Halloween Treat Holder

Hi Blogland. With Halloween just around the corner, I wanted to share with you a project I have been working on. Over at the Cuttlebug Blog Spot we were asked to come up with a project for holding your Halloween Treats!!! Here in the UK we don't really celebrate Halloween as such, although it is getting bigger and bigger!! We even have a Spooky Night here at Barleylands where all the kids dress up and play trick or treat around the craft village in a safe and fun environment.So here is my project for handing out our candy treats.The idea being that the bowl is held up by somesevered, blood dripping, green glowing monsters hands!! ggggrrrrrr.
So here's how it was made......
And can you guess what the bowl was made out of??It was actually an old Cricut cutting mat!!..I cut the mat with a craft knife and ruler half way down the centre line,folded it back over itself to give a definite crease,and then folded the flaps over each other to form the bowl shape. At this point it was not stuck down as the mat needed to be coloured first..
This is the fun, if slightly messy part.I took some Orange Acrylic paintand applied it to the Cricut Mat.It will air dry quite naturally but I encouraged it to dry with my heat gun, don't put your heat gun too near the mat as the heat can warp the plastic mat..You may need a couple of layers of the Orange paint to cover the mat.Next, take some PVA Glueand cover the whole mat with a layer of the glue. You could apply this with a paint brush, but you are probably better off using the best tools you have.. Your HANDS!!!!Whilst the Glue is still wet, paint over a layer of Black Acrylic paint, trying not to mix it too much with the glue, you want the Black Paint on top of the Glue, not in it!What you will notice straight away is that the Black paint starts to split, revealing the dry Orange paint underneath.. This happens because the Acrylic paint dries quicker than the PVA Glue, so therefore it stretches forming a distressed, aged, vintage look otherwise known as crackle..Effective don't you think?! The crackle effect will happen quite naturally as the paint air dries, but you can encourage it to dry by using your heat gun. Again, don't get too close with the gun as you can cause the paint to blister.Once dry, turn the mat overand repeat the process on this side. Put the mat to one side to dry completely over night.
Once the mat was dry it was time to form the bowl shape again and hold it together. When you feel the crackle effect it feels sort of leathery! You could describe this to your Halloween guest as a human skin bowl!!!Now, I don't think I have any adhesive strong enough to hold this shape together, so I decided to use Black Eyelets. I punched holes over the flaps of the mat where they would over lap and also holes around the top, and set my eyelets.I then took some plain ribbon and sprayed it with some Cosmic Shimmer Mists. I used Red Firefly as this has a deep Red colour with Gold Mica powder in it.The idea being that I would stain the ribbon and thread it through the eyelet holes to make sure the whole thing stayed together. I even had the idea to describe the stained ribbon to your guests as intestines... But this might put them off your candy treats.. Who knew I had such a macabre imagination!!Next I made the monster hands to hold the bowl. I cut out some hand shapes from the Sentimentals Cricut Cartridgeand embossed them through the Cuttlebug Machine using the Drip Drop Embossing Folder.I made a ring with some extra thick Acetate and applied the 3 hands to it.I mixed together some PVA Glue and some Red Pepper Alcohol ink and allowed it to drop down each hand as blood!!!Before popping the bowl in placeand filling with some sweet treats..
Don't forget to pop on over to the Cuttlebug Blog Spot to see what all the other DT members have come up with...
Thanks for checking us out, see you soon.
Andy.