My kid is only a mere 2 year old but already has a fondness for all things Halloween. The kid currently sleeps with a small skeleton and one of those candy bowls with a hand in it next to his bed. I don’t know where he gets it, neither of us parents particularly like scary things. The scariest movie we own is Pirates of the Caribbean. Oddly enough our little guy would rather watch the skeleton pirate parts of the movie on repeat than Finding Dory because Dory is “too scary”. Nothing in the world of a toddler makes sense.
One thing I can get behind is Halloween crafts. Halloween kicks off a great season of what I like to call crafting holidays. I guess being stuck inside for three months makes people creative? Either way, I have no problem making all of the ghosts, spiders and pumpkins little man requests if it involves me being able to break out the glue gun.
This project is one of my go to projects when I can’t think of anything else to make or we are low on crafting supplies. It involves very little and can be adapted for just about any holiday or event. I will warn you ahead of time that if you are working with littler children, you will want to prepare some things ahead of time because everyone knows that a toddler and patience do no go hand in hand. If you have some older kiddos that can work a pencil sharpener, let them help in the prep!
What you will need:
- crayons
- wax paper
- iron
- crayon sharpener (you can also use a knife if you don’t have one)
- 2 dish towel
- packing tape (optional)
- construction paper (optional)
- googly eyes (optional)
- glue
First things first. Get your iron ready. I usually keep mine on the setting for cotton since the actual ironing part is done on dishtowels. Next you are going to need to peel all of the paper off of your crayons. This is a good project for all of those used and broken crayons that tend to accumulate over the years. Once the paper is off you are going to want to sharpen the crayons to get your wax shavings. If you don’t have a crayon sharpener you can make shavings with a knife. Just make sure you are careful and don’t let the kiddos do it.
Usually when doing wax melted project, we just mix the colors all together, but for this project I kept them separate. I did mix several different shades of the same color together, just to give it a little more pop. You can always mix more colors together later.
Lay out a dishtowel on a flat and hard surface. Get out two sheets of wax paper and place them on top of each other, keeping in mind how large you want your project to be and taking in to account that the wax will melt and spread a little. Once you have two sheets on top of each other place them on top of the towel. You are going to want something under the wax paper so it doesn’t melt to whatever surface you are working on.
Once the sheets are on top of the towel, sprinkle the colors your want on to the paper. A little wax will go a long way, you don’t have to have the entire area completely covered with shavings.
Once you have your desired and approximate color layout, take two more sheets of wax paper and place them on top of the pile of savings. The two sheets on both sides help keep the wax from seeping through the paper.
Cover the stack of wax paper with another dish towel and place your iron on top. Moved the iron around slowly but in small circular motion. In some cases you might need to press down a little when you move the iron to make sure that the color spreads to all of the less covered places.
Check under the towel every once in a while to see how the melting is going and to see where you still need to move the iron. Once your crayon shavings are melted remove the iron and set aside the wax to cool off.
Cooling off should only take a few minutes. At this point you may want to remove the extra layer of wax paper on either side keeping one layer on each side of the melted wax. It isn’t necessary but sometimes the colors seem more vibrant through one layer of wax paper instead of two.
Next you want to cut out the shapes for your Halloween characters from the melted wax. I didn’t use any templates, I kind of free handed and used the shape that it melted into to decide what it would look like. For the moon I found a bowl that I traced around. For the monster I decided to leave him as a blob and just cut off the excess paper around the shape that it naturally made.
Next you will want to get out your paper and cut some legs for your spider, a bat for your moon, and a stem for the pumpkin. Throw on some googly eyes for your ghost, spider, pumpkin, monster and maybe even the moon or the bat if you want.
I wasn’t sure how laminated these would go because of the wax involved. Some laminating machines use heat, and the wax could also break up if it is bent even slightly. I chose to do the cheap version of laminating where I cover the whole thing in a layer of packing tape and then cut around it. It seemed to work out just fine, although it did take a significant amount of time. I would suggest taping off at least the edges of these since you will be cutting shapes into the wax and the edges will no longer be sealed by the excess wax paper.
In the end, we had several monsters to decorate our little guy’s door for Halloween and he was super excited that he got to help! The best part is that this project can be adapted into almost anything, I almost turned the green into a witch, but I thought Frankenstein’s monster usually get left out.
