fall crafts

Well, hello blogger world. Sorry it's been such a long time since I visited you. :) We're trying to figure out a lot of big choices for our lives, so any prayers (especially for wisdom for William) would be much appreciated!

So, anywhoo, Jennifer (my boss at Bella) asked me to decorate the space for Halloween. So this has inspired a crafting kick lately and thought I'd share a few of the things I've done. This will probably take a few entries so I don't log down one post with a million pictures. Since I don't love Halloween (unlike my sister who has her Halloween costumes planned out a year in advance), so I decided to go with the more fallish look with pumpkins and candy corn. I follow tons of crafting blogs and cannot for the life of me remember where I saw some candy corn pillows. And I thought, I could make those (well, with a little help from my master seamstress of a mom). I found some super cheap fabric in the clearance section in different shades of orange, yellow, and white. Did you know that on real candy corn, the orange is twice as long as the yellow and white space? So it made for easy measuring. We cut the fabric into strips and then sewed them together. I must admit that for as long as I've held out learning how to sew, I can see how addicting this could get. I may even have to ask for a cheap sewing machine for Christmas. My mom (and my friend Anne) would be proud.
The next step, I don't have a picture of, but we just cut out triangles (about 1/2 in bigger all the way around for the seam). Then my mom sewed them up leaving a little space for the stuffing.Then, I stuffed them with cheap stuffing from Walmart. To sew them up, you use what's called a blind stitch. My mom's looks much better than mine, but I'm learning. This video helped. And viola, pillows that look good enough to eat:
Then, I whipped up a couple bats to be hung on clear fishing wire and gave them some white eyes with my paint pen:
And lastly, I needed some fake pumpkins to go along with my real ones. I took 12x12 scrapbooking paper and cut it into 1" strips. Then I glued 8 strips together to make the large pumpkin, and 4 together to make the small one. You could also use a brad to hold all the pieces together, but my glue gun was already plugged in, ready to go.
Then you just fold the pieces up and glue again! Easy peasy!To finish, add a little circle of brown paper for the stem. For the green vine, I simply twisted paper around a pencil to curl it and then glued it in place.
Stay tuned for more. . .