Tim Burton Halloween Party

I'll admit that this took months to assemble. However, we did have our new daughter arrive back in July so that has a huge factor for everything taking 3 times as long as it should have.

Wonderland Scene

Supplies:

1. Plywood

2. Poster Board

3. Jig Saw

4. Acrylic Paint - Assorted Fluorescent Colors

5. Paintbrushes

6. Hot Glue

7. Hand Made Wood Flowers that I found at Target

8. 24" Black Light Fixture (We purchased 2 of these)

While I personally have no talent in the drawing department, my daughter does, so she drew templates on the poster board. My father-in-law cut the pieces out with the jig saw, but honestly I would have been able to do it if I needed to. Then just paint the boards. I made the mistake of getting the little bottles of acrylic paint from Michael's and ended up needing 4 sets of 6 to paint everything. It would have been a lot less expensive if I'd just bought the 1 pint set I included the link for. Finally, I just hot glued the pieces together in order to really create the 3D effect you see there.

Nightmare Before Christmas Candle Holders

Oogie was a gift from my daughters. They know how much I love The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it worked out perfectly for the party theme. 

Supplies:

1. Glass Mason Jar - I just saved the Bertolli jars when I made chicken alfredo.

2. Textured silver paint

3. Free Printable Nightmare Before Christmas Labels

Just clean and spray paint the outside of the jars. I used Modge Podge to attach the labels I printed, but regular glue would work just fine too I'm sure.

Photo Corner

Supplies:

1. Halloween Fabric purchased from Hobby Lobby as a background

2. Dollar Store Toys for Dress Up

3. Selfie Stick

This was super easy with all the kids having cell phones these day, but they had a blast with it. 

Drink Station

Supplies:

We ordered the black light responsive party-ware from Amazon.

1.  Party Essentials Hard Plastic 6-Inch Round Party/Dessert Plates, Assorted Neon, 40-Count

2. Party Essentials Hard Plastic Cutlery Combo Pack, Knives/Forks/Spoons, 48 Place Setting-Count,

3. Assorted Neon Party Essentials Hard Plastic 10-Ounce Party Cups/Tumblers, 50-Count, Assorted

4. Neon Party Essentials 2-Ply Paper Dinner Napkins, Assorted Neon Brights, 24-Count

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Candy Table

My mother is a Goodwill junkie, so she had all the apothecary glassware already from her various "treasure hunts." We're lucky enough that Albanese Candy Factory is only about a half hour from our house, so I was able to get classic confectionery candies. 

Upelkuchen Cakes

This was mine... Yes, sad I know.

These are my sisters... I learned the secret to making cake pops is to crumble them and add in a couple spoonfuls of icing before shaping them. 

The Rest Was Just Fun

How to Transfer a Photo onto a Glass Block... Forget the Mod Podge!

I made several of these personalized glass blocks for my family last Christmas and they were a huge hit. I wanted to share my results for anyone looking for a unique and relatively inexpensive gift idea.

Originally I had started this post with a step by step process on using Mod Podge Photo Transfer Medium. Turns out, you're required to own a laser printer in order for this to work properly. Sorry Mod Podge, but all I have is your standard affordable inkjet kind. It would have been nice if they put it on the bottle that it was necessary instead of just recommended.

 In the beginning I was extremely excited by this project. Getting gifts that my family doesn't just go and out and get themselves is hard and I thought putting a photograph on the square glass craft blockwas something no one in my family would ever think of (because no one in my family is exceptionally good at crafts, especially me). Two days in I was ready to be done with this nightmare!

See, it takes a little over 48 hours for Mod Podge to dry after application. And that's IF the temperature of your home is perfect. It can't be too cold, too hot, too damp, or too dry or it takes even longer (that should have been my clue right there this crap was tricky). But of course, I'm nothing if not determined so I applied it to my printed inkjet copy and waited for grass to grow for it to be completely dry. After the 24-48 hours waiting period you then dampen the paper and "simply" peel it off.

First of all, there is nothing simple about getting the printer paper off the damn block. It sticks like glue, peels the Mod Podge medium if you rub to hard, and drys too quickly which necessitates wetting it repeatedly which results in over saturation and smeared ink (this is probably why the "recommend" using a laser printer).

After a good 20 minutes of peeling off the soppy paper, my end result looked like this:

The photo isn't the least bit clear and if you look close enough you can see where not all the paper fibers came off. It took a total of 3 days just to get that and all I had to show for it was blue fingers and a foggy photo. I was more than disappointed, I was pissed!

After seeing this, I ended up researching alternatives well passed midnight. Some people recommended a product called Liquitex Professional Gloss Gel Transfer, which essentially is a different type of Mod Podge. There was no way I was doing that again! Other people recommended printing on vellum paper. However, after looking into it more closely printing on vellum is tricky. Not all printers will actually do it, since it's basically a water resistant tracing paper that's not actually meant to be printed on. That didn't seem like a really good idea to roll the dice on.

Time was running out, since we're leaving today and it took me until Wednesday to figure out Mod Podge is a joke. In the end, I went over to Office Depot on Thursday and found a wonderful printer friendly product.... WINDOW CLING! If I had just been smart enough to visit my local office store in the first place, it would have saved me a ton of time and a migraine.

So if anyone is looking to do something like this, please just order yourself some printable window cling sheets and save yourself a boat load of stress. You'll actually get the results you're looking for with essentially no hassle...

I'll Be Getting Crafty

Is it just me or do the weeks just seem to be flying by lately? I can't believe that the weekend is already over (sigh).

So thanks to Pinterest, I have now discovered the wonderland that is Etsy. I had come across a t-shirt for Paige a while back that I knew the moment I saw it, she was getting it for Christmas. See, she has a bit of a Harry Potter obsession and you can't just stroll into JC Penny and expect to find the contents of Diagon Alley on the shelves. Etsy however, is a whole different ball game!

They had more Harry Potter stuff on there than I could have ever imagined. Over 250 pages worth in fact! I did order her Make Love Not Horcruxes shirt off there last week and I've been browsing ever since. I even went and installed the app on my phone and have already created a decent sized list of favorite items.

Now, I've never really been good at arts and crafts despite having an over abundance of crafting supplies. We have glitter literally coming out of every nook and cranny of the house (even when we've vacuumed 100s of times between uses) and enough glue and stickers to put back together the London Bridge if need be. Owning said craft supplies, does not however, make one good at being crafty. The attempts have always been there in spurts over the years though. Yesterday, we pulled all of this out because Anne had a project to make Naked and Thankfully Un-Anatomically Correct Santa a new suit.

Ultimately she only asked for my help with this because she wanted me to decorate Santa for her. I did help her cut things out and did the gluing, but all the decorating was her responsibility.

Once the craft supplies were scattered around the living room like a vast array of glittery landmines, it did spark that urge to get creative. I had seen these awesome photo transfer blocks on Etsy this week and now I've got it in my head that I don't have to order them, I can simply make them myself.

I found a video on YouTube that seems like it will be simple enough to follow and went through 1000's of pictures yesterday and picked out the one's I like for each person in my family. Last year, I did goodie baskets because frankly, if my family wants something they just go out and get it. It makes Christmas maddening sometimes, so it seemed just the thing I was looking for this year.

We don't have any of the girls this weekend since Lena is headed to my sister's house and I will be taking over the kitchen in an attempting to pull this off...