Pinterest is full of great fall crafts and décor ideas, especially during the holidays. Halloween is my favorite holiday so I love looking for new and exciting ways to fill my home with all things Halloween related. Like most college students, I am on a budget and that budget does not really allow me to buy extravagant decorations at the store. So I searched Pinterest for cool Halloween crafts and tutorials using common household items. Although the people in the Pinterest photos made everything look super easy, I didn’t have much luck with any of the crafts I came across. The pictures on the right are from Pinterest and to the left are my failed attempts at recreating them:
- Skull Cake:
This one wasn’t a total fail because it was still edible. With that being said, it looks nothing like the picture. This came with a step-by-step tutorial that looked relatively simple at first, but I think using a regular frosting spreader instead of a piping bag and fondant was my ultimate downfall. I tried to fix it up and make it my own with a bowtie and stitches, but it is clear that this was a fail.
- Trash bag Spider Web
http://www.listotic.com/16-awesome-homemade-halloween-decorations/15/
This looked like it would be the easiest one to do, but it ended up being the biggest fail of all. All that was required for this was a trash bag, scissors and tape. With only 3 steps I’m not sure where I went wrong, but it definitely does not look anything like a spider web.
- Packing Tape Ghost Hand
https://makezine.com/2014/10/24/how-to-video-ghosts-from-packing-tape/
For this activity I didn’t bother to include a picture of my attempt, because the result was just a pile of crumpled packing tape. This DIY had only 2 steps and one material, which was packing tape. The directions said to wrap your hand as loose as possible with the packing tape until you achieved the thickness that you wanted, and then you cut it off and taped up the open slits. Not only was this a fail, it was painful.
- Dog Halloween Costume
https://www.popsugar.com/pets/DIY-Halloween-Costumes-Dogs-38772226
I knew this was going to be a challenge going in because none of my dogs are very cooperative when it comes to wearing clothing. I saw a DIY Starbucks cup costume for dogs made out of construction paper, a coffee cup lid and tape. I imagined this would be easy considering there were no sleeves involved, but my dog a nervous wreck the entire time he was wearing it. So this could potentially be a successful DIY for someone with a more cooperative dog, but it was a fail for mine.
I hope you enjoyed all of my attempts at being festive this season. Hopefully if any of you try these DIYs you have a lot better luck than I did. Happy Halloween!