A Season of Thanks and Giving

 Check out the Path of Positivity challenge blog for their newest challenge, The Power of Words: Family & Friends. They're at the midway point of the challenge...

 

Most of my neighbors know that I'm a crafter. They've also seen me pock up interesting things from the ends of driveways to upcycle or alter. Last month I created and gave mini charcuterie boards complete with cheese and a Halloween spreader/knife. 

This month I'm gifting a couple more neighbors with a portable family game center. because I was inspired by the Candyland tin to fill it with game materials. It holds a new holiday deck o cards, Yahtzee score sheets with dice and little golf pencils, and an unopened UNO dice game. I added an extra die for a game known by many names, like Foo, Farkle, etc,.

 The second game center started out as a cardboard card box shaped like a book. I decorated it to make the outside look like a real book using designer papers and a little gold paint. This box holds a deck of holiday playing cards, Yahtzee score sheets and pencils, the extra die for Foo+, and a velvet bag holding an 8-sided, dreidel-shaped "spinner" with "directions" on each side. I included a baggie of chips to use with this game.

Both game centers are also decorated with bows and a small notecard telling each family how blessed I am to have them for neighbors and friends. And of course, each family has young children to enjoy family game nights. I'll be dropping these off this coming week...

Day if the Dead card

Day of the Dead, or "Dia de los Muertos" is celebrated throughout Mexico. Many other countries around the world celebrate similar (or hybrid) versions of Day of the Dead as well, by having special days for honoring the dead.  It is a festive, joyous time of celebration, falling on November 1 and 2 of each year, coinciding with the Catholic holidays All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

I started with coloring a Rick St. Dennis image called Death on a Saturday Night with my trusty Copics. The image is one of my favorites from RSD. I made the background digitally with a paper from Rucola Designs. The moon and paper flags are free clipart from Google. In order to have the "family" appear naturally in my setting, I fussy-cut it after coloring it so it looks like it's truly part of the scene.

This is my DT make for November's challenge at Halloween & Other Occasions All Year 'round.. Besides offering Halloween all year round, as implied, each month offers challenges for each month's celebrated holidays as well. I chose Day of the Dead as my heritage may be German-Irish but my heart is Mexican...

 

IT'S HALLOWEEN!

 

Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!! Hello, crafters, and welcome back to the 31 Days of Halloween! For my final Halloween project in the month of October, I have altered a "My Little Pony" castle front. It was wickedly fun to spray paint the whole thing black. I tricked out my castle with gold acrylic paint that I smudged before it dried.

For my home away from home, I pulled ot all the stops. I had a pile of pumpkins, skulls, skeletons, mushrooms, spiders, buttons, stickers, leaves, jewelry and hot glue. And then the fun began! I actually started with the drawbridge, which I had left down. There's this giant skull "welcoming" kids to trick-or-treat at the front door, with candy and candy corn just waiting to be picked up (if you dare).

One of my grabs from my supplies was a bag of mushroom floral sticks. When you look at the castle's right end, you'll see a turret bursting with overgrown mushrooms and pinecones, where skeletons like to boogie and black cats keep an eye out for fun. One skeleton has had too much fun and wants to get out, but the openings are too small for him to escape.

On the castle's left side, take a peek at the resident witch's turret, where she leaves her fashionable shoes after a hard day in front of the cauldron. Overgrown weeds climb up the tall side tower, where another skeleton dares to disturb the resident ghosts.

The rest of the castle is covered with whatever spiders, pumpkins and Halloween buttons I could fit onto it. Like I've said previously, I don't like "white space". It's all or nothing, baby! My haunted house stands around 12 inches and is about 8 inches wide. I'm thinking of dunking the whole thing into a vat of sealant so it will last years! LOL

This was a fun event for me, and I hope you were inspired to create your own Halloween decor. Stick around, because I've become a new member of the DT for the challenge blog Halloween & Other Occasions All Year. Tomorrow is my first DT make so I hope to see you soon!