Halloween is just around the corner and while most people have been planning their costume for weeks, I have put very little thought into it. I get way more excited planning what my toddler is going to be. I’m usually stuck somewhere between wanting to show my Halloween spirit but wanting to wear clothes that won’t leave me freezing, itchy or with some form of face paint on. I’m also one of those people that once I get dressed in the morning, I’m dressed for the day. That’s where these cute Halloween bracelets come in.
What You Will Need:
First you will need to cut a strip of plastic canvas in the width that you want for your bracelet. I cut the strip along the shorter side of the plastic canvas sheet so that I could make more. It doesn’t matter at this point if it is too long because you will want to overlap it anyway.
Next make sure you cut off any of the little “nubbins” from the plastic canvas. You want it to be smooth on both sides of the strip. This is an easy step, but a surprisingly messy one. Those things will go everywhere and if they get in your carpet the only chance of getting them out is vacuuming.
Now you need to determine the size of your bracelet. It needs to easily go on to your wrist but also not be so big that it falls right off. This is where the overlapping happens. Once you get the size you want, you will need to tie the overlapping parts together. You will only need to do this in one little spot, just to make sure the size stays like you want it.
Once you have your mini yarn ball, pick a spot and start wrapping it around the strip. This part is the most annoying and time consuming part. Weaving through the bracelet hole while trying to keep the yarn close together on the strip takes a little bit of effort. Once you make it all the way around the bracelet you can either stop or go around again just to give it a little something extra. I went around three times, but on the third time I wrapped it not as tight and spread it out to give it a little different texture.
Once you have your bracelet wrapped you will need to cut the yarn and glue the end down, preferably on the inside of the bracelet. I glued it down and then tucked it a little so that it would be more hidden.
Finally add all of the finishing touches! I just simply took the spider rings and cut the ring part to there was an opening and wrapped it around the bracelet. If you bracelet is smaller in width, you can cut the spiders from the ring and glue them to it. For eyes I just glued them on. I think in hindsight I would have used a different color of yarn so that the spiders would stick out more. I didn’t want to do the traditional orange and black because I’m honestly not a big a fan of the color. But a green or even a lighter purple would have looked pretty good too. You could easily add some small plastic snakes or skeleton bones if you could find them. I even tried wrapping one in “spider webs” but it looked a mess so I didn’t post any pictures. When you are done, slip your creation on and wear it proudly!
First you will need to cut your paper in to strips. I made them all different widths but all the same length.
Next, glue the strips to paper making sure to cover the whole page. I even layered some just to get the patterning that I wanted.
Finally, you will need another sheet of paper in the desired color you want to contrast your ghost. Simply draw the outline of the character that you want on to this paper.
Next cut out the character, being sure to cut out from the center.
Place the cutout on top of your strips of paper and glue it down. Its that easy! All you have to do is put the finishing touches on! I love this project because it is easy for every age, and it can be anything. Even if I didn’t have orange pages I could still use white and then use a translucent paint to make a cute pumpkin, a spider, or a a witch hat. The possibilities are endless and it can be used for every holiday.
First thing I did was think of things around that house that were easily recognizable for little FEZ. I tried find clip art for each item and I wanted them to be as simple as the Googling powers of the internet would allow me to find.
Next up, I simply peeled the backing off of the felt numbers and stuck them to the outside of the envelopes. I only numbered them 1-10 but you could easily do more. Obviously felt numbers aren’t a requirement for this project, you could easily write the numbers on the envelopes. I just happened to have some stick on numbers gathering dust in the craft room and was thrilled that I finally found a use for them!
To play the game you just need to leave the clues in the envelopes. In the first envelope you will put the picture card with the location of the second envelope. For example, envelope 1 had the picture of the fridge in it. Envelope number 2 was taped to the side of the fridge. Inside envelope 2 was a picture of an easel. Taped to the easel was envelope number 3. You get the idea. To start the game you simply give your little one the first envelope. I helped FEZ out the first few envelopes but once he got the hang of it he was all over the house hunting clues. The last clue led the little guy to a little “treasure chest” that had a pack of fruit snacks and a cookie.
different small button shapes/animals
Once the page is complete you can lay the whole thing on top of a regular felt page and sew the two together so that your tied off ends and the stitches from the back of the page are hidden and the page is more sturdy. Then cut off the excess felt. I usually add three eyelets to one side of the page when I am finished and I keep them all held together in a “book” with binder rings.
