A Halloween Scene and My Top 5 Spooky Crafts 2014

I love Halloween and I love crafts, especially one's that G can join in with, so after having a little look around a few blogs and being inspired I thought we'd try a few out. I've listed my top 5 simple Halloween activities that you can do with your child.
I also am sharing my own crafting activity of making a Halloween scene.



Mini Glitter Pumpkins

I found this great simple Halloween craft idea from the brilliant Hodgepodgecraft blog. Great to do with even really young children and you only need a couple of things to do it. I found the mini pumpkins in a large Sainsburys store and a couple of tubes of acrylic paint in the pound shop. Gude who writes the blog got hers from The Works which I'll be checking out as our paint didn't coat the pumpkin so well.
G had a quick go at doing one whilst nana was round at the weekend. I think she'll be giving it a second coat and doing the second one next week







Hanging Spiders

These are from Life As We Know It and look like a fun make. I know G would love playing with them after. I've struggled getting hold of the polystyrene balls and black pipe cleaners but I figure if I manage to get hold of the balls I can substitute for sparkly silver pipe cleaners instead.


Jack Skeleton Apples

These are from Wonkywonderful blog (click the link) and look AMAZING! I can't wait to try them out. I'll be getting myself a couple of clocks of white chocolate, some fresh apples and some black icing next week!


Hobbycraft Foam Clay Cat Set:

This little kit is no longer on their site anymore but you can probably find it in your local store like I did. It's a lovely little set and cost me £1. It makes 2 small cats. I've never used foam clay before, it's odd stuff! G enjoyed this but it was more fiddly than I had anticipated so I had to help more than I would have liked to. I love to make things but obviously this activity was intended for her and therefore more she does the more enjoyable it is for both of us.

They have a few other little Halloween craft kids at the £1 to £2 price range. I also love their papier mache pumpkin for decopatching/decorating - great as a decoration/center piece and/or a great place to hide Halloween goodies. I'd love to get their scrape away Halloween decorations kit, these are easy and fun for 3 years plus, perfect for G to do single handedly (I will be sat watching of course) and they are only £2.


Pumpkin Carving:

A wonderfully (or in my case averagely) carved pumpkin....isn't this the best bit about Halloween? Well along side the dressing up! I think I'll be attempting a Jack Skeleton one as I'm not sure how I'd go with any more complicated unless I was on my own for a few hours, which is not going to happen. I love looking at designs on Google images.


Our Halloween Scene: 


For our Halloween scene we used:

• A large sheet of black card from Hobbycraft
• A few sheets of craft foam in white, black, purple and white - depending on the shop the pound shop sometimes do packs of craft foam.
• A packet of googlie eyes
• PVA glue
• A couple of pipe cleaners
• A black marker pen
• Some black fabric (or could just use craft foam)
• Glitter
• Some coloured paper (we used brown to do the tree)
• Scissors

It depends on the age of the child how much you'll need to help with this. G is only 3 so I made most of the characters and she put the glue on and stuck them (apart from the tree which was a bit fiddly) wherever she liked. She made her own bat almost completely by herself which she was very happy with and even gave it a dress out of some scraps of paper we had left. She did the glittery bits and some of the cutting out, taking the big edges off and I did the more intricate bits. I'll be using the left over scraps of paper and foam with G next week along with some googlie eyes so she can come up with some more of her own creations.