The Witch is In. . .

Creepy wishes going out to all of you during this spook-tacular month of October! I am just warning you now, I love Halloween and you will probably have to put up with my obsession with all things orange, black, purple and witchy all month! It's really not my fault, I didn't have much of a choice about liking that day because it is actually my birthday! So I have always had double reasons to celebrate and make it a fun day.

But that's not all-- I actually have even more reasons for this being such a big deal in my world-- 7 years ago, my younger sister had her first baby girl on Halloween and I thought, cool! someone to share my birthday with. AND THEN, 4 years ago that same sister had her second daughter on Halloween. Seriously, my family may be bewitched! So myself and my two nieces share a Halloween birthday and have fun celebrating it together now each year. AND, by the way, my other sister is currently expecting a baby due Nov. 14th which is extremely close to Oct. 31st, especially since her other two babies came early. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a 3rd Halloween niece to share my day (I'll keep you posted!)

So, in honor of the witches, big and small, in my family, my project this week is an altered witch hat.


I simply took a paper mache witches hat bought at my local craft store ($2.99) and covered it with the fabulous Echo Park Happy Halloween paper. I have the collection pack, which is on sale this week at The Beary Scrap for the awesome price of $11.19-- for 12 double sided papers, 1 sheet of die cut stickers and 1 sheet of alphabet stickers (4 different alphabets). No witch can beat that!

First I painted the bottom of the brim, edges, around the crown and the tip with black craft paint-- I wanted to make sure that any edges that might peak through the paper would be black and not the brown kraft color of the original hat.


Then I traced around the bottom brim circle on the sheet of Echo Park paper and cut out the entire circle. Then I flipped the hat upside down, set the circle on it and carefully with my embossing stylus went around the smaller inside circle. After cutting out that inside circle I was left with a piece that looked like this:


I had to trim in a few places to get a tight fit but I got it to slide right down on the brim and then adhered it with glue sticks. I like to use just plain old glue stick (I prefer Scott brand) when adhering paper to chipboard-- I put a layer on both the paper and the board to get a good hold. Some people like Modge Podge but I have a hard time with that stuff and my paper always ends up wrinkling so I just stick to the glue sticks.

The top of the hat was definitely trickier-- first I measure to find out how far it was from the point down to the brim. Then I cut a square that fit those dimensions and rounded it a bit to look like this:


After adhering that piece with glue stick, I was left with a spot like this on the top so I cut another triangle that measured the length of the top and finished covering up the paper mache.


Note: I did use glue dots to attach the last piece to both sides of the paper that was already there so I could get smoother edges.



And now, the best part! Embellishing! I used black tulle, Bazzill tulle in butterfly (0range), some black tulle flowers from Bo Bunny and a few black feathers to go around the brim. Above that I added some crystal swirls (check out the Prima ones at The Beary Scrap) and a cool little bat.


I also made a tiny card to set on the hat brim, using more of the Echo Park papers, die cut stickers and alphabet stickers. Both the card and the hat are edged with Black Diamond Stickles.



Now the only thing I have left to do is find room for this in my highly haunted and decorated house! Check out our Beary Scrap Store for some hauntingly fabulous specials this month and create something to celebrate your Halloween. Best Witches!