CHALLENGES I AM ENTERING:

Crafty Girls Corner - Make It Spooky

Try It on Tuesday - Make It Magical My haunted castle includes magical figures with gosts and skeletons nd larger-than-life spiders

Unicorn - Autumn and/or Halloween -

Inspiration Station - Inspiration photo

 

Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween - DAY 30

 

Today I'm upcycling one of my own pieces of art! Last year I tried Acrylic pour canvas painting. This is one of my pieces, a 6x6' stretched canvas for Halloween. Nice, but boring...

I reached into my bag of Halloween tricks and pulled out a plastic skeleton (I bought so many of these throughout the year that I haven't had to purchase any in forever). Using his lower legs and a larger one from another bag, I formed the latter "B"., brushing it with white paint before adhering it with hot glue. 

A couple black silk leaves and white felt flowers formed the letter "O" twice, and now my artwork has a title, "BOO". I added a few die-cut leaves and a small wooden gravestone to finish off my project. I hope I didn't overload the canvas, but I am NOT a fan of "white space". It's difficult for me to stop when it comes to embellishments. I hope you've enjoyed the 31 Days of Halloween here at 'Patacake's Pages. I have one more day to entertain you with my imagination and creativity this spooky season. See you tomorrow.

Challenges I am Entering:

Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween - DAY 29

 

Halfway to Halloween, crafters! Are you ready? I know that I've saved a ton of $$ by making much of my decorations this year. I also have previous years worth of Halloween makes to use as well. I had mentioned that I was participating in a craft fair where I was hoping to sell out my Halloween and Christmas decor, but when I returned from vacation, my daughter was sick with COVID. The day before the Fair, I caught it as well--lucky me!! 😢I had to cancel, but then again, I have loads of decor for this year...

Back to today's project. During the summer I had to replace my privacy fence. I got to use my nephew's table saw while he was "fencing" and cut some wood slices nice and thin.  I painted three of them as Day of the Dead sugar skulls, hand drawing them after getting inspiration from Marisol's images from Pixel Scrappers. They are so darn cute.

I found a frame and attached jewelry items on each wood slice from which to hang them. I attached a chain to the frame and then added each slice to the chain using thin wire. It looked a little bare so I added some mica/shell slices I had in my jewelry craft supplies and I like the finished product.

There's a beautiful movie showcasing the special meaning of Day of the Dead. It's called Coco and is a Pixar film released by Disney. It's one of those movies that are made for kids with adults in mind, so the whole family can enjoy it (and the music is good, too).

Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween - DAY 28

 Definitely was in a dark place when I thought this one up. I think I might just do a creepy cute 31 days of Halloween next year. I hope it doesn't give me nightmares!

The wreath is made from branches of a weeping willow (I had to look it up). Around this I wove wired ribbon with a Halloween print. Next I used up ALL my plastic skulls. I had three different kinds! After I adhered them with hot glue and E6000, I left a small space for my Skull King. Actually it's a diffuser that was broken that I had bought from Bath & Body. Looking sad and plain, so I added a small bow made from orange and black netting (tulle). 

I finished off my newest Halloween decoration by attaching a spooky black floral deco that I had bought after last year's Halloween. I think you have to zoom in to see it. A single spider on a skull nearest the king finishes my project for today. And it is on my front door now (do you think I'll get any  solicitors?)...  

Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween - DAY 27

 

I've added to my Halloween garden. Grampa cam over to have a beer and I guess he stayed too long ---way too long. LOL  While cleaning out my garage this summer, I found a small child's plastic lounge chair. I almost threw it away, then remembered I had a few skeletons in my Halloween bins. I'm lucky that when I pulled that skeleton out of its bin, I remembered the plastic lounge chair!

He didn't sit well in the chair until I placed a full plastic bag of like bags for his cushion. That worked well enough to get him hot-glued onto the chair. He still didn't look comfortable until I put a towel between the chair and his body. He had to have his beer sitting next to him, so I made the sacrifice and drank a Radler beer (German). To really get the feel of a man relaxing with his beer, I attached sunglasses to his skull and added his pet lizard on his other chair arm.

I placed him in my almost-finished front garden with my other Halloween crafts. I have just enough space for a couple more before the BIG DAY. Are you ready? Do you get many trick-or-treaters? I have both candy and packs of trading cards to give out this year.