Well its past that time of year again....Halloween Planning

Its past time to start making stuff for Halloween. Since we just moved and our stuff is just finally starting to go where its supposed to, I haven't spent much time thinking about what we are going to decorate with. I've still got all of the stuff that I made last year, so that's no big. I've even found a few more owls recently to add to my Owlery. But this year, we are in a neighborhood so we get to think about the outside of the house as well as the inside. WooHoo!!!!

We aren't going to do a ton this year but I will be making stuff throughout the year for next year. I am, however, trying my hand at paper mache. In fact, I'm making large paper mache pumpkins. I've got 2 started now. I'm going to make them creepy looking. I'm so excited. I don't know what else we will make this year. But those 2 pumpkins are my only goals this year. Everything else is gravy. The best part about this project is that its extremely cheap. Your talking, newspaper (free if you ask your neighbors or coworkers if you don't get it yourself, its trash and this is recycling it), glue and/or liquid starch or flour, and water to make the pumpkin itself. Then you want paint to decorate it.

So here are some inspirations and technique info for making paper mache pumpkins and other stuff:

Stolloween has some great pumpkin advice and details....
http://www.stolloween.com/?page_id=67
His pumpkins look intimidating to make but if you really look through his directions, he breaks it down and give great advice. They are actually fairly easy, just time consuming.

Spooky Blue also gives some great information on making pumpkins and details for them....
http://www.spookyblue.com/halloween/giant-jackolantern/
These are spooky looking, but you could easily adapt the different techniques to make them not so spooky.

This site give a different idea using a real pumpkin as a mold to make paper mache pumpkins.
http://www.memoryelixir.com/props/pumpkin.html
I'm not overly fond of the directions but they show you basically how to make a mold out of a real pumpkin, which is informative.

Last but not least, here is a tutorial on how to make your own foam faux pumpkins.
http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/halloween/juggernaut/pumpkins/pumpkins-index.html
Just in case you just don't want to paper mache.

Don't forget you can make pumpkins out of balloons also. The ones I'm making now are using Stolloween's technique (sort of) of using trash bags and newspaper.