Salaric

Pom Pom Frankenstiens Monster on a stick:

Green PomPom

Lolly Stick

Black Crepe Paper

Googly Eyes

Glitter Glue

White Paper or Foam off cuts

Pipe Cleaner

Scissors

PVA Glue

Cut a small slit in the pompom – if it is a home made yarn/wool pompom you will not have to cut into it.

Fill the slit with a dab of PVA glue and push the lolly stick into it, hold the pompom onto the stick (with home made pompoms you may need to use a peg to hold it in place).

This is your base, now glue on the goggly eyes, cut a piece of paper or foam off cut to be the mouth and stick that on. Use glitter glue to add hair and scars.

Leave to dry.

Wrap the black crepe paper around the stick at the top and twist a pipe cleaner around the “neck” just under the pompom head to keep it in place – this is the Monsters cloak.

It can be used as a stand alone decoration or as a stick puppet with other monstrous pompom pals of your own creation.

I made this cheeky devil card for my husband as we first started going out on Halloween and sort of celebrate it as a sort of anniversary.

I used:

• One shiny black card blank

• One small red pom pom

• Two medium goggly eyes

• Red crepe paper

• Red foam sheet

• One red metallic pipe cleaner

• White PVA craft glue

• A pair of scissors

I started off by cutting out the devil’s body from the red crepe paper; I did this by folding the crepe paper in half and then cutting a sort of ‘tick’ out of it, making sure that the bottom of the ‘tick’ was flat along the fold so the two halves were still connected when I unfolded the paper.

I then glued this to the black card.

I then cut out a circle in the red foam sheet. I then cut out part of the circle to leave a crescent shape in the red foam. These were the devil’s horns. I glued them onto the black card above the body. I the stuck the goggly eyes onto the red pom pom and glued it into place as the devil’s head.

I then cut about a third off of the thin red pipe cleaner. This third I then bent so that it had a small triangle at one end, and a gentle curve along its length and glued that onto the card as the devil’s tail.

The red glittery pipe cleaner was then cut so that I had a long straight bit for the handle of the trident and a shorter piece I could bend into a curve to make the outer two prongs of the fork. I then glued these onto the card.

I made this witch as an example of what sort of halloweeny things the scouts could make with pom poms, pipe cleaners and lolly sticks. All of the things used for the witch came from a Big Box of Spooky Crafts that I got from a shop called the Works last year. For the witch I used:

• One medium-sized green pom pom

• One sheet of black crepe paper

• One green metallic pipe cleaner

• One purple and black stripy pipe cleaner

• One purple glitter paint pen

• One medium goggly eye

• One small goggly eye

• One thin orange pipe cleaner

• One yellow lolly stick

• One natural wood lolly stick

• One thin red pipe cleaner

• A pair of scissors

• White PVA craft glue

• Sellotape

First off, I took the natural unstained lolly stick, which was for the body of the witch, and wrapped the purple and black stripy pipe cleaner around it about a third of the way down from the top. I then twisted the pipe cleaner around the lolly stick to fix it in place and I bent the two equal lengths of pipe cleaner into legs by putting them an ‘almost’ right angle where the knees would be.

I then added arms in a similar fashion by attaching the green metallic pipe cleaner about 1cm from the top of the lolly stick. I didn’t bend this one, but made sure that the arms were sticking out of the ‘side’ of the lolly stick body, whereas the legs were sticking out of the ‘front’ of the body.

I now basically had a ‘stick figure’ which needed to be dressed. I thought it would make more sense to put on the witch’s clothing before her head as the head would be too big for things to go on nicely over it.

I had a rectangle of black crepe paper which I cut in half; I then folded one half of it in half and cut a slit along the fold in the middle for the the ‘neck’ to go through. I then slid it over the lolly stick and made sure the fold lay over the pipe cleaner arms.

This, however, didn’t really work that well so I poked the palms through the paper so that it looked like she had little green hand poking out of her dress sleeves. This held the dress in place a lot better than before.

I then added the witch’s head by taking the green pom pom and cutting a slit in the bottom of it, squirting some PVA glue into it and putting on the top of the lolly stick. I then left it to dry for a while.

For the witch’s face I used two mismatched goggly eyes – I thought this would make her look more scary and demented. The eyes were self-adhesive, which was good as it made things a lot easier: all I had to do was peel the back of of each eye and stick it on where I wanted. For the mouth I cut off a 2cm long section of the thin red pipe cleaner and bent it in the middle so that it made a nice open angle, and glued it in place with the PVA.

