Let the Crafting Begin!

I made myself a whole list of Halloween craft ideas. Today was supposed to be gross and stormy so I donned sweats and prepared to craft. First, I wanted to make a banner like this adorable one I found on Etsy:

Materials

• Scrapbooking paper/cardstock
• Silhouette/Scissors
• Glue stick
• Yarn/ribbon
• Hole punch/Crop-a-dile
• Grommets
• Toddler Assistant Optional

This one was pretty easy and relatively fast to accomplish. First, I selected a patterned paper for the letters. I used a free font site to find a "haunted house" font. The letters resembled melting wax. I used my Silhouette cutter to cut the letters. I love my Silhouette so much. I got it "for wedding stuff" who are we kidding, that was just a good excuse. Anyway, I cut over a 100 save the date magnets with it recently so my blade was super dull. If you get one order extra blades. By the time I was cutting the background ovals the blades wasn't cutting all the way through the paper.

I chose brown paper for the background ovals. I just used the shape tool to make an oval around the biggest letter in Silhouette studio and then pasted the oval on to a new document. Then I arranged the ovals so the correct number would fit on a page. Unfortunately, as you already know they didn't cut properly so I followed the outlines left by my dull blade with regular scissors (and then immediately ordered 2 replacement blades).

After I had all the pieces cut I glued them together. Then I punched two holes in each. I put copper colored grommets into the holes with my trusty Crop-a-dile. Then I cut a length of orange yarn. It was the only color I had on hand. I would have preferred brown, but it was still in the fall palette. If you choose yarn rather ribbon make sure you wrap the end with scotch tape to create an aglet so it doesn't fray. (Yeah, I said aglet).

The nice thing is you have a lot of wiggle room once you have the letters on the yarn. You can leave big gaps and put spider rings or tied ribbons in between. I decided to keep mine simple. Partly because my bat paper punch was too tiny for bats in between to be recognizable and also because Riley's nap ended.

I cut out some bigger bats to hang above the banner in the archway of the family room. I haven't painted the big bats, but I'll post pictures when some of my other crafts are complete. Yay, homemade Halloween!