To Celebrate

This craft is a little late for Halloween, but it took a little longer than I expected to get it all together. I’m still super happy with how it came out, and it’s never too early to plan for next time, right?

This started when I started to see posts and pins all over for window silhouettes. Some were really scary, but I veer towards cute and charming for my Halloween decorations.

After browsing all sorts of images and clip art ideas on the Internet, I came up with a couple of cheery monsters that would lend themselves to big silhouettes. I drew them in Adobe Illustrator, and then after taking measurements of my upstairs windows, I resized them printed them on the large format printer at work on plain paper.

If you don’t have access to a large format printer, Staples or Kinkos can do this for you, or you could tile them out on 8.5 x 11 paper and tape them together. This part doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfect, because it is just the pattern used to cut the final material.

I was lucky to find some unused rolled black paper in the back of the office. If you just don’t happen to work somewhere with these kind of treasures in the trash bin, black posterboard would work just fine.

I taped down my paper pattern onto the black material and cut the outside shape with regular scissors. I slipped my self-healing mat underneath and then cut the eyes and mouth details with an X-acto knife.

I used double stick tape to add a layer of colored tissue paper where the eye and mouth cutouts were so they’d “glow” a different color. And then I double stick taped each monster to a big piece of white tissue paper that was the size of each window. It would probably be easier to use spray adhesive for this part, but Mr. SuzerSpace hates the smell of that, so I didn’t.

I used push pins to mount the tissue paper at the top of my window frames, and then put a small light behind each one at night. It’s hard to see them during the day, which is fine. But at night, the lamps cause the silhouettes to really stand out.

I’m already working (in my mind – that counts, right?) on a Christmas-themed version of this craft.

I’ve seen this craft all over Pinterest, with a couple of variations, but essentially it’s all the same technique – cans, paint and fabric create your choice of a themed windsock.

Like most of my crafts, it was easy, fun, and then suddenly took a little weird turn but it ended up just fine.

To start, I saved two aluminum cans from cooking during the week. Many of the craft posts suggest using coffee cans, but the coffee we buy comes in a bag, so that wasn’t a choice.

I painted one can white, and the other green. Fun fact: Fabric paint isn’t just for fabric. My only tube of green paint was part of a fabric paint set, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it on a can. If it didn’t stick, I could just toss it in the recycle bin and start over.

While I waited for the paint to dry, I browsed the internet and my Pinterest board full of doodles and practiced making simple but funny/happy ghost and monster faces.

Once I had an idea of what I wanted, I used my black sharpie to draw on the outlines of the faces, and then came back and used black and white paint to fill in the details.

For the ghost, I used duct tape to stick on strips of white vinyl inside the bottom rim of the can for the streamers. I happen to work at a company that has vinyl scraps in the trash, but a trash bag or ribbons or even a vinyl tablecloth cut into strips would also work. At the top, I punched a small hole with a hammer and nail, and then screwed a cup hook into that hole, using a wine cork on the inside to hold it all together.

And then my attention turned to my Frankenstein can. And I realized I had painted it upside down – the open end was at the top.

Whoops! It sure was easier to hold onto while I painted it that way, but now I had to figure out how to put the streamers and hooks on it.

I decided to use a bottle opener to cut holes in the bottom of that can, and then threaded through strips of black material. This is much easier (and much less likely to result in a need for a tetanus shot) if you thread them from the outside into the holes to the inside. I pulled each strip up to where I could reach it, and then tied a big knot in each which keeps it from falling back through the hole.

For the hanger, I punched holes in the sides and threaded some thin gauge wire through, and then twisted that into a hanging loop at the top.

On both versions, I cut the streamer strips at random heights, and then cut a notch in the bottoms to make them a little more finished.

These were fun to make – my plan is to keep saving cans through the month and keep adding to the collection. I’m thinking a vampire, a pumpkin and maybe a mummy?

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