I then cut out a semi-circle out of the remaining crepe paper and wrapped it around to make a pointy hat, gluing it one edge of the hat to the other using the craft glue. This was a bit messier than I would have liked. I then added hair using a purple glitter paint pen and basically drew on the hair and stuffed the hat on top of it. It then had to be left to dry for ages as the glitter pen took a long time to dry, which is one of the reasons I tend not to give them to the scouts for craft projects.

Whilst the witch was drying I made a broomstick for her. I did this by cutting the thin orange pipe cleaner into sections 3-4cm long and gluing them on the end of the yellow pipe cleaner. I was careful with the placement of the ‘bristles’ so that they fanned slightly. I then used a spare section of pipe cleaner to wrap around the end of the bristles that were on the ‘broomstick’, ie the yellow pipe cleaner. This made it look a lot neater and broom-like in my opinion.

Once the witch was dry I bent one arm so that her ‘hand’ was hooked under one end of the broom. I then sellotaped the end of the witch’s body lolly stick to the centre of the broomstick lolly stick, which meant the witch looked like she was siting on the broomstick nicely. I then bent the remaining arm so that she looked like she was waving.

I made this card to show to my scouts an alternative to making spooky halloween things. I got the purple card and the sequins on the card, not to mention the PVA glue, from the Big Box of Spooky Crafts.

I picked out three black star sequins, three metallic orange butterflies sequins, one black circle sequin, two metallic orange three dimensional flower sequins and four metallic green sequins. I then arranged the sequins into a pattern I liked and glued them in place. If you look at the picture you will notice that I stuck one of the flowers onto the black circle, I think this gave a nice effect. Also the purple worked well with the orange and green metallic sequins.

One of my friends has a birthday that happens to fall exactly on Halloween the 31st of October. We could not make it to his birthday party so I made him this card instead.

I used one card blank and enverlope from The Works in Cheltenham and a set of coloured fine liners from WH Smiths.

I then drew on the card, first off the spooky writing – the HAPPY in red as it was supposed to be dripping blood and the BIRTHDAY in gloopy green writing. As you can see from the photos I did this all free hand and as a result had to break up the word birthday over two lines – I would advise that you measure out where you are going to put the letters before hand.

I then drew things in around the writing that I thought suitably halloween scary like the huanted castle upon a rocky jagged hill, the moon peaking out of the clouds and the silohett of the witch on her broom stick! Along the bottom of the card I drew a cualdren with fumes drifting up to form a skeleton – I wasn’t very happy with the skeleton and if I was to redo the card I would dig out the book Greys Anatomy so that I could copy the skeleton rather than trying to work it out as I drew it. There is also an eyeball complete with optive nerve trailing behind it. I also added a ghost in amoungst the writting and a amphora of poison. Anywhere else on the card that I thought needed something I added little flying bats!

I then coloured it all in – like the posion and the castle but I left the writing uncoloured as i felt it would look better.

This pipe cleaner spider was really easy to make – I used a black pompom, four black fluffy pipe cleaners, two medium goggly eyes and a pair of scissors.

I simply cut each pipe cleaner in half and then twisted them around the black pompom which became the spiders body – the pipe cleaners its eight legs. I then stuck on the eyes which where self adhesive.

This green stick monster or alien depending on what it is doing was deseptively easy to make. I used one medium green pom pom, one green lolly stick, one large goggly eye, two green matalic leaf sequines, one white foam shape, a pair of scissors and white PVA craft glue.

I started off by cutting a slit into the green pompom squeezing in some glue and sticking the green lolly stick into the glue filled whole. I then squeeshed the slit closed around the lolly stick and waited for the glue to dry.

I then stuck on the large goggly eye.

I then cut two slits in the green pompom either side of the eye. I then squeezed glue into the slites and poked the wide rounded ends of the green leaf sequines into the wholes as ears.

Whilst the ears were drying I took the white foam sheet and cut out a zigzag line to make the teeth – I would suggest that you draw on the shape you want before cutting though I didn’t. I then glued the teeth in place.

I got two halloween monster making kits from The Works in Stroud for my Scouts to use. The kit came with moulds of pumkin headed monsters, frankienstien monsters, mummys, vampires and vampire bats. The moulds where in two halves that you had to press together however they where made out of flimsy plastic that I associate with food packaging. Some of them didnt click together properlly and some of them even came out of the box slightly crushed – not a good start.

