As some of you may know if you've been following my blog for a while, my favorite movie is Stephen King's The Shining. No, not the Stanley Kubrick film. The made-for-TV miniseries that basically no one likes except for the Master of Horror himself and me. Each year for Halloween, I decorate the bathroom as room 217 (see, e.g., Halloween 2018) and last year I decided to add the stolen passkey into the mix. I tried to design mine to be reasonably close to the one featured in the miniseries adaptation of The Shining. However, if you like Kubrick's adaptation better, you could easily mimic the passkey from his film instead.
The stolen passkey on the sink in "room 217."
Materials:
*Skeleton key
*Cream colored cardstock
*Color printer or brown marker (I used my Silhouette CAMEO to cut the "2" from the cream colored cardstock and added brown cardstock in behind, but printing or drawing on the "2" would be faster and easier).
*Hole punch
*Key ring
Directions:
*Print the number 2 onto a sheet of cream colored cardstock. (If you're drawing on the number with a marker, you can wait to add the "2" until after you've cut out the diamond shape.)
*Cut out a rounded diamond shape with the "2" at its center, using the template below.
*Punch a hole in the top of the passkey and attach the skeleton key to the passkey using a key ring.
If you've looked at my party pics from my recent Halloween parties (see Halloween 2017 and Halloween 2018), you may have noticed my radiation hazard sign on my fridge. I actually made mine using my Silhouette CAMEO, but since Blogger doesn't make it easy to add SVG files to posts and since I imagine most of my readers don't have die cutting machines at home, I've turned it into a printable sign. I made it in Paint, so it is a little pixelated if you print it at a large size. However, if you have a better photo editing program which allows you to smooth the edges, that will probably fix the issue. This sign could be a great addition to a Halloween zombie or science lab setup.
This hot glue alien parasite is easy and inexpensive to make, and is the perfect addition to a Halloween specimen collection. Although I didn't use this for my X-Files party, it reminds me a little of the alien parasite in the X-Files episode "Ice." You could also fill the vial with a colored liquid to make it look like you've embalmed the specimen, but I'm not sure if that would adversely affect your parasite if you want to reuse it for future years.
Materials:
*Hot glue and glue gun
*Vial
*Fine tipped black marker
*Label (see this post for creating potion labels)
*Thread
Directions:
*Apply some hot glue to the bottom of the vial's cork and create a line of hot glue going downward. Make sure that the line of hot glue is still short enough to fit inside the vial. Let harden.
*Once the hot glue has solidified, you can peel the parasite from the cork or leave it hanging from the cork, whichever way you like.
*Add a couple of eyes to the parasite using a fine tipped marker
Welcome to the final X-Files Darkness Falls post. Even if you're not planning on hosting an X-Files themed party, you can string up one of these cocoons in your yard as part of your Halloween decor. Instead of little green mites, perhaps your skeleton was the victim of a giant spider. Use your imagination, and have fun!
Materials:
*Plastic skeleton or bones
*Light colored "creepy" cloth (large mesh cheesecloth-like cloth sold at, e.g., Dollar Tree)
*Clear elastic cording
*Fake spider webbing
*Scissors
Directions:
*Lay your skeleton or bones on the "creepy" cloth. If you're working with loose bones, like I was, the bones may move around a bit as you're making this, so you may have to shift them around a few times.
*String the clear elastic through the edges of the cloth, slowly pulling the edges together. Creepy cloth tends to come as a rectangular sheet, which means that when you pull the edges together, you may get some uneven bunching at the top, which you can see a little bit in my pictures. I didn't think it was that much of a detraction, and if you have a tree way above eye level that you can hang it from, the bunching probably won't be noticeable.
*Tie the cording to hold the edges of the cloth together. Make sure the ends of the cording are long enough to tie around a tree branch or whatever you would like to hang your cocoon from.
*Pull spider webbing across the cocoon to give it a more web-like appearance. Use as much or as little spider webbing as you like.
An X-Files Darkness Falls party would hardly be complete without some little green mites crawling around. Removable vinyl makes it possible to stick a lot of these little buggers to your wall and remove them easily once you're done. If you keep the non-stick sheet you cut them on, you may be able to store them and reuse them for a future party.
Materials:
*Removable vinyl in lime green
*Silhouette CAMEO or other die cutter (could potentially be done by hand, but I would not recommend)
Directions:
*Import this little green bug template into your Silhouette or other die cutting machine's software program.
*"Trace" the template following the directions for your machine's software program. If you have a Silhouette CAMEO, you can check out this post for some info on how to create a cut file from a template.
*Create many, many copies of the bugs, as many as you can comfortably fit on a 12"x12" sheet of vinyl.
*Place a 12"x12" square of removable vinyl on your cutting mat in accordance with the directions on the package.
*Load the vinyl into your cutting machine and cut using the vinyl settings.
*Peel bugs off the cutting mat and stick to your wall.
*Once you're done with the bugs, they should peel up off the wall fairly easily. They may stick a bit to other surfaces, however. For example, I also put some on the TV, and those ones were a bit more challenging to remove. You may want to place one down and peel it up as a test to make sure that it peels off easily enough for your liking.
