Redrum Nails

We're counting down to Halfoween with some spooky fun nail art.  First up we have these The Shining-inspired redrum nails, which are fun to play with in the mirror.  Whether you're a fan of Stephen King's book, Stanley Kubrick's movie, or the 1997 miniseries adaptation, these blood red letters could be a great nod to The Shining.

Materials:

*Blood red nail polish
*Opaque polish color close to your nail color
*Nail polish base coat
*Nail polish top coat
*Ultra fine nail art brush

Directions:

*Paint on a nail polish base coat.  Let dry.

*Paint on a couple coats of a polish that is close to your nail color to try and make your nails look a little more uniform in color.  You could also paint them a light solid color, such as cream or light blue.  This is just to create some sort of base over which to paint the "redrum."  Let dry.

*Using an ultra fine nail art brush and blood red polish, write out "R" on your left ring finger nail, "E" on your left middle finger nail, and "D" on your left index finger nail.

*On your right hand, write "R" on your index finger nail, "U" on your middle finger nail, and "M" on your ring finger nail.

*Seal with a clear top coat.

DIY Jack (Torrance) and Coke Couples Costume

     Here's a fun twist on the popular Jack and Coke couples costume.  If you haven't seen it on Pinterest or elsewhere, a commonly featured couples costume involves one partner wearing a Jack Daniels T-shirt while the other wears a Coca-Cola T-shirt or dress.  Brian suggested trying this costume, but with Jack as Jack Torrance from The Shining.  I thought that was a great idea, and so we decided to give it a go.

     I made a video tutorial for this one.  You can watch it below, or head on over to Youtube to see it.  Let me know what you think of the video tutorial format.  I'd potentially like to do more video tutorials in the future, so your feedback is greatly appreciated.  I've also included a written tutorial for the Cherry Coke dress, if you prefer written tutorials.

     Since this project uses removable vinyl, the nice thing is that once you're done with your costume, you can peel off the vinyl and wear your garment again.  Just make sure to test the vinyl first to make sure that it doesn't damage the fabric, and avoid using removable vinyl on delicate fabrics.

DIY Cherry Coke Dress

Materials:

*Dress or shirt in the color that you want your soda can to be

*White removable vinyl

*Green and red removable vinyl (if you're trying to imitate a Cherry Coke can)

*Paper, pencil, and scissors or die cutting machine

Directions:

*Lay the dress or shirt on a flat, clear work surface.

*Optional: cut out Coca-Cola lettering from paper or cardstock and position it on the dress to determine the placement that you'd like for the vinyl.

*Cut out letters from removable vinyl.

*Using a scrap of removable vinyl, press it down on an inconspicuous part of the garment and peel it back up to make sure that the vinyl doesn't damage the garment.

*Replace the cardstock letters (if used) with the vinyl letters.  Since the vinyl is removable, you can peel it up if you make a mistake in laying down the letters, but the vinyl may lose some of its adhesiveness.

*When you're done with your costume, you can peel off the vinyl and wash and wear your garment as you would normally.

Room 217 Passkey

     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.

My Halloween 2018 Party and New Halloween Trophies

     This past Saturday Brian and I held out annual Halloween party.  We had a ton of fun and we hope all of our guests did as well.  Here's a recap of our party, including two new crafting and activity ideas.
     Usually I devote a section to food, but Brian and I were too busy to do any food crafting this time around.  We went with pizza and pretzel sticks and our friends Ayesha and Ken brought cookies and ice cream, so there was still plenty to eat.  However, if you're looking for something a bit spookier, check out last year's post for some ghoulish goodies.

Outdoor Decor

     Here's what the front door looked like.  We got a hanger for the Wayton Manor sign so we didn't have to hang it off the mailbox this year.  My spooky doorbell suffered a fall earlier this season which messed up the speaker, but Brian managed to fix it, so it was back in working order for the party.  My jack-o'lantern lights got dashed around during last October's wind storm, but they returned this year, minus the one jack o'lantern that split in two when the wind bashed the door against it.  I also put up my "knock if you dare" door hanger, which I downloaded as a PDF from Family Fun years ago and have not been able to find online in the years since.

     My little cemetery was the core outdoor decoration.  Five of the tombstones are handmade, and you can find the tutorials here, here, here, and here.  The other stones are from Target and Dollar Tree.  The fencing and the zombie fog accessory are also from Target.  The bat gate posts are from Dollar Tree, although I painted them black, so if you see them in store, they won't look quite like this.  My cemetery angel is also hiding out in the back there.  The haunted hedge eyes, which are peeking out from behind the bat tombstone, I got from Target years ago.  The "Haunted: Keep Out!" tape I picked up from A.C. Moore years ago.

