Halloween Bottle Cap Necklaces Are Still Fun

Spent a few spare hours making fun bottle cap necklaces for Halloween.  I couldn't wait to try my hand at making a shaker style one.  Anything shaker style or snow globe is right up my alley.

I ran across this shaker tutorial ( https://youtu.be/OkvUVOnuwOA) as I was prowling  YouTube for something else.  Seems that always happens to me.  It must be ADD 'cause I get side tracked and easily lost anytime I turn on YouTube.

After seeing  Crafting It Up and Creations  tutorial, I immediately ordered some black bottle caps, a few chains and printed off some Halloween graphics.  I already had the glue and chucky glitter that was perfect for the shaker fill.  It  took a little practice to keep the acetate from slipping around too much, but all and all it was a pretty easy project.  Can't wait to wear mine in October to a few upcoming  Halloween themed events.

More Winter Churches

Like I mentioned in my last post, I have these wood slices from tree branches that I have to find a use for.  After looking through my crafting stash, I came across a few glittered churches from the Dollar Tree that I picked up last year.  All I had to do to create a wintery scene was to apply a little hot glue to the bottom of the church, add a few bottle brush trees and sprinkle the piece with a little artificial snow.

I liked it so much, I decided to make two.

I'm sure you'll agree that they came out looking adorable.  The perfect little piece to place under a glass cloche.

 IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS!

Recently, the organization I volunteer with commissioned the Rebuilding Exchange to slice tree branches collected from the City's tree trimming operations into disks.  The intention was to use the disks as pendants for children to stamp animal prints on as part of a park event.  Well, the event got canceled due to stormy weather and we were left with a number of disks.

One of the other volunteers who was familiar with my crafting suggested that I might want to incorporate some of the disks into a project.  It's then that I realized the disks would make the perfect foundation for the little paper Christmas churches I had planned to make as decor.

I painted the tops with a clear matte varnish, added dabs of snowy white paint here and there, dusted on some sparkly glass glitter added a few bottle brush trees and wah-lah.  A darling, rustic, wintery Christmas church. 

This little church scenes will look adorable sitting on a  stack of old books, a tabletop, pedestal or shelf.   The best part, they're not so Christmassy that they can't be used
throughout the winter season. 

Halloween Cards

I finally had a couple of free hours to work on Halloween cards.  After die cutting out a few scraggly trees, haunted house silhouettes, tombstones and a few fences, I came up with the idea to make a Z-fold card.  I searched my stash for background paper, and like always, couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.  Now that I'm on a very fixed income, I'm determined to use only supplies I already have.  With those limitations, I selected printed paper in fall colors and had to be satisfied with that.  With the exception of their size being different, the cards themselves are pretty much the same.

Halloween Good Witch Wands

I'm already behind schedule.  I vowed that I would begin my Halloween crafting starting in July - kind of like "Halloween in July".  But a million things like work and family obligations got in the way.

I thought I would start with a simple and fast  project idea, but in the world of crafting, nothing is simple or speedy.  

Halloween Wands gave me a chance to use a lot of what I already had in my stash: paper, cut files, cardstock and tidbits of ribbon.  I have to admit that I didn't have the dowels so I did have to spend money I didn't want to.  When you live in a tiny house like I do, and your craft room already has shelves of leaning stacks, you shouldn't even buy one more sheet of paper.

Like I said, I thought my simple project was going to be speedy too.  Well, you think I would have known better by now.   By the time I gathered all my tools, painted the dowels, waited for them to dry, cut the paper, pleated the rosettes, waited for the paper glue to dry, hours had gone by!

But it was worth all the effort when my 6 year old grand-daughter stopped in and spotted the wands laying on my table. She  immediately picked one up and asked if she could have it.

I plan to make a few more and hope that the experience of making them will lend for a reduction in time spent making them.  I'll see.

ADDED LIGHT TO MY HALLOWEEN SCENE

I inserted orange fairy lights into my diorama display to make for an eerier display.

Early Halloween Diorama

My two favorite holidays to craft for are Halloween and Christmas.  I  use to go crazy for the scrapbook paper and embellishments that came out specifically for those holidays.   I couldn't wait to take pictures of the grand kids participating in those holiday just so that I could make scrapbook pages.

Well,  I've expanded my crafting to include holiday décor and greeting cards too.  Because I'm a busy camper volunteering for many social causes, and I because I want to start selling my finished projects on line, I have to start early.  Halloween comes before Christmas, so I  thought I'd get a jump start on it first.

I've fallen in love with the many dioramas I've seen posted on line lately.  And I've been fascinated with miniature worlds ever since I was a kid.  So this is my first attempt at using paper to create a spooky scene to set on top of a shelf, desk, table or whatever.  Using items from my stash, I kept it simple but thought it came out both cute and spooky.

The paper comes from a Martha Stewart addition from some time ago.  The shapes were cut using my Wishblade.   The box is made from foam core board and a picture frame.  It's not perfect, but handmade items aren't meant to be.  I'm thinking of adding lights. Now if  I could only find that strand I picked up last year...