Skeletons in the Closet

I love Halloween time, it is really just so fun to me. But I guess the more modern take on it is what thrills me, not so much the gory gloom and doom of it that goes way back in its making. I guess it comes down to I love being creative and dressing up, and who doesn't love candy? Then with my husband's family we have taken on a new Halloween tradition that we eat pizza and candy and watch some sort of Halloween movie after the trick or treating is done for the night. I love the fun factor of it all.

Well since I am about to pop, with a wee little one growing inside me, I thought I would get an early start on sharing our costumes, just in case this little girl wants to grace her presence before the actual fun Halloween day. We went to a Halloween carnival last week, so we at least got to share our get-ups at least once, hopefully we will still get one more chance next week.

So long story short, and back to the title of this post, here is what we did. In my browsing on pinterest, I came across this, and knew that would be a perfect theme for our costumes this year, and would be very reasonable to get together in my lazy and awkward state.

So here is how it all worked:

1. I googled different images that we wanted for skeletons and stomach areas. For my little girl, we thought it would be fun to put an "apple" in her tummy, since she loves to eat them. We also did a juice box, but free handed it from our own memories.

http://www.arthursclipart.org/silhouettes/plants.htm

2. Get some hand freezer paper, which can be found in most grocery stores with the plastic wrap and wax paper and stuff. It makes great stencils. We could have printed this apple on paper and then traced it on the freezer paper, but because of its simple design, we just free handed it on the freezer paper and saved us some printer ink!

http://www.clker.com/clipart-ice-cream-silhouette.html

 Then we did an ice cream cone for my husband's stomach. Our life is just not complete without ice cream. I also free handed this since it is a very simple design.

http://www.playingitcooley.com/2011/10/my-baby-skeleton-costume-extra.html

 Then for my stomach, we did print this. I placed it underneath the freezer paper and traced it. It is best to write on the non shinny side of the freezer paper, especially since that is the side that you will want to use to iron on to the clothes later.

http://www.zazzle.com/rib+cage+mousepads

Again, for saving on printing, I free handed the rib cages, and made rough estimates to make sure it would fit for each of our rib cage sizes. Ours don't look exactly like this one, but it gave me a start of how I wanted ours to look.



http://bang-on-wholesale.com/transfers.php?my_category=Add%20On&sub_category=Costumes

Then lastly, we found an image for our arms and legs. I know this isn't entirely biologically correct, but I am lazy, and it isn't only one night, one holiday, so I didn't really care. But I used the basic look of these bones and did rough sketches for all our arms and legs.

3. Then after you have traced or drawn all your bones on the freezer paper, using an exact-o knife, I cut out the shapes. The baby took the longest, for obvious reasons, and I actually didn't cut out all the little details in full scale, because I didn't have the patience. I will explain later how I made up for that.

 4. After they are all cut, you iron on the parts to the clothing. We got our black clothes from our local thrift store. Make sure they are ironed on really well to keep the paint from bleeding out of the stencil.

5. Then you paint away! Depending on the texture of the clothing, some needed more coats of paint than others, but for the most part I did two coats of white paint, and then topped it with a coat of glow in the dark paint.

 And wall-ah! There you have it! Here is a stepped back look of our costumes (sorry, I hadn't finished my hubby's legs yet while taking this picture, but you get the idea).

 Then for a fun close up look at the baby in my belly. It looks more detailed here right? Well after I was done painting (and the paint was dry of course), I went back with a permanent black marker and then used the above skeleton baby pic as my guide and drew in the details. I drew the eye, and underneath the chin, and then the hallow parts of the rib cages and around the legs. Before all this touch up, it kind of looked like a yellow baby blob. Then I don't have it pictured here either, but I sewed a little bow on the top of it's head, since it is a little girl!

And there you have it! So if you are stumped for last minute Halloween costumes, this is always an easy out, and it is was a blast to put together!
Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and thanks for stopping by!

Yaba Daba Do! (Flinstone Costumes)

Now that Halloween has come and gone I thought I would share with you how it all worked out in putting the lovely costumes together. For starters, here is how our wigs turned out. . . and remember this is my first time trying to make a wig, so please keep kind thoughts, cuz I know they didn't turn out super great :)

First I made these lovely hats, if I were to do a wig again, I would make them a little bigger, and I would have made them into a color that matched the wig's hair better, then. . . .

I wrapped yarn around a pillow several times, tied them off on one end and then cut, to give a nice chunk of "hair". . .then. . .

I tied them on the hat, repeating several times over, the first top layers I made much longer. . .

Then when the top and back area was done, I made smaller layers by wrapping around my hand, like below, and put it in the front bangs area and then on layers underneath

Wrapping away!

Here are some layers underneath. . .see why it would have been a much better idea if I had made the original hat in black? It would have been much less to hide!

The finished product! I did have to trim a little after he had it on, but I still can't get over how he looks more like a Jamaican Fred with the "Dread" like hair.. . .oh well. . .at least. . .

He is super cute! I am so glad I got him, even if he can be a little nerd :)

Then my wig was a little more, well ALOT more tricky because Wilma has her hair in a pony tail. So I tied all my hair chunks on the bottom so I could then pull them back into a pony tail and then made sort ones for bangs as well . . .

Like so, and I cannot even count on both my hands how complicated this was to pull the pony tail back. I know it is deceiving, like it would be just as simple to pull back your own attached hair, but it turned to be much more complicated, I am not sure how to explain, but just take my word for it, if you try this at home, just be prepared for a little more of a challenge (unless I just have issues! :)

Our finished products! I made my outfit of some random white material I had around the house, made a top part and then made the bottom by making panels and sewed them all together. I also made myself some tan colored sleeves so it will still be modest and also so I wouldn't freeze! Again, best part, BY FAR, in making these costumes was I didn't have to hem the bottoms, have I mentioned how I really don't like to hem?

