A Quick Halloween Decoration

 

Halloween is coming and my kids can hardly stand it!  Each year, we order costumes extra early (in fact we have had them for a few weeks now) and they begin counting down the days until I start to decorate the house.  They love Halloween probably more than Christmas so what is a mom to do?  Get crafty!

 

For my project today, I used some awesome shrink film made by Cooler Concepts and my trusty eBosser to whip up a quick decoration.  In fact, it was so quick that I started to think that these would make amazing placeholders or party favors for a Halloween party.

To start with, I printed some digital paper from Lettering Delights (Haunted Halloween) and the RIP sentiment onto my shrink film.  This is pretty easy to do with Photoshop or most photo editing software since the digital paper is a picture file.  Just import your digital paper and then add your text on top.  I used a light orange for the text because once you shrink it down, it will darken.  After letting the shrink film dry (i.e. time to clear off my desk LOL) I set to work.  I used a die from Papertrey Ink called Mat Stack 5 and lined it up so that the sentiment was in place and taped it down so it would not shift.  Then I ran it through my eBosser using the sandwich appropriate for that die.  In this case, the thin metal die sandwich.  It cut just as clean as any paper I have thrown at it.  Love that eBosser!

You can see here that some of the ink from the printing actually transferred to the die, but no worries…it cleans up easily with a baby wipe and did not affect the look at all. Next, I punched a 5/8” hole in the top and then started to shrink it with my heat gun.

Here you can see how much it shrunk down compared to the die itself.  Next, I threaded my label with some homemade crinkled ribbon and tied it around the black plastic rose (which I found at Target).  I took a strand of Halloween lights and fed as many as it would hold in a glass container and then added my rose.

I am thinking that I will have to make some more of these, I think they would be awesome lined up on my fireplace mantel.  Anyone care to share some quickie Halloween decorations that you make?  I’d love to hear them!