Handmade Halloween: My Costume

We hosted a Halloween Party on Saturday night. It's one of my favourite events of the year. But playing hostess is busy work. So busy that i hardly got any pictures. Which i'm now kicking myself about. But i do have this one to share of my costume. i decided back in February when i saw the film that i was going to be the Black Swan. And i quickly realised that i already had nearly everything i needed to make my costume. Handmade costumes are the best. Happy Halloween!

Handmade Halloween: Haunted House

i came across this beauty in a charity shop sometime ago and have been holding on to it waiting for the perfect 

project. Then the idea struck me to turn it into a haunted house!

i think it's my favourite Halloween project ever! Here's a few detail shots:

i think i need to made a few more of these button embellishments to add to my scrapbook pages!

Handmade Halloween: Woodgrain Mod Podge Pumpkin

Hi Everyone! Today marks the start of my Handmade Halloween series. If you've been following me here for a while or on twitter (because i tweet about Halloween all year round!) you'll know that Halloween is my favourite of favourites. i'm not quite sure what it is about the holiday that gets me so excited, because horror movies terrify me, but i fully embrace it. i love to make decorations, concoct wicked cocktails, plan my costume, and pick pumpkins. Basically i love everything about it except the fact that the colour purple features so heavily.

Today i wanted to share a tutorial to make a pumpkin that you can use year after year. Here's the supplies you'll need:

*Scissors

*Fabric

*Mod Podge

*Foam Brush

*Paper Mache Pumpkin

i picked my pumpkin up in Hobby Craft, so i'm sure most major craft shops will sell them. Really there aren't many steps to decorating your pumpkin but it can get really messy! So be sure to cover whatever surface you're working on and be prepared to get sticky fingers!

Originally i was intending to decoupage my pumpkin with scrapbook papers but i couldn't bare the thought of using so much paper on one project! So i decided to use this lovely woodgrain fabric that i've been hoarding for some time. You might prefer to cut your fabric strips before hand, but i cut mine as i went.

You'll need to paint a layer of Mod Podge onto the surface of the pumpkin. i found it best to do this as you go  as Mod Podge dries pretty quickly .

Then layer on a fabric strip.

And paint another layer of Mod Podge onto the fabric. Repeat until your pumpkin is covered! My pumpkin had facial features cut out so i made sure there was enough fabric to push through the holes and mod podged them to the inside.

So that my pumpkin looks spooktacular in the dark i've got some faux battery operated tealights to put inside (safety first people!). 

i hope you enjoyed my project! i'll be back tomorrow with another one. 

JBS Scrapfest

Yes, it's been a while since i posted. And if you’re wondering why the blog has been so neglected over the last few weeks it’s because i’ve been busy with all my Halloween crafts. i’m REALLY excited to share what i’ve been up to next week in a Handmade Halloween series! So i'll be making it up to you with lots of crafty posts!

But this weekend i'm joining in on all the fun at the JBS forum for their Scrapfest online crop. i loved the last one they hosted and all the challenges that have been posted so far this time around are really motivating. So much so that i actually finished a layout in one sitting last night, which is the first time i've done that in a while! i took Waleska's colour combo challenge of red + black + turquoise as my inspiration.

i thought it was about time i shared my new hair colour :) i had it done about a month ago. i just felt like a change for the new season. When i first had it done it was really bright and i got quite a few stares! Now it has settled down a bit. It's nice being different for a while, but i think i'll go back to my regular colour after christmas. 

i played around with twine a little on this page instead of going with my standard staple it down with my tiny attacher. And there's a real mix of old & new JBS products, i've been hoarding that die cut paper since 2007! i think that's what i love most about Jenni's products, that they are co classic and never go out of trend. Please pop into the forum and play along with us, you have all week to take part in the challenges so there's still lots of time. Hope to see you there!

October Daily

You're probably already familiar with Ali Edward's December Daily concept. If you haven't you can read all about it here. i've never played along, nor attempted a week in the life but when Doris suggested an October Daily, i was all over it. October is usually a difficult month for me with all the seasonal changes going on so i wanted something fun to focus on aside from the ever growing list of Halloween projects i'm wanting to attempt. It's also my last month living with She Who Must Not Be Named and that's certainly worth documenting. Despite the colder days, darker nights/mornings and the impending doom that is winter, there's a lot to love about Autumn.

i made the mini from scratch. And it's very mini at around 4x6. It's similar to all my previous travel scrapbooks on the go like my Canada album. I find that it's easiest to keep up with an on-going project if i have a pre-made book. It's filled with lots of papers of varying sizes, along with transparencies, tags and doilies to mix things up a bit. The cover is made from some chipboard (I always hoard this from packaging for such projects) that i painted and stamped on with my Smash date stamp. i hand sewed the whole lot together, which made my fingers sore! And then put some 7gypsies fabric tape on the spine to make it a bit sturdier + prettier.

i'm taking pictures with instagram on my iPhone. i always have my phone on me so that seemed like the only way i was going to keep up with actually documenting October. i plan on printing the pictures in batch. And so far i'm journalling in it every day.

Are you doing an October Daily? Link me up if you are! And if you aren't there's still time to get started, there's a little support group going on over here. Do join us.

Scrap Rat October Kit

The October Scrap Rat Kit is now on sale! i found this kit so inspiring, i ran out of time to get any more layouts done in time for the gallery reveal but plan to work on a few more as i still have a ton of product left over. My favourite pieces in the kit were the vintage crepe paper, the Jenni Bowlin Doily flowers and the Crate Paper Random Denim paper. i looooooved that paper! There were also a few things in the kit that i would never normally purchase like the Crate Paper Chipboard Accents, the Prima Resist Canvas pieces and the MME Beautiful Girl Labels paper. But that's the beauty of working with a kit, you sometimes end up challenging yourself to use stuff out of your comfort zone. And i ended up using these pieces as the main inspiration for a few of my pages.

Additional materials: Twine & Punch by Martha Stewart. 

i got a  little happy with my craft knife this month, which is something i almost never do! See what i mean about kit's pushing you to try different things? These papers were begging to be cut up! 

I'll be back with my other layouts later in the month but in the meantime you can check out the DT gallery here.