If you don’t know what a dementor is, I suggest taking your booty to the nearest store and buying the entire Harry Potter series.

Anyway, four days ago there was a Harvest Fest in my area. I live in a farming community, so harvest is a huge thing. And the festival is a celebration not only in that, but in Halloween and in marking the end of the farmers market until next summer. This year, Kathy (the lovely lady who was in charge of everything) themed it Hogwarts. And it was incredible. The past two years I came to Harvest Fest in creepy costumes (a possessed deer and the Red Death), so she asked me to do something creepy again this year. So, what did we decide?

A 7 foot 4 inch dementor.

Here’s how I did it:

Starting with the mechanic that gave me an extra foot and five inches. I had a foam circle (Hobby Lobby) that I super glued the bottom of small football shoulder pads (found a used one at a thrift store for four bucks) onto. The circle went on top of my head, and I put some elastic on the circle as a chin strap so it can stay in place. I later also put some elastic on to support the back of my head.

I got a foam head (Hobby Lobby) that I totally carved out to look a little more bony, or at the very least deformed. Once his ears, nose, eyes, and mouth were gone, I painted him brown.

Turns out dementors are grey (oops), so I repainted the head and blacked out some deformities. Then I painted him around some more just to make him even more ugly. Once he was ugly enough, I super glued him to the shoulder pads, which made him 7’4″.

Then I made some hands. I used a tutorial I found on Pinterest (linked here), and made them a little thicker and more grey. Once they were dry completely, I super glued them to a pair of cheap black gloves (Dollar Tree). That way I was able to move my hands and even grab stuff I need to. I also glued little clasps to the back, and later sewed clasps to the sleeves so my real arms didn’t show and he was just a mess of black fabric.

Making the cloak took an approximate of 10 yards of fabric (Hobby Lobby and Walmart). I grossly hand-sewed the fabrics together, ripping and cutting where I wanted to look absolutely disheveled. The very last piece of fabric that went on was the hood over the fake head. I glued the top of his head to the fabric so it would stay in place, and bunched the fabric on the side so it shaped the head better. (Also, thanks to Vladimir who tested the mechanic).

I wore all black under the cloak (duh) and went out to the Fest. Thanks to the way it was made, I was able to walk around, move my arms (aka reach out to little kids to scare them shitless), bend, and nod when someone asked for a picture. I would make the cloak a little shorter than it was because I did trip on it a bit. The only real issue I had was the mechanic at the top was supported by my head, which did bruise the next day.

Overall, I had a blast. The pain was worth it, and everyone loved it. The costume itself took an approximate 35-50 hours to make and cost about 40 dollars to make. The most expensive stuff was the fabric. I don’t know when I’ll bust this guy out again, but he was awesome to have even for just the Fest.

Hugs

Alexandra

Recently I got to go to Disneyland as part of a birthday celebration. My friend Kiki and I went as a Disneybound Snow White and Evil Queen. The Evil Queen is my favorite villain, I love her (and that’s a psychological point for another time). So, of course, I went as her. I wanted to make something for the trip. It was originally going to be ears, but my lovely friend bought some fierce ears for me. So, I made a pin (partially because I thought my outfit needed something more).

Supplies used:

• old corkboard I had lying around
• scissors/a knife to cut the board
• paint (red, white, brown, light grey)
• white glitter
• Krylon spray
• a pin backer thing
• some very good glue (I use E6000)

And of course, I had my queen on the side as inspiration.

First thing you do is trace the shape you want on the corkboard. It would be a total shame to cut and it come out looking like a pear. I used scissors for the basic cutting out and a small X-Acto knife for the small crevices/details. Also, please be careful cutting corkboard, whether you use scissors or a knife. It’s harder to cut and the extra force, if slipped, could be detrimental to your fingers.

Once you have a shape you’re happy with, it’s time to paint. Make sure, if you’re copying off something, that you have a reference. While my little apple to the side has green, if you look at the original movie it was white. Thus, I used white paint. Trace your design first, then paint. Go over it at least twice (I recommend thrice) so you can get all the little corkboard crevices.

After it dries completely, really clean the lines and add details. And because I’m extra as fuck, I had to add glitter. In order to do that, I put the glitter on carefully and a little bit at a time with my final layer of white paint instead of glue. I also highly recommend doing that with paintbrushes rather than pouring it on, only because I wanted to completely avoid getting glitter into the red apple. Once everything is on and complete, spray some Krylon on so that everything stays as is.

Let the Krylon dry completely. I let it sit overnight if I have time. Then you put a strip of E6000 on and firmly press a pin backing. This, definitely, you need to wait a solid overnight (24 hours preferable) for the glue to fully dry and stick. Open and close the pin a few times so it doesn’t stick when you try to put it on and take it off.

And here it is, on my backpack at Disneyland. It lasted the entire day with my ripping my backpack on and off, and the paint/glitter stayed crisp and clean.

I’m actually interested in making more pins. I really enjoyed the process.

