It’s the most wonderful time of the year…. oh wait, that’s the wrong song. This is Halloween!
We LOVE Halloween here at Beagle HQ. Well, I love Halloween and I love sharing my passion with the Lamb (hubby is waiting patiently for Christmas!). With the October half term giving me some lovely, uninterrupted time with the Lamb, we’ve been busy crafting and decorating the house, ready to welcome the spirits on the 31st October.
It’s been lovely digging out decorations we’ve made over previous years. Last year we made string letters which spell out ‘Boo’, the tissue box monster which was a lot of fun and we’ve made pipe cleaner monsters for Women in Horror Month so thought we needed to diversify our makes. A quick look on Pintrest and we had ample inspiration.
My favourite thing about Christmas is all the twinkling lights and I always get sad when we take them down so decided to extend the happiness by getting some cute ghost lights from Poundland. The Lamb asked for a Christmas tree for her birthday (don’t ask. Have you tried buying a Christmas tree in September??) and we’ve left it up, but it’s now covered in the ghost lights and the pumpkin Mickey Mouse keyrings I made. How cute!
Painted hand and footprints can easily be turned into pretty much any Halloween character. We got mucky and created ghosts, pumpkins and witches. It’s a super simple make which doesn’t need many supplies.
We seemed to have a mountain of kitchen towel and toilet rolls, waiting to be used. We talked about a few ideas and settled on making a haunted house. It was very easy to make: we painted the cardboard rolls black, then I carefully cut out windows while the Lamb cut the door (remember to keep a close eye on little people around scissors!). We then made cones for the turrets and I added a little ghost. I just need to get a little tea light to light up the house.
We had so many cardboard rolls, we decided to try ‘The Pintrested Parents‘ dancing skeleton. Again the Lamb was in charge of black paint, whilst I painted the legs and arms. I cut some hands and feet from white card then we strung it all together (I used a scalpel to cut the holes and my tapestry needle to help thread the cord through so as always keep an eye on little fingers around sharp things!). Our little skeleton has quite happily been doing the Monster Mash since!
We’re also still filled with Disney magic following our recent holiday there and so wanted to celebrate some of the villains who made our trip so memorable.
One of our favourite characters we met was ‘Maleficent’. She was superb but I realised once we were home that it’s been a looooong time since we watched ‘Sleeping Beauty‘. Popping it on while we were busy with our other makes, I was reminded about Maleficent’s familiar, Diablo. I thought we definitely needed our own Diablo, but with a Beagle HQ twist! The Lamb was busy supplying me with ‘feathers’ and wings with black handprints whilst I painted a crow shape. He looked fabulous with his handprint wings and I added a yellow beak and an eye. I think Diablo looks truly malevolent!
Phew! What a busy crafting session. We had so much fun. How are you celebrating Halloween this year?