Halloween Bat Mobiles

In case you missed it, The Frugal Hostess decorated for Halloween.  You can catch up in yesterday's post.


Ingredients
Thin cardboard (like a gift box)
Assorted Halloween-y papers
Black glitter
Glue
Hole punch
Scissors
Black ribbon or string
Pencil

Directions
1.  Draw a bat on a piece of thin cardboard.    This is pretty easy; The Frugal Hostess did hers freehand and then replicated it.  You can also Google a bat shape and trace it.

2.  Cut out the bat shape, and then trace it to make four more identical bats out of thin cardboard.  [If you are using this decoration inside, card stock will work just fine.]

3.  Trace those bat shapes onto your Halloween-y paper.  FruHo used papers on two bats (meaning she needed four shapes) and glitter on two bats (more on that in a minute).  You should pay attention to what side of the bat you're using for tracing; if your bat is at all lopsided (or "jaunty," as TFH's bats are), you'll need to keep track of which cut out goes with which bat.  Just number them or something simple.

4.  Cut the bat shapes out of the paper you've traced it on, and glue it to the cardboard bats.  [Gift box/tampon box - use what you have!]

5.  If you decide to glitter any of your bats, The Frugal Hostess suggests that you spray paint or color them with markers first.  She didn't, and as a result she had to use about twice as much glitter and still had gaps.

6.  When the bats are dry, cut a one inch slit in the bottom of two bats and the top of the other two bats.

7.  Punch a hole (if you have a hole-punch that is smaller than standard, that will be better) in the bats that have been cut from the bottom up, and string the ribbon through the hole.  The length of the ribbon will be determined by where you're hanging it.

8.  Push the bat with the ribbon into the bat cut from the top down, so that they interlock.  Presto, flying bat mobile extraordinaire!

The Frugal Hostess has bats in her belfry.  Please comment. You can also join the Frugalistas on Facebook for exclusive content, subscribe so that you always know when a new post appears, or follow on Twitter.

Halloween Porch Decorations

The Frugal Hostess likes to decorate her front porch for the various holidays and seasons.  She sometimes buys decorations (usually at the after-holiday sales), but she really prefers throwing things together.  After the graduation party a few weeks back, TFH decided she would definitely make a fabric banner for Halloween using purple, green, black, and orange fabric.   Easier said than done, as it happened.  None of her fabric scraps were the right colors, and the thrift stores were suspiciously barren of fabric scrap bags.  [Do note that most thrift stores sell giant bags of fabric remnants for next to nothing - like, two dollars - TFH just had bad luck.  If you like to use fabric in your crafts, get thee to a thrift store.  Plus, you usually get random colors and patterns that you wouldn't pick out but are glad to have.]  She was finally able to score single napkins and pillow cases in the right colors, and away she went.  Instructions are here, if you missed it.

 
Next, she planned to use some of the things she made last year.  In a fit of new home owner crafting, The Frugal Hostess made bat mobiles, witches' hat garlands, a pumpkin still life, and a bunch of other stuff last Halloween.  While the decorations themselves fell apart, paper perhaps not being the most long-lasting of choices for outside decor, TFH saved all of her templates, ribbon, and other odds and ends in a box in the basement.

But wait!  Didn't her basement flood recently?  Oh no!  What happened to all of the templates?  (Doesn't that just sound like something that would get uttered in all seriousness in an accounting office somewhere?)  Well, Dear Reader(s?), they were rescued.  Whew.


For the door, FruHo (Yes.  Like J-Lo.) envisioned a creepy black wreath with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton.  Because she already had the skeleton and couldn't figure out what to do with it.  Here's how it went down.  TFH had purchased a huge lot of embroidery hoops at a thrift store a while back, because they are the perfect thing to use for paper craft mobiles, wreaths, etc.  She took two of them, one large and one small, and taped them together.  Then, using a pair of black tights that she sliced up, she wrapped the wreath shape to cover the tape.  (You could also spray paint it).  Next, she took a long and winding black scarf and wrapped it around the wreath, followed by a long piece of black velvet ribbon.  All of this was loosely secured with a couple of safety pins.  The final touch was to dangle the little skeleton from the wreath.  Now, you are probably normal and thus lacking in a storehouse of embroidery hoops, but the point here is to use what you have rather than spending a fortune on decorations.

To flank the fabric banner, TFH decided to make a couple of bat mobiles (mow-bull, not Bat Mobile like what Batman drives).  Detailed instructions are forthcoming soon, but these would be slightly less complicated than last year's bat-a-palooza, while making use of the already existing bat templates.  Brill.  She got out the box of templates, placed it on the table, and began to work.  She cut out the bats, did all the steps, blah blah blah to be explained in a later post.  And then she walked away from the table for a few minutes to talk to The Frugal Husband.  At which point one of the assholes cats peed into the box of templates.  That's right, folks; the templates that had been carefully tucked away for a year, then rescued from flood waters, were destroyed by cat piss.  All the more reason not to spend a lot of money on decorations, in The Frugal Hostess's humble opinion.

BOO!

The Frugal Hostess is turning into a cat lady. Please comment. You can also join the Frugalistas on Facebook for exclusive content, follow on Twitter, or subscribe so that you always know when a new post appears.