Halloween Contest Skeleton Trophies

     This year when I was browsing for ideas for new Halloween crafts to make, I stumbled upon these adorable skeleton trophies and decided that I needed to make some for my party.  This meant that I had to come up with reasons to dole out trophies, so I ended up initiating the first ever costume contest at my Halloween party.  I also gave out a trophy to the winner of my jack o'lantern game.  Here are our award winners:

Best Costume:

By a 5:1 vote, Katie won best costume for her look as Sandy from Grease.  The other vote was for Brian's dark sorcerer costume.  In this picture, I'm supposed to be awarding Katie her trophy, but it kind of looks like I'm trying to take it from her it :P.

Best Couples Costume:

By a 5:1 vote, Brian and I won best couples costume (largely by default, as we were the only couples-ish costume) for our witch/dark sorcerer combo.  The other vote was for Katie and Katie.

Jack O'lantern Champ:

Although dad won the jack o'lantern game the first time around (see this post for the picture), he did not want his trophy, so we held a rematch when some more guests arrived.  Ayesha won and became the jack o'lantern champ.

     On the whole, I was pleased with how the trophies came out and people seemed to like them.  I'd like to do this again in future years, but each time come up with different costumes/decorations for the skellies.  Looking to make some trophies of your own?  Here's how I made mine.

Materials:

*Dollar store skeleton garland

*Scissors

*Wooden plaques

*Hot glue

*Gold spray paint

*Paper and printer or paper and pen

*Scraps of fabric, ribbon, pom poms, clay, etc. to create costumes for your skeletons

Directions:

*Remove skeletons from garland and cut the loop off of the top of each skeleton's head.

*Position skeletons as you would like them to appear (some people have cut apart skeletons at the joints and then reassembled them so they could alter the poses and have gotten some neat results, but this seemed like it would make the trophies even more fragile, so I didn't try it).  Glue stationary any parts that move.

*Glue skeleton's feet to its plaque.

*Once the glue has set, spray paint the trophy in accordance with the directions given on the spray paint packaging.  Let dry.

*Make paper sashes for the awards by either printing the text onto paper which you would then cut into strips (I hit 'enter' until I reached about halfway down the page and then wrote out the awards vertically, one letter per sash per line, using 'tab' between sash lines) or cut strips and hand letter.

*When the paint has dried, decorate your skeletons as you'd like.  See what costumes you can come up with using odds and ends.  Here's how I made mine:

*For the jack o'lantern champ, I made a clay pumpkin and glued it to the plaque.

*For the couples costume, I made one skeleton's Ouija board costume by designing an Ouija board in Publisher, printed it onto cardstock, and hung it around its neck using some of the twine from the skeleton garland.

*For the medium of the couples costume, I used some doll hair which I had gotten in a bulk craft pack from the Orono Thrift Shop and some scrap fabric.

*For the individual costume trophy, I pulled out my Valentine's craft stuff and used peace sign hearts to make wings and some wire, felt, and pop poms to make an antenna headband.  I intended for it to be a 'love bug,' but Brian thought it looked like a butterfly, so I went with that.