Halloween At The Cemetery, a Candle Holder

More Halloween! This month, Alpha Stamps sent me some small reliquaries. What to do, what to do? I'm not sure what made me think of making a candle holder, but now that it's done, I'm glad I did. This will be such fun to add to the mantle this year. *Note, to avoid any sort of fire hazard, I'll be sure to only use a battery operated candle in this holder.

I painted all the tombstones with a mixture of paints (tutorial at the bottom of this post) and added papers, charms, rub on type, and collage sheet images to create five different tombstones. This little graveyard is littered with pumpkins, a witch's broom, and bones that were snapped off of a plastic skeleton. It's pretty easy to just break those bones off at the joints.

Here lies Edgar Allan Poe.  I used rub on type to indicate the year of his death, and for the RIP written on the gravestone to the right. To make the bats fly, I used a thin wire and literally just shoved it into the rubber bodies of the bats (poor things!). The wire was sandwiched between the two pieces of chipboard before gluing the gravestones together. Clothespins were used to hold the pieces tight while drying.

A black cat, a giant crow, and more bones. So spooky! I wrapped the candle with a black mesh ribbon before placing it into the holder.

I love the sentiment on this final tombstone: "Gather ye blossoms while ye may."

I made the base for the candle holder from corrugated cardboard. I used a large can to trace around a circle, and cut two of those out using an x-acto knife. Glue these together to make a thicker piece This will elevate the candle and give the tombstones something to lean against. Glue this double thick base to another piece of cardboard.

You can make the base any shape you want; I elected to make mine a larger circle. Cut that shape out with an x-acto knife, and you are ready to go. I added a little moss to help hold my tombstones in place, then glued them to the inner circle with a glue gun. Most of the other elements, like the bones and pumpkins, were also attached with the hot glue.

For a complete list of supplies, click here. Spooky Halloween!

Halloween Tunnel Book

It's never too early to craft for Halloween, and now that it's August, be prepared to see a lot more spooky stuff! When I saw this 6" x 6" tunnel book, I just knew it was time to bring out the scary. Enter if you dare...

When it's closed, you can see through all the layers to the back of the book. I added lots of fun Halloween things, from a jack o'lantern, an articulated skeleton, a curious rat, and a skull and crossbones. There's even a ferocious lion door knocker! Once I had it all assembled, it looked like it needed more color, so I added an orange bunting. It's so easy to make: just glue little triangles to a piece of thread, and hang.

Let's open it up! On page one, we visit the undertaker's, which features a couple of tombstones and what appears to be a forgotten casket. Someone tried to decorate a bit by putting out some jack o'lanterns. The iron door is actually sold as a window, but with the addition of the street number and the knocker, it makes quite a presentable door.

On this next page, a couple of skeletons frolic on Halloween night. When I covered the page on the right with scrapbook paper, I left the branches that ran across the opening of the window.

Here's the final page. The book kit comes with one last page with a smaller window, but I liked the the size of the second to the last window, which perfectly framed the image of that tortured soul, so my book stops here. The sign says, "At twelve o'clock on Halloween, many strange things can be seen." Looking at what lurks out of this poor guy's window, I think I'd agree.

He doesn't seem very happy, does he? Perhaps he's just resigned to his fate on this All Hallow's Eve.

I cut out tons of images from collage sheets, and spent quite a bit of time moving them all around until I was happy with each page. It was like working a great fun Halloween puzzle. I used my handy BindItAll to add the wire binding to this book. Are you in need of spooky supplies? Click here to find nearly everything I used for this project. And happy haunting!