Still the kids mixed up the plaster in the little grey pouring cups provided in the kit and followed the instructions, but the stuff would not pour into the moulds as the feeder channel of the mould was far too small and on some of the monsters had a nasty sloping bit just before the main shape of the monster was reached. In frustration some of the children tried adding more water but by this point it was starting to dry and had hard lumps in it. Others opened the moulds and sqidged the plaster in having added more powder to it to make it stiffer. They banged the moulds on the table to dislodge the air bubbles but as some of the mould – the mummy in particular had bubbles the size of whole arms that wouldn’t shift the whole thing was a bit of a disastor.

I took the moulds home as you are supposed to remove the monsters from the mould after an hour to let them dry properly. Those we tried to open where just gloopy mess and those that I left once dry just shattered upon open the moulds or if they remained whole they where shapeless blobs.

I thought that the kid was just too hard for the kids and that they must have done something wronge with following the instruction and as I have a huge tub of plaster of paris that we got from Hindles I thought I’d make them a set of the little statues which they could then paint.

However – me and my husband ran into the exact same problems as the kids and our attempt was only slightly better in that we hit the tub we where mixing the plaster in on the workbench to get rid of bubbles before pouring.

But fundimentaly you could not pour the plaster into the moulds as it was too thick and the moulds where badly constructed.

I would say this is the worst craft disastor I’ve ever had and to avoid these kids – I’ve bought other stuff like the big box of craft from the Works and they have been fantastic value for money but this kid definatly isn’t!

I picked up this big box of spooky craft in The Works – a discount book shop chain I have rescently discovered. I was not expecting it to be that good as a previous kit I had got from them had been a bit of a flop when I got my scouts to use it but I was pleasantly suprised by what I found upon opening it!

The pipe cleaners ranged in sizes and where strippy and glittery as where the pompom balls and foam shapes and goggly eyes. The goggly eyes also had sticky backs on them which was a huge bonus. There where also sheets of crepe paper in appropriate halloween colours namely – red, black, green, purple and yellow. There where coloured lolly sticks in black, yellow and green and four blank cards in purple, black, yellow and white, a bag of foam shapes and PVA craft glue. There were also some orange, green, black and purple metallic sequines of various types and sizes.

Having been stung by craft kits before I opened one of the kits and had a bit of a play. Happy that the kids would be able to get something good out of this I took them in for the Scouts Halloween party.

And here is what some of the kids produced:

This flying cyclops was made by taking a medium sized red pompom and sticking a large goggly eye on it, the kid then took a large orange leaf shape from the foam shapes and cut out the wings which he simply glued on the top to great effect!

for this cute skull the kid used one medium sized white pompom, one large goggly eye and one medium goggly eye, and red and white fluffy pipe pipe cleaners. First off they stuck the eyes on – the fact they are different sizes worked very well to give it a monsterous appearance. The eyes where slef adhesive so no glue was needed. He then twisted a red and white pipe cleaner together and wraped these around the pompom so that the wire in the pipe cleaner helped the skull retain its shape and the red was supposed to represent blood.

For this ghost the Scout used one washed out yogurt pot, one large white pompom, one white fluffy pipe cleaner, two googly eyes, PVA glue and a sheet of white waxy paper that I got from some packaging.

He started by covering the yogurt pot with glue and squidging the paper onto it, he then stuck the pompom on the top, stuck the eyes on and wrapped the pipe cleaner round the middle to make arms – I thought this was quiet effective.

For this spider they used one medium black pompom, two medium goggly eyes and two green and two black stripy pipe cleaners. They simply stuck on the eyes to the pompom and then twisted the pipe cleaners around the pompom to make the legs – I didn’t have the heart to point out that spiders have twice as many legs but one of the other kids did at which point we decided it was obviously a mutant!

This cute little creator is apparently a frog bat highbred according to the Scout who made it! He used one medium sized black pompom, two small googly eyes, PVA glue and two green foam teaar drops.

He glued the two green tear drops together so that the large round parts of each where over lapping this made what is either the wings or legs – he hadnt decided which they where. He then glued the pompom on to the green sheets again at the round end and then added the eyes.

They all had great fun with this kit and there was so much in it that it helped out with their Chirstmas craft projects too 🙂

To make this pumkin I used one large orange pompom, a rectangle of black foam sheeting, a small green pompom, a pair of scissors and white PVA craft glue.

I squashed the large orange pompom so that it became more of a squart cylindrical shape than a sphere (can of tuna shaped instead of ball shaped).

I cut out two roughly equilaterial triangles from the black foam for the eyes with the remianing black foam sheet I cut out the mouth – this took a bit of thinking about as you have to cut away the teeth you want as they will be represented by the orange of the pompom. I then glued the eyes and mouth onto the orange pompom.

I then stuck the small green pompom on the top as the pumkins stalk – this was again simple but effective.