     Here's the "Beware of Werewolf" setup again.  It has become a Halloween staple.

     We also had a new display this year, although I almost didn't get a chance to put it out because it was raining at the beginning of the party.  I decided to do a gothic take on Alice in Wonderland, what I call Alice in Halloweenland.  To accompany my costume, I decided to make some decorations, including clay mushrooms, skeleton flamingos, a giant paper mache mushroom (tutorial to come), and oversized roses (tutorial to come).  Unfortunately I don't have anywhere to store all of the oversized props, so this one is probably a one time display.

Indoor Decorations

     If you've been following my blog for a while now, many of these decorations may look familiar to you, although the arrangement is a little different from what I've done in the past in many instances.  For one thing, I moved the haunted mirror and the lenticulars to the wall.  I also reframed some of the lenticulars to give them a more uniform appearance and brought out one that had been sitting in storage because I didn't have a frame for it.  The lenticulars came from Dollar Tree except for the vampire couple on either side of the mirror.  Those two were from Rite Aid, although I got all of the lenticulars years ago, so I don't know if anywhere sells those exact ones anymore.

     Here's an overview of the living room.  My sister loves Stephen King, so I brought out my framed Stephen King DVD cover wall art once again.  You'll also see my spooky sign in the background.

     This was another little spooky setup I had.  The figurines and ghostly grove came from A.C. Moore years ago.  The "Beware" sign I got from Target a while back.  The spooky radio Brian picked up for me from Joann earlier this month.

     This is how I decorated the couch.  I have tutorials for the zombie throw pillows and the eyeball throw pillow.  The "creepy cloth" came from Dollar Tree.

     Here's my potions shelf.  On this shelf you'll see my creepy rag doll, my Pet Sematary inspired potion bottles, my monster blood, my spell book (plus another spell book I made but have not blogged about yet), my gingerbread zombie, my Halloween 2017 "Best Couples Costume" trophy, more potion bottles, my nebula in a bottle, my spooky faced candle, and my 2016 "Best Couples Costume" trophy.  The skull, test tubes, beakers, and tea light candles are all from Target.  The spider web candle I got from Kohl's years ago.

     Here are my creepy dolls.  The antique haunted radio I got from Target two years ago and the haunted phone also came from Target.  They have a similar phone at Target this year, although I don't think it looks nearly as nice as this one.

     Here is the fortune telling setup, new as of this year.  Brian's mom gave me a Target gift card for my birthday, so of course I saved it to buy Halloween stuff.  The wheel of fate, candelabra, candles, and crystal ball are all from Target.  Brian usually does tarot readings at our party, so I ordered some Alice in Wonderland tarot cards from Amazon.  However, we ended up forgetting about them.

     Last up we have the bathroom, which I decorated as room 217 from The Shining once again.  I put up "redrum" on the wall and added a replica of the invite Jack finds in the Overlook scrapbook, as I have done in previous years.  I also added a paper masquerade mask, a tube of lipstick, and a floor 2 passkey, which hopefully I'll have a tutorial of for next year.  I placed the roque mallet in the bathtub again as well.

Party Hat Craft

     Several years ago I made some paper witch hats to use in a Halloween Yankee swap.  The hats had been sitting in storage for the past several years and so I decided that it might be fun to let people make wearable hair accessories by taping or gluing the hats to headbands.  I had my pom pom critters on the table with the hats and people ended up using them in their hair accessories too.  Both the witch hats and the pom pom critters are relatively easy to make, so if you're looking for a party activity, this could be a fun one.  Make a few hats and/or critters in advance (or let your partygoers craft them) and offer some glue and duct tape to attach to headbands.  The headbands make good party favors too.

Alice in Halloweenland Costume

     Brian and I went as gothic Mad Hatter and Alice for my party.  Here's how I made the pinafore apron, the bow, the White Rabbit plushie and its bag, and the Mad Hatter Hat.  The romper and heels I got from Love Culture and the socks came from Joann.  For more costume ideas, keep reading.

The Costume Contest

     Here are most of our costumes.  Brian's mom was a red hat lady, Katie was Georgie from It, Jacob was Buckethead (see below), mom was a jack-o'-lantern, and Ken was a werewolf.  As you can see, there were a lot of good costumes, but only three trophies.

     Katie won "Best Costume."

     Jacob won "Most Creative" costume.

     Brian and I won "Best Couples Costume."

Halloween Trophies

     Below are the 2018 costume contest trophies.  To make the trophies, I hot glue cat figurines to jar lids and paint the lid and the cats black. Using a nail art brush or something similarly thin, I give the cats red eyes.  I type up the trophy label, print it out, and glue it to the jar lid.

