Halloween mop up

August is upon us. In between the burned tar of summer's last scorching rays and shouts of back to school sales rests a dark respite; as peaceful as the grave.

The first weekend in august is when Yankee Candle has a little halloween premiere party. Usually there's something gothic-like that catches our eye, but this year they seemed to have doubled down on the boney bunch and forgot everything else.

We mostly wandered around just soaking in the Halloween atmosphere, not really feeling anything new for sale, and got a jar cover that looked like a spider web.

A few other Halloween delights dropped at Michaels as well including a false candle for carved pumpkins that let me burn the hell out of my fingers.

You remember my scarecrow? The one that caused a major hot glue burn on my leg? I wasn't happy with the dark face and figured it needed some light.

Enter scarecrow brain surgery.

Starting with a drill, I cracked a small hole into the thick plastic. Then I tried everything in my arsenal to widen it to fit the light source. The hot wire took forever and stunk to low hell. The drill bit was in no mood to play, so I finally yanked out a small saw blade and got to slicing.

The real problem came when I shoved the light in the skull and I realized it wasn't kicking out enough lumens. Thinking I was oh so clever, I wadded up tin foil and carefully jammed it inside the hole and tried to hot glue it in.

After burning five - ten layers of flesh off my finger, I used the end of a metal kebob stick to guide the foil onto globs of un-aimed glue.

But, I suppose it was all worth it for this creepy guy:

Or so we tell ourselves so we keep pulling out that cursed hot glue gun and letting it get to work on our tender flesh.

In less brain surgery, less power tools sides of crafts I finally made myself a witch's broom.

This was incredibly easy and cheap.

1. Find stick in pile of scattered tree remains.
2. Strip excess branches off and toss to dog who thought the whole thing was for her.
3. Roll raffia around the end, obscuring the stick below.
4. Tie off with jute string/whatever you have around.

Witch broom:

 The mannequin got some clothes on after a month of nakedness in the garage.

I have the skeleton arm and leg for her, but I still have to wait for the skull to crack into her face.

I want a plastic one, and all I have are foam ones. I did think to try my hand at a hot glue skull. The idea is you take a skull, coat it in tin foil, then dribble hot glue all across it.

Cut it in half and glue all that back together and you have a entire new skull for the price of three glue sticks. While it looks kinda creepy for just being hot glue, it wouldn't work for the mannequin plans. It's not detailed enough.

On the plus side. If I ever decide to get my own catacombs, I know a cheap way to get lots of skulls.