Super quick and easy, these five mini projects will put the scare in your lair in under an heure (ok, that’s French for hour, but it rhymes! Poetic license peeps!)
Lickety-Split Luminaries (est. 15 minutes)
These are more like lamp shades, in that they have no bottoms or tops, but they’re perfect for quick and easy decorating. Find your favorite creepy shapes in the Pazzles Craft Room and create your own scary scene with shapes such as the witch from files like Best Witches, the tombstones and fence from the Graveyard Fence Border, the Spooky House, the Howling Ghost, the tree and Bats (to name a few). Create an 8.5 by 5.5 inch rectangle then inline it at 0.5 to create a black frame with the center (inline) white, then line up your scene with each element overlapping the one next to it as well as the edges of the frame; select the whole group and Subtract Weld them together in your software.
To create legions of lurid landscapes use the powerful software to modify the files to fit your fancy: rotate and crop the Haunted Spooky Tree (with Cut Straight Line) then duplicate to become a brier thicket foreground or use the Spooky Branch in a similar manner.
Create multiple sizes of the Howling Ghost and flip its face for variation.
Fit two luminary scenes to a portrait-oriented 8.5 by 11 page and cut them out of a piece of black cardstock. Line your luminary with parchment (tracing) paper, curling it a bit as you glue the black frame and elements to the parchment. Attach the sides together with Scotch tape or Scotch Permanent Glue Stick forming a cylindrical oval and place over a puck light, electric votive candle(s) (the flickering kind give an especially nice effect!) or a string of LED Ultra Slim Wire Lights (or a combination thereof) and place as your snack table centerpiece or as added interest in a window sill.
To make it extra fun, use Subtract Weld to add a Spider Web (or many scary eyes from Pazzles Craft Room files Trick Or Treat Ghost, Howling Ghost, Curvy Ghost, Dracula Pumpkin, Monster Mash: Blue Monster and Magic Frog [the last two both modified so the pupils are attached], Orange Eyed Cat) within an oval frame slightly larger than the size of the top of your luminary, cut it out and lay it on top (with a bright puck light, it will project images onto the ceiling if placed close enough), or fill the top of the luminary with a sparse smidgen of spider webbing.
Pumpkins Parley (est. 10-15 minutes)
Dress up your pumpkins (without any mess). These talk bubbles came from the Craft Party Nametags file in the Pazzles Craft Room, with some added fonts tweaked as follows:
“BOO!” was created with 0.913 high Antiquite font which was then condensed horizontally with the right center handle until it was skinny enough to fit the speech bubble, then stretched taller with the top center handle until it filled the speech bubble. Then the text was welded to preserve the shape so that the individual letters and their parts can be manipulated should the same font be absent on a different computer.
“Sup?” was created with 0.913 high BngMd font which was then welded, grouped (the “p” parts together and the “?” parts together), then manually the punctuation and letters were moved tighter horizontally by selecting each letter, holding the shift key to maintain the vertical placement and again selecting, holding and dragging them closer to each other using the mouse.
“Yo” was created with 1.005 TechnicalSm font modified by using Visual Text Spacing, to give more space between the letters, then welded to preserve the shape, then outlined to 0.04 (with the inner O inlined to 0.03 which replaced the original, and colored white [brush color] with black trim [pen color] which lends to it looking the same thickness as the Y). Cut the back layer of the name tags and the letters and punctuation from black cardstock and the front layer of the name tags from white cardstock. Assemble and glue in place with a Scotch Permanent Glue Stick. Attach the talk bubbles to the pumpkins with LocTite Fun-Tak Mounting Tabs or a little Duck Tape.
Frighteningly Fast Freaky Fridge Face (est. 5 minutes)
Grab the Curvy Ghost file from the Pazzles Craft Room, ungroup it and select just the eyes. Rotate and enlarge so they fit together using the most space possible on a single 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of black cardstock. Cut out of black cardstock.
For the scary mouth, use the Oval Tool in your software and make it as big as will fit using the entire space on a single 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of black cardstock (about 6.997 inches by 10.821 inches). Use the Distort Tool to give it some waviness. Cut out of black cardstock. Tape in place on your fridge! (also works on your front door) Voila!
Bootiful Bats (est. 5-10 minutes)
Tape these to mirrors, walls, picture frames, doors, ceilings, lamps, etc. Or, with just a little more effort, you can hang them from the ceiling or chandelier on black or white craft thread (embroidery floss).
Make a double set and secure them in matching pairs (creating a double-sided bat) around the craft thread with a dab of glue, using a large bat at the bottom end of the string with a penny glued between the main body portions for weight so the string and bats hang nicely (otherwise the lowest bat tilts awkwardly). Find the Bats file in the Pazzles Craft Room and duplicate as many as you want onto a sheet of 12 by 12 or 8.5 by 11 black cardstock (sometimes deep purple is fun, too), resizing a few for variety if you like. Cut out of black cardstock, crease slightly and decorate away! You could also stick them on the ceiling, along your fireplace mantel or in a spooky dried twigs bouquet. Use the rest of the cut page as a festive scrapbook overlay! Win: Win!
Trapped Hands Shadow Window Decoration (est. 10-15 minutes)
Using the hands from the Pazzles Craft Room file Graduation Day Collection: Hands In The Air, size to your liking and cut from black cardstock. Tape them to the windows of your garage door, front door or front door side lights then cover with bright yellow butcher paper for a fun spooky effect. To make it even creepier, cover with parchment paper (instead of the butcher paper) and then hang a set of LED Ultra Slim Wire Lights behind the parchment.
Halloween home accomplished!
~Renee
