Halloween Scary Book

It's never too early to start up on Halloween crafting! I used some Solid Moon Book Pages from Alpha Stamps to make a spooky Halloween book. A Haunted House overlay was the basis for the perfect cover art for the book. I painted the overlay black, and added scrapbook papers plus a moon and pumpkins from collage sheets to set the spooky scene. You can just see the tiny skeletons peaking through the windows. This book was bound with a Zutter Bind-It-All.

It was fun to mix and match Halloween papers to make each page different. Once each page was covered, I used lots of individual images from collage sheets to fill the space. I kept moving everything around until I was happy with the layout. For the really busy pages, it helped to take a photo before removing everything for gluing.  

The first page is a clowder of cats. Black cats, to be specific. I love the vintage look of these frightful  felines.

Next up, some jack o'lanterns. That background paper has to be my favorite.

Witch, please! It's so nice that this coven got together for a group photo. Better look behind you, witches.

These shady fellows are obviously up to no good. Are those the ghosts of past victims of this poison dealer?

The penultimate page features happy trick-or-treaters. Witch better have my candy!

I found the perfect image for the final page. It fits beautifully, and it makes me laugh to think that of all the scary things featured in this book, Medusa seems to finds the fun loving children on the adjacent page to be the most horrifying.

For a list of supplies, click here!

Tiny Circus Wagon

The tiniest of circuses is coming to town, and they've purchased a shiny new wagon to bring in their prize polar bear. This project is made from an Altoids Smalls tin, so it's pretty teeny; the wheels are only 3/4" tall. I covered the tin with some chilly blue circus stripes and stars, and added shiny gold filigree.  The wagon may be small, but it's fancy! 

 

There are four bits of filigree around the edges of the wagon: one large one at the top, two on the bottom of the sides, and one, a Symmetrical Raw Brass Flourish, at the top of the sides that I cut in half with some sharp shears. The filigree was attached using E6000 glue (super toxic; use it sparingly and outside!) A paper medallion sits at the top of the wagon. A tutorial on how to make paper medallions can be found here.

The wheels were silver, but I painted them with a gold paint pen to better match the filigree. Attaching the wheels was a little tricky; I used a toothpick for the axle, but the tin is only about 1/2" wide, so I had to cut the toothpick down and whittled the cut end to a point to fit in the hole in the wheels. Don't force the wheel on; they are pretty fragile. (Don't ask me how I know!) I did break the center out of one, but I ended up gluing the wheels to the tin anyway and put that one on the backside, so you can't really tell, except for the couple of missing spokes. Oops!  

 

And there they go, off to the circus parade! For a list of supplies, click here.