Spooky Stuff

I love decorating the house for Halloween and thankfully my kids would much rather stay in the house and give out sweets than go and get some themselves.  I think this may be to do with doing it one year in the cold and rain.

I thought a few little posts on some easy Halloween decorations might be nice, especially seen as I recently found a whole load of Halloween decoration photos I've taken over the last few years.

This first one is so easy, and yet a lot of fun. It is simply a phrase typed up and printed onto paper, I've then laminated it so I can use it over and over again.  I don't remember where I first saw the phrase (anyone know it?), but it made me chuckle the first time I saw it and I thought I'd copy.

One of my favourite things is being able to hear the reaction from the other side of the door (before you open it).  I love it when people see this sign and get a little spooked.

I love it even more when someone in their group makes them jump by grabbing them on the shoulder, boo-ing them, or just generally scaring them.

Paper Bunnies

Getting ready for Easter I was thinking about what crafts we could do and what we have done in the past.  We have made some lovely bunny paper punch art a couple of years ago.  For this one I used 2 different sized circle punches and then cut out a couple of ear shapes and used some cotton wool for the tail and drew on the whiskers.  It is an easy Easter card to recreate.

Another bunny paper punch art, but this time no bottoms!  We used an egg/oval shaped hole punch and then added a couple of cut out ear shapes and a little paper punched heart.  Googly eyes and some whiskers and you're done!

Whilst looking for rabbit related crafts, I came across this on the Crafty Crow blog. Sadly when I followed the link, this particular cut out was no longer available.  So I have created my own and thought I would share.

I designed it to fit on a piece of A5 paper.  Print it out landscape onto A4, cut off the large blank expanse, fold in half and then cut out the shaded bits to create the rabbit in the frame.  I hope you like it. :o)

Rabbit Template PDF

More Hearts

I've been enjoying using hearts to make more bits and bobs recently.  My Mum found some cards that weren't the traditional stand up kind of card.  Instead you hung them up.  I loved the idea, and immediately had to copy it!  The ones my parents found were owls and monkeys and butterflies I think, but I could see that it would work with a lot of different shapes.  Here it is with hearts.

I used co-ordinating paper, and a heart template.  On the back of the paper I attached the string, which is actually embroidery thread, and on the back of that I added some thin card, I embellished using some craft jewels (mainly from Poundland!).

I was really pleased with the result, and plan to do more like this in the future, I can see that it would work well with flowers, birds and stars and I'm sure many more designs.

I also love seeing what other people can create using felting techniques.  Mine never seem to turn out how I imagine them in my head, but the process is fun.

I was hoping to make this into a family project, but halfway through their first hearts, both children managed to injure themselves with the felting tool.  Normally they are very good with it and manage to keep their fingers out of the way, but not this time, and I'm not sure how long it will take me to persuade them to have another go.

So I think rather than the bunting project I had planned, I'll just do a little hanging garland thing.  I quite like these, even if I can see I've not quite managed the design I had in mind for them.

As well as being able to get involved with the felting, card making and other crafting I do I like to get my kids to create some art of their own for a "sort of" gallery we have for them.  At the moment I really want them to make me something with hearts on it for Valentines Day.  

Often I can encourage the type of art I want by finding printables online with the right subject matter, or I do love the Usbourne colouring books and sometimes I photocopy pages that I know I will want them to do more than once!

This time I created my own doodle page, and I thought that it might be fun to share it, so others could colour it in too:

Skulduggery Pleasant

We have been through many phases in our house, there has been Thomas the Tank Engine, Octonauts, Deadly 360, Hello Kitty, Super Heroes, Harry Potter, Moshi Monsters to name just a few.  The current obsessions are Minecraft (which I already wrote about here) and Skulduggery Pleasant.

Some friends started reading this Derek Landy series, and I thought there was no way that my daughter would like to read them, but I showed her one of the books in the library and she was quite keen.  Over the Christmas holidays we managed to acquire books 1 to 7, and I am so pleased we did.

The blurb on the back of the first book is:

"Meet Skulduggery Pleasant; detective, magician, warrior.  Oh yes, and dead."

How cool does that sound.

My daughter started reading it, and my son was interested so I started reading it out loud to him.  Currently my son and I have just started book 2, my daughter is coming to the end of book 6 and the Husband is just about to start book 3.  We are really, really  enjoying the series.

Now, normally, when the kids discover some new craze I go find some games/word searches/crafty ideas on Pinterest/the internet and we work through them.  This time it has been different, I really couldn't find that much out there.  Although, there is some very cool artwork here, and the official website here also has some things to do on it.  Oh and I also found this, which gives you step by step instructions on how to draw Skulduggery Pleasant.

So this time we've had to come up with our own crafts and printables.  My daughter owns a fashion designer book and she created her own Stephanie using the stencils in the book.  I created a word search inspired by Skulduggery Pleasant.  Here it is.  I hope you have fun with it.  I have an answers sheet, please leave a comment if you need it, and I'll try to put that up too.