wordless wednesday
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| Halloween 2012 Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, Ar |
talya
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
Halloween Shadow
Flying Bats – Halloween Craft
THIS flying bat project is my favorite Halloween craft. I made these flying felt bats several years ago after reading a how-to article in Country Living. Click HERE for the original felt bat article and template.
This project requires only stiff black felt, duct tape, scissors, one piece of paper and a pencil.
Draw a bat pattern on the paper. Cut out the first bat and use it as your pattern for the others. The more bats you make, the better. I have about forty in two different sizes.
Duct tape the bats across the front door area of your house as though they are flying in a colony. To make your display more realistic, space them unevenly and not in the identical direction. In nature, bats fly in a more sporadic formation.
See how these real bats look…
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| Morguefile |
Here’s my naked front door.
I’ve added a few of the largest bats.
Duct tape…
Here’s a shot with all the large bats attached. (Look closely and you can see two schnauzers watching from inside…).
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Fill in the flock with smaller bats placing most of them on the left-hand bottom side and the right-hand uppermost side. This creates the illusion of distance.
That’s all there is to it!
A flock of bats would look great indoors as well around a window or fireplace.
After Halloween, use care slowly removing the bats as duct tape can peel paint. Store your bats folded in a plastic bag. Next year, they will be perfectly shaped as though flapping their wings.
Now there’s only one thing left to do. Wait for the Great Pumpkin.
talya
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
Musical Pairing:
The Great Pumpkin Waltz, Vince Guaraldi
Check out my other Halloween projects:
CREEPY HALLOWEEN DECOR
HOW TO MAKE PUMPKINS FROM RECYCLED BOOKS
CREEPY HALLOWEEN DECOR
HOW TO MAKE PUMPKINS FROM RECYCLED BOOKS
DIY Halloween Decor – Realistically Creepy Ideas!
This time of year I look at the world through orange-tinted glasses. While I may only appear to be walking the dogs, deadheading flowers, or grocery shopping, I’m planning my Halloween decor. I’m studying broken tree limbs and produce aisle bins filled with root vegetables wondering—can I turn this into a Halloween decoration?
Rather than buy expensive and/or cheesy decorations, I prefer to utilize things around my house, reclaim objects and display vintage finds from my two favorite neighborhood haunts (pun intended)—Curiosities and Dolly Python.
Here are a few of my favorite tips for creating a realistically eerie haunted house.
1. Think old. Old is naturally creepy when displayed correctly. Old dusty jars, old books, old black-and-white photos in cracked picture frames set a spooky tone.
2. Let your silver tarnish. This is the easiest tip of all. Serve food on tarnished trays. Make sinister arrangements in your silver teapot using twigs, dead plants and inexpensive plastic flowers spray-painted flat black or gunmetal gray.
3. Stack your scariest books on the mantle and in bookcases. Leaving a stack of gardening magazines or the new Jodi Picoult book on the coffee table won’t frighten anyone. When I searched through my entire library, I discovered I had quite the collection of classic horror to display.
4. Paint-by-art and other still-life works have a gothic feel.
5. From your computer, print basic pictures of ravens, bats, skeletons, and tape them over your regularly displayed family photos (onto the glass). Leaving your child’s soccer picture on the mantle won’t set a Halloween mood.
6. Dumpster dive for treasures. I found this mannequin on my neighbor’s curb. Painted black, she greets our guests.
7. Buy a $0.99 bag of cobwebs at Party City. Stretched thinly over candles, books, pictures, everywhere, these look like the real thing.
8. Hang shredded cheesecloth (found at Target and fabric/craft stores) in doorways, windows, and over tables. Cover furniture with cheesecloth or white sheets like an abandoned house.
9. Old doll heads are creepy without doing anything.
10. Buy a bag of plastic bones – scatter them in your fireplace (unlit of course!), float them in your pool and/or display them in a large jar.
11. Display doll parts.
12. At flea markets, look for inexpensive vintage pictures of people, strange plants, science class human body posters, etc.
13. Hide glow sticks behind books and inside vases to create an eerie purple or green glow.
14. Cut bats from felt and duct tape to your porch around your front door. Free-hand the bat design or download a template. (Use stiff felt and be careful when removing…the tape can pull off paint.)
15. Download and play scary music. REALLY scary music. Like the selection at the end of this post…
Do you decorate for Halloween? What are your favorite Halloween decorating tips?
Do you decorate for Halloween? What are your favorite Halloween decorating tips?
Happy Halloween!
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
Musical Pairing:
Tubular Bells