If you decided to do this, let me know! I would love to see.

Hugs

Alexandra

 

Remember my teacher friend from previous posts? It’s been a hot second since I talked about her, but she’s back! For her classroom this year, she themed it Harry Potter. And because she trusts my creativity(?), she asked for input. So I helped decorate her classroom. One of the things I came up with were floating candles to hang from the ceiling. Here’s how I made them.

Supplies I used:

• Hair rollers from Dollar Tree
• Paint–light blue and white–from WalMart
• Plastic wire typically made for making jewelry. I grabbed this from my jewelry making kit and don’t remember where I got it but I’m sure you can get it anywhere that sells jewelry making stuff
• Orange construction paper
• Paper clips

Because the rollers were dark blue, painting it white over it immediately wouldn’t give a good effect, so I painted all the rollers in a light blue paint. These rollers have plastic ends on them, and since only one side will be visible I painted one end but not the other. This’ll actually help in the long run.

Once the blue dried, I thought I’d be good to go for white. Well, word to the wise, paint one end first, because what’ll happen is the blue will come off with the white if you touch the wet paint. So, I painted the majority of the candle white, waited for it to dry, then painted the rest of it white. Now I have white, flameless candles.

Here’s why it was good not to paint over both ends: I was able to secure the plastic wire around the plastic end piece and tie it so it wouldn’t randomly fall off. Once I’ve got plastic wire on every. single. candle, I cut out tons of flame twins out of orange construction paper. And I don’t know why I didn’t get a pic of this (good job, Alexandra), but I put the flame twins against each other on the plastic wire so the stay up.

Then I attached the plastic wire on a paper clip slightly opened (again, no pics, Alexandra?). The paper clip goes into the ceiling, and if you know public school ceilings you know that they are cardboard tiles, practically. So I put the open end of the paper clip in the tile borders and the candles are thus floating!

I only made a solid 18, but from what my teacher friend told me the kids really like them. And I suppose that was the point, lol. It all worked out, and it cost less than 10 dollars.

If you decided to do this, or even have a different way of doing this, let me know! I would love to see.

Hugs

Alexandra

 I love being crafty, especially lately when it seems that so many spring and summer things have come up in stores.

I decided to put that craftiness to use by making a potted garden, like a land of fairies or gnomes. But if you notice the basic layout of the garden, there’s a lot of space for more flowers and more garden. I definitely could have done more, however, this was created for my teacher friend I often talk about as a lollipop holder for her well-behaved students.

That’s right. It was a garden of sweets.

But how to do the do? How to make the make? Beautiful, I am here for you. And even better news, I got all my stuff from the dollar store. So you can make your own garden of sweets without breaking the bank.

So here’s what you’ll need:

• three flower pots of different sizes
• foam for foundation inside pots (I prefer the balls for the small & medium pot)
• fake moss
• small rocks
• fake flowers
• a gnome outhouse (or another type of fairy establishment)
• lovebirds (optional)
• butterflies (optional)
• hot glue gun with hot glue
• regular liquid glue (I used Elmer’s clear glue)
• a medium paintbrush
• wire cutters

1. Put foam into the pots. The largest one should be overflowing foam. The medium one should have the foam stop right at the mouth. The small one should have a little bit of foam, not yet reaching the mouth. Hot glue the foam into place.

2. Hot glue the medium pot on top of the large pot. The hot glue the small pot on top of the medium pot. That way you get the three-tiered garden.

3. With the regular liquid glue and brush, paint on the foam. That’s right, paint glue. As you glue the foam, stick on the moss until you cover all of the foam on all three pots.

3 1/2. I decided to spray the moss with hairspray to that the moss would stay in place.

4. Once the moss sets, hot glue the outhouse onto an empty part of the ‘field’.

5. Hot glue small rocks around the sides and especially the back of the outhouse. Not only does it help support the outhouse if necessary, but it also helps it look more lived-in, like someone or somegnome piled the rocks there. Honestly, I’m not sure why garden houses have rocks, but it looked too natural to leave out. So I got rocks.

6. Using wire cutters, cut the tops of the flowers from the majority of the stem. Leave just a wee bit of stem to stab into the foam under the moss so it looks like the flowers are growing out of the ground.

7. If you decide to have lovebirds, hot glue them on the top tier side by side.

8. If you decide to have butterflies, hot glue them on the lip or sides of the largest pot, or even the medium pot if you’re particularly brave.

And voila. You got yourself a lovely little garden scene. From here you can stab the moss with any sort of lollies that you want, or you can stab some more flowers for a proper garden.

On top of that, I used leftovers (and some of my clay) to make a nice little monster home. A medium pot, a small pot, foam, moss, and flowers. And a wee monster peaking from under the flowers.

Anyway, like I said, I love being crafty so hopefully I’ll have some more of these posts out and about. Enjoy them, and let me know if you do any of them. I’d love to see!

Hugs

Alexandra