     For the couple's costume, I made the cats into Freddy Kreuger and Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street.  For the Nancy cat, I glued some doll hair to her head.  For the Freddy cat, I painted on the sweater and glove.  To make the hat, I punched a circle from brown cardstock.  The circle became the top of the hat.  I cut a circle around the hole and that became the brim of the hat.  I cut a thin strip of cardstock and rolled it into a cylinder, then glued the cylinder to the brim and the circle to the top of the cylinder.  That's how I made the hat.

     The "Most Creative" costume was inspired by Katie's mock Goosebumps cover.  It's supposed to be "cat got your tongue."  I cut tongue shapes from pink felt, drew a line down the middle using black pen, and glued them to the jar lid.  I then painted red "blood" over the end of the tongue and part of the lid.

     The "Best Costume" was originally supposed to be a dinosaur, but it ended up looking like a multi-finned green shark.  That's probably because I made it basically the same way I made my shark cat trophy last year.

     Hopefully you've enjoyed this glimpse into this year's Halloween party.  For more cool food and activity ideas, check out my posts from 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014, plus my The Shining and Goosebumps themed birthday parties.

My Halloween Party 2017

     This past Saturday Brian and I hosted our annual Halloween party.  We spent a good portion of the day on Friday and Saturday morning cleaning, putting up decorations, and making the food.  We were still finishing the snacks when the first of our guests arrived.  In spite of the business, I had a great time.  Here's a recap of our party.

Snacks

     Brian and I made our cemetery cupcakes (recipe in this post, although you'll have to scroll a little to find it).  I had picked up a skeleton mold on clearance at the end of last Halloween season, so this year I added bones to the cupcakes.  They didn't have any mint chocolate baking chips at Joann, so I opted to make the tombstones strawberry flavored instead.
     Brian made his classic eyeball deviled eggs (recipe in this post, although you'll have to scroll here too) and I made some cheese and pretzel "witch's broomsticks" (see this post).  I had stumbled across this caramel apple cream cheese spread online and decided to give it a try.  It was delicious and the easiest of the snacks we made.  The caramel sauce I used spilled off the cream cheese pretty quickly, so I'd recommend waiting to add it until you're about ready to serve it and keep extra caramel sauce on hand so people can add extra if they want.
     I poured the rest of the pretzel sticks into our new candy bowl.  The new bowl has a motion sensor that, when motion is detected, causes the eye to open up and causes the bowl to say something spooky.  Any time people got close enough to the table, the candy bowl would come to life.  We also had three types of pizza on hand, so everyone was well fed.

     For drinks, I had seen this vampire drink idea online and decided to give it a try.  I used Sprite Zero and liquid cherry Kool Aid.  You'll want to use clear plastic cups so that your guests can see the effect.  All you have to do squirt a little of the Kool Aid into the soda and the Kool Aid looks like blood as it disperses.

The Tablescapes

     We had our usual two tables, the snack table, pictured in the snacks section of this post, and the main table.  Some of the items on the tables are hand crafted, so I've included the relevant links in this paragraph in case you want to try making one of your own.  On the snack table, the deviled egg eyes are on top of the Halloween platter I made a couple of years back.  The cupcakes are balanced on my spider web cupcake stand.  The tablecloth I made as well.
     For the big table, I used many of the same adornments I've used in the past.  The only crafted item is the spooky faced candle, which Brian and I made last year for Halloween.  The tablecloth I picked up on clearance from Joann ages ago and the bat salt and pepper shakers came from the Target dollar aisle, also years ago.  I think the tealights might also have been from Target.

Outdoor Decor

     Here's what the whole outdoor setup looked like this year.  The eyeball path markers came from Kmart years ago.  The gnomes were a Christmas gift from Brian's mom a few years ago.  She got them from Oriental Trading.  The rest of the stuff you'll see in greater detail below, so I'll put in links there.

     Here's the door.  I didn't have a good way to display the Wayton manor sign, so I used a twist tie to fasten it to the old mailbox.  My eyeball wreath made an appearance again this year.  I also put up my spooky doorbell from Target and the jack o'lantern lights Brian got me from Rite Aid a few years back.

