitating life, that would be one of my cats' hairs! :D
My toxic orange Oranges! Always mix your fimo, don't just use it straight from the block, LIKE I DID :D Anyway, the texture came out very well, I made equal sized balls, then rolled them around on very coarse sandpaper, and gently flattened them. The "stem" hollow was made using the tip of a cocktail stick.
A paper skeleton doing an Irish jig, with his hands on the, possibly, wrong way around :D I think this is a vintage Beistle skeleton, I can't remember where I got this from, possibly an image from Ebay, I've been sourcing stuff from there a lot these days. I saved the image and then with a bit of copy and paste and some MS paint, I was able to make it into a printable, moveable cut out. I made a hole in each piece to be joined, then threaded a length of knotted thread through, and made a knot on the other side and trimmed the excess. If you put a needle into the knot loop you can manoeuvre it down closer to the card, then tighten it up.
A little apple trug, made using lollypop sticks and dowel. The lovely little porch hut is a resized version of this victorian
Moyennes Construction model from one of my favourite flickr sites,
Pilllpat (Agence Eureka). I made it up without the tabs, as they are virtually useless at this scale, so I just sliced them off :D
After seeing how fab Elizabeths' curtains turned out, I wanted to use her
Bed curtain tutorial method on something a little less grand, a plain old table cloth.
I wrapped the table to be used, in cling film, and then followed the tutorial, omitting the staining part (though it probably would have been scarier looking had I not).
The cling film wrapped table was set onto a cork place mat. Using a piece of fabric much larger than needed, I soaked it in watery glue and then draped it over the table, with the weave parallel to the perimeter of the table top, and using pins and patience, styled it as shown, then blasted it with the hairdrier.
Once it was dry I trimmed the excess, following the natural lines of the warp/weft in the material. It kept its shape remarkably well during this process, I was a bit worried it would fall out, but no, it didn't, in fact it could just about stand by itself :D
P.s. The green jug and glassware is a Chrysnbon set, in the colour Jadeite. The "curtain" is a bandage.
The scary door graphic is a silhouette of Oogie Boogie from Nightmare before Christmas, I found that online. The spooky black cat picture is a resized version of a painting by a local artist called
Neil Shawcross. It's not very clear here, but the webbing around the cat picture was made using some strands removed from a stretch bandage.
I have noticed a few miniaturists on Etsy selling resized vintage Halloween decor in PDF format to email to buyers to print for themselves. I haven't bought their PDF, but I have used some of the same imagery that they have used, as it is available freely online and they are images of real life sized 50s' 60s era Halloween decor, so I have decided to provide a link to the one I put together for myself, below. I will advise Personal use only though, as the images do not belong to me.
I'm sure everyone has noticed that, It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.........
so if you are in need of some (ok, a lot of) Christmas decoration boxes, keep an eye out for me around early December, as I will be putting up a free Christmas decor box printable sheet! It's an early Christmas present! :D
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