Halloween Crafting

Any excuse to craft is a good excuse. But holidays aren't an excuse - they're a reason. Holiday crafting is the best kind of crafting!

Here are some of the crafts I've made this year:

Cards! This has been a fun and easy project. Someone left a Ronald Reagan calendar on the free table at work so I incorporated that into some of them. Another person left a whole bunch of James Bond trading cards on the free table so I, of course, used some of those as well. Other cards were just inspired by the workings of my most twisted imagination. I think I've made at least 25 cards but here's a small sampling:

I can't take full credit for the sick one on the bottom right. Others helped.

Last year, my friend Holly (my crafting mentor and inspiration) taught me how to make a witch. This year, I really wanted to make another one so she indulged me. I got the base of the witch in an antique store in Shipshewana, Indiana (Amish country) so I was excited to use it and give the witch a more rustic look. Here's the first step:

 Around the middle point of the project:

The finished product:

Over the weekend I went to a pumpkin patch with my nephew. The assortment of pumpkins at this patch was amazing.

These are the ones we chose:

I also bought a small bale of straw to help display the pumpkins. Once home, Ethan and I gutted and carved his pumpkin. He hated the smell of the inside of the pumpkin. Personally, I love that smell. I cleaned and washed the seeds while he drew a pattern on his pumpkin. While the seeds were roasting, I helped him carve it. Don't try to guess which part was done by me and which part was done by an 8 year old. The skill set for carving is equal:

I took the easy way and instead of carving my pumpkin, I cut out a witch silhouette on my Silhouette machine:

Another very easy craft I did was to paint some craft acorns. I picked up a couple packs of plain acorns from Michaels, then painted the non-cap part (sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable about acorn biology) with a Martha Stewart gold paint I already had.

A very easy craft I made last weekend is a burlap banner. It was easy breezy. All I did was find some Halloween print burlap from JoAnns (favorite place on earth), cut out triangles, and hot glue it to some twine I already had. Sorry, all I have is this super craptastic photo of it.

Gourd Decorating - a couple weeks ago my whole family got together when my aunt and uncle came to visit. To keep the kids busy, I brought a bunch of gourds, paints, and other supplies to the table and got the kids busy crafting! They had some pretty funny creations:

that one on the  bottom left is giving me the stink eye.

And lastly (for now) I made this very easy wreath, based on an idea I saw on Pinterest. It was so easy. I simply got a wreath form from JoAnns (using a 50% off coupon), a boa (also from JoAnns), some ping pong balls, some ribbon I already had, and some vinyl I already had for the pupils. Add some hot glue to the mix and voila!

Even though this seems like a lot of crafting, I'm sure I have more to do and I'm almost equally sure that I forgot to include something in this post. Have you done any Halloween crafts? What have you made?