paint cut paste

i hope everyone had a happy halloweeeeen! thought i’d share with you a little mother-daughter creation: N’s halloween costume!

by “mother-daughter,” this time i actually mean myself and my mom (N’s gwee!) N expressed that she wanted to be an owl this year for halloween… and that they are her new favorite animal now, trumping the fox?!? whaaa? of course, she does have owls all over her bedroom and her shower curtain and bathroom is covered in them, so this isn’t outta no where.

N's felt owl mask

i remembered how awesome all of my halloween costumes were as a kid because my mom made them all! i feel like such a loser that i usually go the pottery barn kids route each year, so when i realized that my mom was visiting us in cali a few weeks before halloween, i jumped on the opportunity to enlist her help with making this costume (and learning more about this sewing machine thing-a-ma-jig collecting dust in my guest room closet.) i was inspired by the artful parent’s post on making bird wings (which was inspired by ones she’d seen on prudent baby.) i figured these would work well for a little owlie girl on halloween night, right? so first, a trip to joann’s fabrics was in order so we could choose fabrics and a color scheme, based around N’s fav color (which is still purple, to my knowledge.)

then we measured N’s wingspan arm length, and i cut a pattern for the wings and “feathers.”

next my mom and i got down to business with a whole lot of tedious (but easy) tracing and cutting. (sorry for dark photos. most of this work was done at night after the little one was asleep.)

the sewing began. (and my mom showed me again how to wind my bobbin and thread my machine. somehow i do not retain this information, no matter how many times i’m told. probably because once it’s done, i don’t touch the machine for a year or more in between lessons.)

costume contains lots of love

the sewing continued and messes were made.

i created a mask out of felt while mom diligently sewed.

we also created an oval patch covered with the “feathers” that we tacked onto one of N’s shirts.

in the end, it was all worth it. my little lady was the cutest owl in town on halloween night!

as you have seen on the blog lately, i’ve been trying to spruce up my autumn mantel. i think it’s an ever-evolving process, but i do want to share a little creation i made at the suggestion of one of my readers – thank you anna lucia – felt leaf garland!

after creating the autumn wreath and the BOO halloween pumpkins, i did feel that something was missing in tying it all together. i was anticipating N making our favorite real leaf garland for the mantel or using our paper roll pumpkin garland again this year, but instead it seemed my mantel needed another touch of felt to bring the look together. i cut (freehand, be nice) various leaf-like shapes into the same colors of felt we used in our wreath. (you could trace real leaves for shape accuracy, but i was just freestyling it while watching tv the other night.)

i pinned them together, slightly overlapping, and set out to sew.

the sewing was quick and painless (even for a beginner like myself!) i just had to lift the pedal foot sometimes so as not to have a leaf’s tip get folded onto itself. no biggie.

the garland looks pretty cute on our halloween mantel, and it will likely stay there beyond the halloween decorations and until thanksgiving.

i’m not totally loving the mantel’s fall face, but there’s always next year to try something fresh, like maybe this amazing green autumn mantel. okay, now back to the KID ART, right? (sorry for the mom-tinkering and home decorating as of late – i’m a little preoccupied… and inspired!) do you create seasonal mantels in your home?

admittedly, i got all jazzed about pinterest painted pumpkins this year. i mean, have you seen the options?! it’s intense out there. martha is quaking in her fryes with the sheer amount of pumpkin talent run amok on the interwebs. and lemme tell ya, i am NO  threat to ms. stewart in any way, shape, or form. let’s talk total craft fail right now (and a quasi-recovery?) here are some of the pinterest gems that piqued my pumpkin passion.

you know i don’t use the words “craft” or “fail” much at all, (for totally different reasons) but this is a complete craft fail (do i have to put a hashtag in front of that term? eww, lingo.) and instead of ___fail, i’d rather just call it an art-gone-wrong moment. (but yes, #craftfail!) i was inspired to make some painter’s tape resist pumpkins (like bottom left pic above) and three pumpkins with B O O stenciled onto them. i figured they’d be all beautiful and i’d title the blog “smashing pumpkins” and everything. i bought these super inexpensive beauties at a produce stand.

taped and stickered them where i wanted them to remain orange.

i grabbed some matte spray paint, and went to town.

(the only thing that was cool here was the caravaggesque lighting of these photos, and that was an accident)

after the paint dried, i peeled off the tape and stickers… um, and MOST OF THE SPRAY PAINT! (grrr)

for the B O O pumpkins, i thought i’d use these cool vinyl letter stickers i bought at michael’s, but large stickers do not stick in any sort of flat way to a rounded pumpkin surface, so i knew they would not produce a clean line when painted around. so i thought (sure, just for like two seconds) and grabbed some rubber cement and painted the letters B O O onto the pumpkins instead.

i figured the rubber cement would roll right off after they were painted and show the letters i had carefully designed by hand. perhaps this would have worked (???) if i had NOT USED SPRAY PAINT!

so i dropped this agenda altogether. i purchased three white pumpkins. i stuck the vinyl letters onto them as best i could. i traced around the letters with a pencil. i painted inside my pencil lines with sepia acrylic ink.

