DIY Spidergirl Costume

My oldest daughter decided that she wanted to be Spiderman for Halloween a long time ago, like months.  For a three-year-old, that is a very long time.  Luckily, she hasn't changed her mind about it either.  I don't know why she is so into Spiderman, except for maybe some fatherly influences, but she is, and so we are going with it.

We tried on a cousin's old costume with built-in muscles, and it just looked weird on a little girl with long, blonde hair.  Then, I saw this on Pinterest:

Problem solved!  Just add a tutu to a boy costume and you're set.  (I don't know the original source of this photo, because the link is broken on my pin.)  This week, I found a muscle-less Spiderman costume at Target for $10, and work on the tutu began.

I used an elastic waist and made the elastic band 4" shorter than my daughter's waist.  Even then, it ended up slightly looser than I wanted, but it still fits well enough.  The tulle was cut in 15" strips, so it ends up around 7" sticking out.  Here's a full-length "in character" shot:

I don't know where she gets it.  We still need some accessories, like maybe a felt eye mask and some cute hair things.  I have some leftover red tulle, so I could even just tie that around pigtails or something.

And no, the pink flip flops aren't part of the costume.  It's way too cold around here for that.  Once I finish the felt eye mask, it's going to be a very happy Halloween around here for this little girl!

Wooden Candy Corn Hanger

This autumn, I decided to try something different for my front door.  And since my crafty friend Cami suggested that we make wooden candy corns, I thought it would be a perfect fit for new front-door decor.

We pretty much made it up as we went.  The tools we used that made it all possible were my husband's fancy miter saw and cordless drill, my orbital sander, and a pair of pliers/wire cutters, not to mention our paintbrushes and such.  For this project, we kept things simple and bought pre-primed 6" trim from Lowe's and just cut it to length.

The bottom piece is 12", the middle piece is 9", and the top piece is 6".  We cut each side on a 75 degree angle to meet up with the next piece(the measurement we used on the miter saw said 15 degrees, but it makes more sense to me to say it the other way).  Then we drilled the holes for the wire and sanded all our edges.  We used plain old acrylic craft paint to paint each piece.  The colors ended up pretty bright, so I rubbed a little bit of stain over the top of the paint after the paint was dry to tone the colors down.  Next, I wired all the pieces together, added some felt furniture pads to the back to keep it from scratching the door, and finally hung it up!  We were able to pretty much finish this project up in a day.

Linked up: The CSI Project, Tatertots & Jello

EDIT:  I made the top 10 in Krylon's painted Halloween projects challenge!

Halloween Tulle Wreath

I recently saw this black tulle wreath on Pinterest, and I thought it would make a sweet Halloween wreath for my front door.  Since I have a brown front door, I thought it wouldn't be enough of a contrast with black on brown, so I got white tulle.  Thinking back on it, I might have gotten an off-white instead.

I used a large embroidery hoop for the wreath form, then just knotted tulle strips around it.  (I used this method for quick tulle-cutting, and it worked very well.)  I happened to have 12" hoops on hand from another project that didn't work out, but using such a large hoop meant that my wreath ended up being a lot bigger than I imagined.  The tulle was also a lot puffier than I thought it would be, so it looked sort of weirdly oversized on my front door.

Fortunately, I have this big mirror right inside the front door that it looks great hanging in front of.  I used black polka dot ribbon for the hanger, and I got the blackbird at the dollar store.  It has wire under the feet, so all I had to do was wrap the wire around the hoop after I tied the tulle around.  This was a pretty quick project, and I think it makes a nice statement, plus all I have to do to use it for other holidays is switch out the ribbon and bird.

Linked up: Tatertots & Jello