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Halloween brings out the crafter in us all.

Somehow October flew by me at unprecedented speeds, and because of this I didn’t have a lot of time to hype myself up for it. The pressure of trying to put together a costume and something to bring to the work bakesale probably helped me with my creativity. With no time to languish in creative-thinking hell, I set straight to it.

Firstly, my Halloween costume:

Rabbid & Manny Calavera

That is me as a Rabbid (from Rayman Raving Rabbids fame), and my boyfriend as Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango.  I wore this to work but did not win any costume prizes. However, I got some wonderful responses while out on the street and was in more than a few strangers photos! I’d love to see them, but have no way of finding them. If you were out near kensington in Toronto and took a pic of/with me I’d love to see it!

This is what I used to make the costume:

• Posterboard
• Felt
• Acrylic Paint
• Styrofoam balls
• leggings/leg warmers
• and old shirt
• papier mache (over a balloon)
• a lot of moxie (and tape)

Basically I created a large tube to sit on my shoulders out of the posterboard, cut out an area for the face and taped it up. Then I stuck an inflated balloon into the top and papier mache’d over it so the dome would be joined to the tube. I used sharpies and paint on the eyes, and the same for the mouth/face area.  It’s a bit hard to see but I did even have a plunger! Bwaaah!

The other craft item I made was the Pumpkin Cake:

Pumpkin-o-lantern Cake

It was made using 2 betty crocker cake mixes (French Vanilla for the Pumpkin, Chocolate for the dirt patch), home made cream cheese frosting + a can of store bought chocolate frosting, oreo cookie crumbs and fondant.

Using a sphere cake pan, we carved out the shape of a pumpkin, covered it with fondant and used the end of a knife to score the lines. We added the stem and the vine and put it on the the base, which was covered in oreo cookie crumbs for the ‘dirt’ effect. It was my first time covering a cake and fondant and I think it worked so well because pumpkins are lumpy by nature.

I’ve decided that I need to craft something once a month. Since there are no major holidays in November, I’m not sure where my inspiration will come from but hopefully I’ll find it.

Happy Halloween!

She’s Crafty! Ikea Fira Paper Craft

I’ve been overly negligent with this here blog. I have a good reason: I bought a condo.  Well, my boyfriend Baron and I bought one together.  We made the momentus move from North York to downtown which is a huge lifestyle change. In addition to the general crazyness of buying our first home – we had to do some somewhat minor renovations to make the place livable – but isn’t that the fun part?! Yes it is!

All this thinking about furniture and design and decorating has made me want to craft something bad… that combined with the fact that all my art/craft supplies have been packed away for over two months and I’ve got one big craft itch.

I’ve scratched it a bit today with my Ikea Fira Chest craft. I’ve seen this around on various design blogs: Ikea Hacker, Chez Larsson, Decor8… and they all looked great, so I decided to try it.

I use my fira chest to store makeup and jewlery and other skin care/toiletries. The inside of the drawer can get really messy from the makeup, so I’m trying to figure out how to best protect it.

I got some fancy scrapbook paper from the store Essence Du Papier, some spray adhesive and spray gloss from the art store and set to it.

The supplies

I’ve never really done a craft like this before, so I wasn’t 100% sure on what materials to use… I decided to paint the edge of the box white using acrylic paint

Fira gets painted White

White Paint

I traced the edges of the box on to the backs of the papers I selected and cut them out using the knife. I used spray adhesive on both the wood and the back of the paper and stuck them on. That seemed to work alright. I’ve experimented with the spray gloss – I wanted something to protect the surface from dirt and what not. So far it seems like the spray gloss just soaks through the paper – but does provide some what of a finish. Maybe Mod Podge would have been a better option! (I chose spray gloss because I thought it would provide a more even finish. hrm)

I also covered both sides of the small drawers in paper – different colours/patterns, as I couldn’t decide what I wanted it to look like. This is great because all I have to do to change it up is put the drawers in the other way

Anywho, here is the finished result:

Finished Fira Chest

Finished Fira

Or, finished so far. I am not sure if I should add paper to the entire insides of the box (the side walls, and back), and of course I’m still not sure exactly how to ‘finish’ it.. but this is what it looks like and I’m quite pleased with it.

Tags: chest, craft, crafts, fira, ikea, ikea fira, paper