and it worked out well enough for this year.

pumpkins drying against sliding glass door - fun effect

and now onto designing the rest of the mantel…

in creating our fall mantel (after plenty of pinterest research, of course) i decided we needed an indoor autumn wreath. i scored a really cool paned window at the salvage yard a couple of weeks ago, and it was begging for a little adornment. i’ve seen these cute little felt flowers all over the internet lately, and thought we’d give them a shot.

i purchased a $4 grapevine wreath from michael’s as the base. decor-wise, i straddle the line (not so elegantly) between rustic and modern, and the grapevine wreaths are definitely on the earthier side of things. i was hoping some sleek felt spirals would make them somehow more chic. N helped me to select some autumn colors of felt at michael’s, too. we decided to stay with just three colors. she had fun helping out in the whole process, which helps her to take pride in her creations as part of our home.

though i had seen the felt flowers around the blogosphere, i wasn’t quite sure where i first saw/pinned them and how to begin. after i conducted a search for a video tutorial, i coincidentally landed on my high school friend, beth’s, AMAZING blog, Home Stories A2Z, and she taught me and N how to do it! love that!

we followed beth’s clear directions, and it was suuuuper simple. N even made a flower of her own (but i did the hot glue part, of course.)

the flowers turned out rather cute! (i can see how it could get addictive… i now want to make N a headband with smaller versions of these on it!)

now to figure out the rest of the mantel… my painted pumpkin project for halloweening the mantel has been a total craft-fail so far. i’ll share about that soon…

a work in progress...

do you do a fall mantel or halloween mantel or switch it up? what’s warming your hearth this season?

as halloween approaches this weekend, i thought i’d do a little round-up of some of our favorite halloween projects we’ve done.

here are a few projects we did in 2009 at halloween-time:

a hallow-green monster

a boo branch

others that we’ve done that make for great halloween crafts:

• monster magnets
• halloween gingerbread cookies (gluten-free!)
• pumpkin garland
• yarn pumpkins
• day of the dead skull

more of our autumnal art can be found here. what are your favorite halloween arts and crafts projects you’ve done? let’s inspire each other — please share your photos on our facebook page this week!

have a happy and safe halloweeeeen!

over the weekend, we went over to N’s classmate’s house for a playdate. N’s friend “s” has a super-creative momma, karen, who planned out a cute halloween craft for the kids to do together. she agreed with my photographing their process and sharing it with you on my blog. so here are our silly spiders!

the night before the playdate, karen covered a few styrofoam balls with orange tissue paper (using glue) and gathered other materials such as orange and black pipe cleaners, googly eyes, puffy balls, feathers, and glitter glue. you could do this with black tissue paper to make black spiders, too, or any other color, of course!

we started by asking the kids how many legs a spider has, and the girls began to stick the metal pipe cleaners (legs) into the ball (body) to create the spider’s form.

dress-up time was right before art time, so N was dressed as tigger here

then the fancy decorating began. they glued on googly eyes and puff ball noses.

while N kept her spider quite minimalistic, “s” decided that her spider would have really colorful feathery hair and lots of sparkly glitter glue, and it turned out so awesome!

both girls were quite proud of their silly spiders! this is such a non-messy, super-easy craft for kids from 2 years old and up. our spider will certainly be a cute addition to our annual halloween decor.

thank you for the playdate, “s” and thank you, momma karen, for this sweet idea!

día de los muertos, or the day of the dead, occurs on november 2nd, shortly after halloween. some rituals connected with this mexican holiday include creating altars honoring the dead using sugar skulls, marigold flowers, and the favorite foods of the departed. sometimes people visit cemeteries with these gifts honoring their ancestors. while the day of the dead is different than halloween, it is often lumped together with it since some of the iconography is similar. we decided to create our own little skull honoring the holiday and our ancestors for our altar at home.

N found a pre-made paper mache skull on a recent trip to michael’s that she really wanted to paint, which was the impetus for this project. she decided it should be white (like skulls are) so we got out some white acrylic and mixed it with a little silver for some shine. N began to paint.

after it was all painted white, she wanted to decorate it by gluing on different sequins, shimmery stones, and feathers.

embellishments

she had a great time putting on drops of glue and placing objects. my favorite moment was when she found a red plastic “crystal” and glued it to the forehead of the skull and said, “this can be one of his chakras!” what a proud reiki master momma i was in that moment.

N loved the finished skull with its different yellows, reds, golds — inspired by marigold flowers (though we had none.) after it was complete, she asked if it could “glow in the dark.” we didn’t use glow-in-the-dark paint, so i told her we could try to put an electric votive candle inside of it to make the inside glow. i had to use an x-acto knife to cut a little trap door in the bottom to get the “candle” inside, as it wouldn’t fit through the jaw.

she loved the effect — “magic!” though not made of sugar, the skull will be placed on an altar i made in grad school to honor our ancestors as an offering to those who’ve come and gone before us on november 2nd.

(a peek at my ancestry altar from 2003)