Hey everyone, I hope you've been enjoying my Horror Pocket Pals series. This portion of the project was a fairly big undertaking for me. I've never really focused on honing my drawing skills, but when I decided that I wanted an image of the nightmare house as part of the play set, I thought that drawing it was probably the best option. That way it would be something that was uniquely mine. It took a fair amount of time and effort, and it's far from perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with the results. I opted to draw the house as it's depicted in the original movie, so that's why the door is blue instead of red. I've included a scan of the uncolored sketch as well as the colored final project so that if you want to modify it a bit for your project, you can. If you haven't already seen my Nightmare on Elm Street plushies, you'll find Freddy here and Nancy here.
This post will probably be the last one in my Horror Pocket Pals series for at least a little while, but don't worry. I have plenty more spooky treats I'm planning :).
Elm Street Sign
Materials:
*Green felt
*Wooden skewer or thin dowel
*Gray paint
*White embroidery floss or thread
*Sewing needle
*Scissors
*All purpose adhesive
Directions:
*Cut out two identical small rectangles from green felt.
*Embroider the words "Elm St." on both rectangles, as well as a white border around the rectangles.
*Cut the dowel to size, if necessary, and paint gray. Let dry.
*Once dry, glue the embroidered felt rectangles to the top of the sign.
Play Set Box
To construct the box, you'll want to follow the directions given in the Michael Myers plushie box tutorial, with some modifications to accommodate two plushies and the Elm Street sign. Instead of a poster, however, you'll want to include an image of 1428 Elm, given below:
Before I get into today's post, I just wanted to let you know that this marks my 400th blog post on Amber's Craft a Week Blog! It's been almost 8 years now since I started this blog and I've managed to keep up with only an occasional missed post through the end of my undergrad career, through my master's, and now into my PhD. I'm excited and proud, and I hope to keep bringing you craft ideas for many years to come.
What better way to celebrate my 400th post than by presenting you all with a costume idea I've been trying to find a way to do for years, namely Dana Scully? When I was little, I think I related to Mulder the most. I wanted to believe in all things spooky. However, now as and adult and as a scientist, it's Scully's logical, scientific approach that I've come to appreciate. We didn't really go all out on Brian's Mulder look, so this post is mostly about Scully, although I do have a few Mulder costume suggestions in places.
The big obstacle preventing me from coming up with a Scully costume has been the hair. My hair is long and not red and I didn't want to permanently alter it for a costume, but decent looking red wigs are surprisingly hard to come by. This is where Colorista Hair Makeup in bronze/auburn comes into play. It's a temporary hair color that washes out after about one shampoo as long as your hair isn't a pale color.
It is important to note that this shade will NOT work for most people if you want a color close to Dana Scully's. If you look at the packaging, there's this one light brown range of colors where you get reddish look, but for darker or lighter hair colors, it looks like you'll get a pinker look. So if you have light brown hair, you may get good results, but if your hair is a different shade, it may not work so well. I would definitely recommend testing it on a section of your hair in advance to make sure it looks close enough to what you're envisioning.
Dana Scully Temporary Red Hair (for Dark Blond or Light Brown Hair)
*Starting from the roots of your hair, add a very thin layer of hair makeup to clean, dry hair. You want as little color as possible, because if you layer it on too thick, it will have a bit of a pinkish/raspberry color to it.
*When you're done with your costume, wash your hair as normal. I shampooed twice, but the color was almost all gone after the first shampoo.
Dana Scully Faux Bob
Materials:
*Hair elastic
*Bobby pins
*Hair spray (optional)
Directions:
*I mostly followed this video, although I skipped the teasing part and I also didn't use hair spray (the Colorista Hair Makeup hardens up a bit on its own). My hair certainly did not come out as nicely as hers, especially in the back, but it worked well enough.
Dana Scully or Fox Mulder Badge
Materials:
*Free printable Scully or Mulder badge (such as from here)
*Laminator (optional)
*Hole punch
*Lanyard
*Pen
*Double sided tape
Directions:
*Print out your badges.
*Sign the badges if they are not already signed to make them look realistic.
*Fold in half and tape wrong sides together.
*Laminate if you would like.
*Punch a hole in the top of the badge and attach to the lanyard.
Clothing Ideas
Scully wears a lot of suits, so a suit is a safe bet. I went with black pants, a black blazer, and a teal tank because that was what I already owned that looked like something she would wear, but a lot of people use a dark colored skirt suit and white button down shirt. For Mulder, a suit will work fine.
Makeup
For my makeup, I decided that earthy tones best fit Scully's vibe. For primer, we opted for e.l.f. tone correcting primer and e.l.f. eyelid primer. Brian used Temptu's Porcelain foundation for my skin and Temptu's Pebble eyeshadow along my lids. Brian went over the Pebble shadow with a rose gold colored shadow from e.l.f (it was in a palette with lots of different colors, so I'm not sure what it was called). He used e.l.f. liquid eyeliner in black for my upper lash line and an e.l.f. black pencil liner for my lower lash line. The mascara he used was also from e.l.f., although I'm not sure what it was called. For my lips, I used e.l.f. lipstick in Praline.
