Recycle Halloween Fun

Where do you get  your ideas?  What inspires you to create?  Last Friday the arrival of office supplies at my office inspired me to make this fun Halloween Door Decoration.  

Somewhere on line I read about using recycled items in your art.  That must have planted the seed because when the large box arrived this idea kept pushing at me.

We have that big pumpkin Ellison Die... We have that 2.5" Ellison Alphabet.   Hummm... I could do something with that.   I wrestled this huge box until I cut it into pieces that would fit through the large Ellison Die Machine.  My pieces of card board were a little larger than 8.5x11.  I cut a few pumpkins and I noticed the negative or frame from the pumpkin was a nice size.  

I knew I could hang BOO inside the pumpkin shape so I was in business.   I used several coats  of orange acrylic craft paint to cover the brown box.  I used some Vintage Photo Distressed Ink around the outside of the frame.  Then I use Ripe Persimmon Distressed Ink on the edge of the pumpkin.  

I cut the letters out of the same box material.  I also cut more out of green and yellow card stock.  I covered the corrugated box letters using a glue stick with the card stock letters.

Fishing line was used to hang the letters inside the pumpkin.  Thanks to Theresa O for coming to my rescue by giving me some fishing line.  Only another crafter would not think it was odd for someone to call and say, "Hi, do you have any fishing line."  She never batted an eye... 

Hanging those letter was a little tricky because they kept wanting to twist.  I ended up wrapping the line around the bottom and top of each letter for stringing them to the frame.  They still wanted to twist so I also tied them together horizontally.  I tied the two Os together and then tied them to the B.   Finally, no more twisting. 

   

Note about stringing the letters.  I started out with a bead at the bottom of each letter... If I made another one, I don't think I'd do that again.  I just taped the line on the back at the top and then put a bead of glue on it so it wouldn't slip.  That was much easier.  It might be fun to hang streamers of some kind from the bottom... I might have to try that next. 

 I t thought this was nice but a little blah so I took black acrylic paint and flicked it over the frame to make it speckled.  If you are like me and think of this after the fact.... remember to cover up your letters firs unless you want them flecked too.

It still seemed a little blah to me so I added some of this cool cotton stringy mesh fabric Lori gave me.  It's used for Halloween decorations and you can get it at the $Tree.

That still wasn't enough so I added the ghost die cuts and pumpkin die (Sizzix, I think) 

I used a piece of jute string for a hanger.  I ran it from the two top corners so it would hang straight.  Below is my finished project hanging on my front door.

Nothing was purchased for the making of this project.  I used only supplies I already had except for the fishing line which I begged from my crafty neighbor.  So there, to all you people who never save anything.