     Next up is my favorite part of my Halloween decor, my Halloween cemetery.  The cemetery has been gradually expanding and this year I decide it was finally time to make a second row of stones.  Since I'd been leaning my handmade stones against the house previously, I didn't have a way to get them to stand.  I used toothpicks and that held them up for a while, although they were no match for the strong gusts of wind we had that day.  By the end of the party, most if not all of them had toppled.
     If you're looking to make some foam tombstones, check out these posts.  It's kind of hard to see, but my eerie graveyard bouquet is in front of Ada Lillian's stone.  My cemetery angel ended up all the way at the back, next to the small gravestones which are hidden from view by the taller tombstones.  Two of the other stones, the fencing, and some of the bones came in this Halloween cemetery kit from Target.  The other two visible stones I picked up at Dollar Tree a while back.  The "haunted: keep out" tape I picked up at A.C. Moore on clearance a couple of years back, but I also got some from Kmart last year (when we still had a Kmart in this area).  If you look closely, you can see my haunted hedge eyes (from Target) peeking out from behind the tombstone with a bat at the top.  The bat gate posts at the ends of the fence came from Dollar Tree.  They had some purple and red paint on them which I thought was kind of awkward looking, so I painted them black.

     Here's my "beware of werewolf" display.  As far as Halloween displays go, this one was relatively easy to make and people tend to like it.

Indoor Decor

     We don't have a lot of room in our apartment, so when it comes time to put out Halloween decorations, I throw some fabric over the printers and storage containers and put the decorations on top.  Here you'll see the spellbook I made a couple of years ago with my Silhouette CAMEO (I describe the process a little in this post) and my haunted mirror.  The spooky radio is a new addition.  I had seen it at Target last year, but it sold out in store before I had a chance to get one.  I ordered one online, but it wasn't going to arrive until after Halloween, so it became part of my Christmas present from Brian :).  Turn the knob and you'll hear quirky ads, song snippets, and news bulletins.  It's so fun and it has become one of my favorite Halloween decorations.  The spooky telephone is also from Target and that's another fun prop.  The lenticular portrait came from Rite Aid and its frame from the Orono Thrift Shop (if you scroll to the bottom of this post, I talk about reframing store bought lenticulars).  The little blue bottle is an antique poison bottle my dad gave me.

     Here you'll see my murderous dolls, my creepy rag doll, and my gingerbread zombie.  If you've seen last year's post, you'll notice that only a couple of the lenticulars that I usually have as part of this setup are featured here.  I needed more room for the dolls, so I moved the other lenticulars to the wall.  To cover this storage container, I threw my tie dyed sheet over it and then covered the sheet with some cloth I'd gotten from Dollar Tree.

     Here's my potions shelf.  If you're looking to make some potions, you'll find ideas in these posts.  The eyeball beakers and test tubes came from Target.  I filled each one with water and added a few drops of food coloring.  I also made a couple of last minute potion bottles and added some glass bottles my parents had given me to fill out the shelf.  There's the trophy Brian and I won last year for best couples costume up toward the top.  My pom pom pals are also paling around on the shelves.  The candle came from Kohl's ages ago.  The book of spells and potions I made this year.  I don't think I'll have a chance to write about it this Halloween season, but I hope to get a post out on it for next year.

     These are some figurines my mom got me from A.C. Moore years ago.

     This year I added some decorations to the fridge door.  I actually managed to get the Halloween countdown calendar and its Halloween clothespins set up on October 1st and so far Brian and I have been remembering to turn them over each day.  The radiation hazard sign I made using my CAMEO.  I plan to post the template next year, along with the template for the biohazard sign I put on my bedroom door.

     Felt sleepy bat and my Halloween sign ended up back at the edge of the hallway again this year.

     Here's the biohazard sign I mentioned earlier.

     I ended up decorating the bathroom too this year, using some of the decorations from my The Shining themed birthday party.  The door became room 217 (from Stephen King's book.  If you're a fan of Stanley Kubrick's movie, you'll know this as room 237).

     Inside the bathroom across from the mirror I put up the letters spelling out "redrum" . . .

. . . which you'll see what it means if you look in the mirror.  I put the invite I made on the sink (to see the invite in more detail, check out this post).  It got a drop of water splashed on it, but it should be easy to reprint for next year if I want to go with the same theme.

     I tucked the roque mallet in beside the bathtub.

Costume Contest

     Unfortunately I didn't think to take many pictures during the party, so you'll only see a handful of them here.  In addition to the pictures below, we had Rick from Rick and Morty, a werewolf, and a zebra.

     "Most creative costume" went to Katie for her "it's raining cats and dogs" costume.  In the background, you can see my plushie garland hanging over the entryway.

     Jacob won "best costume" with his Buckethead costume.

     Brian and I won the "best couples/group costume" award for our dark sorcerer and witch get ups.  Like my look?  Check out the following links for how to make the cape and hat, the broom pendant, and the magic wand.  You can't really see my top in this pic, but it's by Dare to Wear fashion and it's pretty awesome.

     Here Katie and Jacob are with their trophies.  Brian and I didn't get a pic with ours, but you can see it in this post.

     Well, that about sums up my Halloween party 2017.  I hope you can find some ideas in here for your Halloween get together.