I started on a Halloween craft yesterday. This might not be your thing right now cause let's face it, its still summer and Halloween is still 92 days away. Tomorrow is August 1st. I know its early but I thought I'd share it with you. Halloween will be here before we know it. Yikes!!

Let me just say that I don't do much decorating at Halloween.  My boys always did the Trick or Treating and we'd carve a pumpkin but that was about it. I just hate spending money on Halloween. This is a simple craft and it isn't expensive at all which is good for this cheap frugal crafter. I've seen several variations of it online but I'll give the shout out to Andrea at Andys Accents because this is where I think I saw it first.

I started with a 2 x 4 and believe it or not I actually used a Radial Arm Saw to cut the wood myself. I don't use power tools that much because Mike, my husband, is so good to help me do what ever I'm wanting to do but this time I did it myself and I still have all my fingers.

So I cut 5 pieces of wood. One 18", one 10", one 9" and two 8".

The paint is regular acrylic craft paint. I had a mixture of brands and just used what I had. This is after the first coat of paint.

                                   
After I put another coat of paint on and let it dry, I just hand painted the faces onto each piece of wood. These are the faces that I decided on. You could make them look scarier if you wanted  but I don't like scary. I had a hard time painting these faces because my brushes were old and I couldn't get it to look just right.  But after awhile I decided these were good enough and moved on. While the faces were drying, I worked on the mummy. My original plan was to use the burlap I had laid out in the above photo and wrap it around the wood but it didn't look right to me so I used some gauze we had in the medicine cabinet. I think it looks so much better with the gauze. 

The last thing I did was paint the letters on the base. I painted on Happy Halloween and you can definitely tell I need the new brushes. I will be going over the letters as soon as I get those new ones just to make it look a little brighter.

You can sit these little guys on the base or you can screw them in so they won't get knocked over.





I also cut some strips of the burlap and bunched them together with a burlap string and hot glued them to the top of my pumpkin for the stem.

Maybe this year I'll get some more things made besides just the wreath on my door and a pumpkin on my porch. What about you: Do you go all out for Halloween?