She wasn't so happy at first, but at least she's so cute, right?! This was right before going to my husband's work where we went trick or treating, it was right after her nap but before her snack time, can you tell?  :)

This was after it all, she was much happier and was so excited to see Daddy at work for a few minutes!

Remember these cute little matching slippers I made!? Well silly me made them a little TOO early in the month cuz they wouldn't fit on her feet right before going. I guess the elastic I put in the ankle area was just a little too tight, oh well, at least we just went to his work, indoors, instead of outside all night!

So there you have it! We hope you had a Happy Halloween! We sure had a great time! :)

Until next week!

Halloween Costume Part I

It is the lovely month of October which means we get to be a little extra creative and dress up and indulged into mounds of candy. Aside from all the weird creepy side to Halloween that some portray, I have always loved Halloween and dressing up and seeing others creative dress up ideas as well.
I especially love to make our costumes (go figure, since I like to make a lot of everything else :), so in my brain storming of what the lovely winner dress up idea will be for the year I also had to keep in close range of my creative skills, in that as much I'd like to be really great at making something from nothing, I am still really lacking.
OK, long story short, the lovely winner this year is "The Flintstone Family"! My little girl was actually the main inspiration for this idea because of her weird hair, she has really short hair everywhere except this really long chunk on top, which I put up in a little pony tail sometimes so she can still see, and well, you guessed, she looks like the little pebbles girl :)

How could this cuteness not be inspiration? I just love her!

So far I have finished her little outfit, and my husband's outfit, now I just need to get cracking on my costume and I am also daring to venture in making wigs for us too, yikes! We'll see how this one will turn out, I have never made a wig before, but I thought it would be fun to try since my husband's hair is dirty blond and mine is brown, which is defiantly not the hair colors of the Flintstones (and we didn't feel like dying or spraying our hair, which I guess could still be a last resort option if this doesn't work). Don't worry, I will be sure to post at how this one turns out.

Since I want to do a more grand-uous post of us fully in costume for the big day, I won't be sharing too much of costumes, so they will look more amazing in the end picture, but for the sake of showing you how I got it all together, I will show them to you and how I made them, but I won't show you with us all in full uniform, so it will look more lovely as we approach this lovely holiday. I know, I am silly, and weird, I don't need to be reminded of this.

OK, first things first, my little girl's outfit:

 I went to the local thrift store and found this bath robe that was in this lovely leopard print (don't worry, I washed it very well!), and I cut it to her size, made straps, and then made a jagged look the bottom, here she is making sure she'll fit it (and I will share the full affect pictures closer to Halloween, don't worry! :)

Since we practically live in the Arctic, we have to plan around REALLY cold weather, so I thought it would be fun to make her some little slippers to go with it, here is the cut outs before I sewed it all together.. . .

 Having it wrong side out, I have it pinned and ready to sew.. . .

 After sewing the sole of the slipper to the rest, I wanted to put elastic around the leg area, so i used a safety pin to loop it around, and then I sewed it up the back of the heel

 Trying it on to make sure it'll fit, it'll work like a charm!

 The finished booties. . . .

 My little girl is all set to go!

 Here is my husband's outfit. I also got his supplies at the local thrift store, I got two orange shirts that looked very similar in shade. Then I cut the arms and neck area off one and sewed it to the bottom of the other. Then I painted the black triangles on and then made jagged cuts on the sleeves and bottom (best part of this costume idea is there is no need for hemming!! Yeah! Which is one of my LEAST favorite things in sewing!)

Since this post is in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I would also share some more recent decorations I have made this week. I got this idea from my sister, Keri, on her creative blog HERE. I made some fun candle glowing jars, see how they turned out. . . .

 Before. . .

 After. . . I think I like how my sister's turned out better, she is a much better artist than I am, but I think they'll work, and here is the back of them. .. .

 I used apple sauce jars, since I have a bazillion just hanging around, we love our applesauce! I also liked the roundish look with these jars :)

 Remember the cute little pumpkins I made? Well we finally painted them with cute little faces, and believe it or not, but my hubby actually WANTED to help me with this one :) It was a fun date night!


Now that I have you looking this way, I want to also mention my brother-in-law's blog, The Forsaken Petal. He gives great insight for those of you who are into writing (and for someone like me, it is nice to get a refresher on different physcology sort of things, I think this blog is more for than just writers). He has a masters in Physcology, so he uses this wisdom as a twist to help you understand your characters as you write about them, pretty cool, huh? (or for me, it's nice to learn more about myself!) Well you should check it out, because it's pretty amazing, and to top it all off even more he is doing a giveaway, HERE, where if you win you could win some mula towards My Memories Suite, which looks like a really great online/printing scrap booking, and who doesn't love capturing memories in cute little books with WAY less work? So you should check it out and join the giveaway, and enjoy his blog while you are at it (and don't forget to mention me :D

Okay, now that I have jumbled ALL over the place with fall and Halloween and crafty sort of stuff, I will end here. Remember how I said I am gonna try to make wigs for our costumes? Well here is my start. From my lookings around online it suggests to use a beanie hat as the base, so I made some hats. . . now that I got your curiosity stirring there will be more update to how this will turn out so be sure to come back!

Thanks again for stopping by this way, and sorry for all the jumbled sharings, I guess jumbling is what I do best!

Until next time. . .