Day 40 - DIY fancy dress

So no blog yesterday as Iw as gearing up to a party, and then hosting. I spent ost of the day pottering around tidying and adding more decorations, but also the finishing touches to my costume. This costume cost me 99p for the tiny elastic bands in my hair, everything else was recycled, obviously it helps having facepaint lying around. After my practice on the polystyrene heads, it was pretty easy painting my own face, and I'm pretty chuffed with the outcome. Definitely a low effort costume I would recommend.
Anyway, off to work soon so I will be back again later.

Day 39 - DIY skeletal cut-out T shirt

Happy Halloween! I'm gearing up to host a spooky party tomorrow evening, hence the decorations. Today it was time to think of a costume to go with my Sugar Skull make-up plan. I was going to just wear black and keep it simple, before Pinterest inspired me to play with the skeletal theme. I found an old white T shirt which I turned inside out and drew on in felt pen. I used my mannequin to help discern where bones lived and the Man picked at details until he was satisfied it was reasonably correct. A bit of snipping and then the difficult job of finding something to wear underneath. As it was a giant T shirt I used safety pins to bring in the sides a little and give it a bit more shape
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Day 38 - Pumpkin Part two

My pumpkin is complete, now all I need to do is wait for night to fall so I can display it in all it's glory. I went for a battery powered light rather than the old candle as the design needed a harsh light to stand out. So my genius plan is a multi LED torch implanted into the back of the pumpkin. It was a challenge doing an image this intricate, but I love challenges, especially when I achieve what I set out to do.

Day 37 - Pumpkin, part one

I have a very ambitious plan for my pumpkin, I have transferred my design and carved the moon, but more than that is not going to happen tonight, so here it is in it's first stages...

Day 36 - Halloween Sugar skull heads

It's been pretty nice painting this afternoon, I'm not feeling one hundred percent so this was something I could get on with on the sofa, in my pajamas and pretend I don't have to go to work later. These are polystyrene heads I purchased for my market stall a few years ago, I've used watercolour tubes to paint and a biro for smaller detail. It's actually a nice surface to work on, you can use your hands to blend and if you go wrong you can just rub it out with a bit of wet tissue!
Anyway, a little bit of practice for my costume and some freaky additions to my Halloween decor.

Day 35 - DIY easy Halloween bat decal

So this is yesterdays blog as it was one of those busy days of work and visitings, and actually I made most of the bats a few days ago. Though I had fun this morning arranging them coming out of the chimney and up the wall. I think it needs more...many more!
Black sugar paper, scissors and bluetac, I had a google image page open with lots of bat silhouette shapes and worked on folded paper to get mostly symmetrical bats. I think mixing up the sizes and shapes makes for a more realistic cloud of bats (or colony, or camp!)

Day 32 - DIY halloween nails

I love dressing up, making costumes and painting faces, I hope I never get too old for that. For Halloween, or rather for All Hallows we are throwing a little party. I'm sure there will be a number of festive posts over the next week as I prepare. First up, dark stripey nails, I used a deep red for the base and a very thin brush to paint the black stripes. All you really need for this is a steady hand and patience. I think stripes is a good place to start, I think I'll try adding a spiderweb next week...