Monster House v2.0: Last year's foam board version was ripped down by the wind in a matter of hours. This year it's plywood, Rust-Oleum, and a whole lot of L-brackets, so hopefully it's staying put through Halloween 👻

The build itself was pretty straightforward as the framing of the porch provides the structure for the face. So all we made were the teeth and the eyes -- we used last year's foam board leftovers as a template for the plywood, cut everything out using a circular saw, sprayed it all down with Rust-Oleum, added the pupils and eye shine with acrylic paint, sprayed it all with clear coat, and screwed it in with L-brackets

How I made my witchy cauldron: I bought a cheap plastic cauldron then filled it with empty milk jugs to take up the extra space. Then I added green lights and fashioned a dome over the lights using chicken wire, to provide a surface to place the bubbles.

The bubbles are iridescent Christmas balls, and I stuck them together using Gorilla Glue Dots (which are a complete crafting game changer and I don’t know how I never discovered them before).

Hi friends! I’ve returned with another performance costume! Scroll to the end to see more of the amazing photos we took, including a twirl shot :)

This outfit was handmade for a local fashion show, for which I am the host and producer. In the spirit of the event, I wanted to bring a showstopping look that was handmade using mostly materials I already had. This post is about the construction of the headpiece and skirt.

I’ve made a few of these double hennin hats before, so the construction was pretty straightforward. I rolled some cones out of felt interfacing and pinned them to my wig block, taking care to make them symmetrical (pic 3). I knew I wanted this headpiece to have three horns with a smaller one in the middle, and played around with some interfacing scraps until I got a shape I was happy with (pics 4 and 5).

I hot glued all that together and covered it with some rhinestone stretch velvet I had laying around, also secured in place with hot glue (pic 6). The silver star and moon appliqués (pic 7) are from a fabric remnant I found at a thrift store ages ago; unfortunately, they are made of sequins. I am still finding little black half sequins all around my house from having to cut out all the shapes at odd angles. I played around with composition a bit, trying a few arrangements and pinning them into place, before securing everything with even more hot glue once I was happy with the design. I added final embellishments using some silver trim and rhinestones from my craft ephemera bin (pic 8) to add some dimension and polish. The headpiece took me about 8 hours to make over the course of 3-4 days. That was the easy part of this outfit done; now time for The Beast.

The Beast is a tearaway ballgown skirt made from over 40 yards of black tulle. I did have to buy this fabric new, as well as the crinoline fabric I used for the understructure. By the end of this project, I was having to wrestle with it every few stitches just to be able to sit down. Oh, and did I mention The Beast was my first ever project on a sewing machine? I am nothing if not ambitious. When I started working on The Beast I had about 3 weeks left until show day, and I’m honestly still kind of shocked I managed to finish her on time.

To make The Beast I followed this tutorial by Frieda Lepold. Without her I would have been utterly lost. I highly recommend checking out her channel if you like pretty fantasy inspired gowns and want to learn how to make them.

I used Frieda’s negative pattern method to create the understructure (pic 9) and marked where all the tulle layers were going to go with white straight stitches. I then measured the distance from each guideline to the floor to figure out how long all my tulle layers needed to be. A majority of my time spent working on this project consisted of measuring and cutting rectangles out of tulle. I decided to forgo circular layers at the top despite Frieda’s recommendation, since I was running low on time and sanity and just needed the skirt done. This ended up giving The Beast a slimmer silhouette at the top than I wanted, but I’m happy with it regardless.

Layer by layer, I sewed and gathered each piece of tulle before attaching them all to the skirt (pics 10 and 11.) When all the layers were in place, I sewed a lining on the inside (pic 12) as the crinoline fabric is a very stiff, scratchy mesh. In the photo it’s pinned to the back seams, but I decided to just sew it at the waistband to allow it to move more freely inside the skirt. The nice thing about the skirt being a tearaway garment is that I didn’t have to close the back, so instead I sewed on a waistband, added some snaps and a pull tab, and called it a day. The sheer volume of tulle disguises the open back, even when I’m walking, twirling, and dancing, which is super convenient and makes for a better reveal.

I was going to call it done here but looking at the outfit all together, I decided it needed more. I had the idea to make silver stars out of paper to match the headpiece, and found this super simple tutorial for making them. The silver paper I had wasn’t ideal for folding, so I made the bigger stars out of Bristol board and cut out triangles to glue to the outside (pics 13, 14, 15). This method worked okay, though it came out looking a little sloppy, and I might remake them in the future.

To attach the stars to the skirt, I glued ribbons to the points of each star and sewed them to a waistband I made out of some leftover lining fabric and a black feather boa I had in my scrap bin (pic 16). The back is secured with snaps. This way I can make a modular system of “toppers” for this skirt in all kinds of colors and designs, so I can style it in as many ways as I want.

Overall, this project was a massive undertaking and I learned a lot. The skirt itself went smoother than I was expecting once I got into a rhythm, but there were definitely a few times halfway through where I contemplated just giving up and wearing something else for the show. I had a vision, though, and I would not let myself stop until I brought it to life. I’m very happy with how everything came together, and I am so excited to bring this costume to the stage.

A2 300gsm paper, basic paper glue and a bunch of old decor catalogues with some extra printing. About 3 hrs, most of which is finding the images and cutting them out, and it’s great fun

I started knitting this in April. Of 2024...

I designed it to copy my existing favourite jumper. The trouble is, that jumper was machine-knitted so the tension was insane. I used 2mm needles with DK yarn. It's also in brioche stitch so every row is worked twice. Also, I finished the entire body once through and then decided I was unhappy with the yoke shaping, so I unraveled it and then started from scratch in early 2025.

It's knitted seamlessly from the top-down with raglan sleeve shaping. The collar, cuffs, and hem are in half brioche stitch although the difference is barely discernible. For the collar I knitted twice the length, folded it over, and then knitted in the cast on stitches with the next row.

The yarn is Sylecraft Highland Heathers in Gorse (3743).

This is an 8x10 shadow box I ordered from Amazon. I took an empty Paul Masson Apple bottle that I cleaned then wiped with alcohol when dry. I put it in a box and cracked it into pieces. I then mixed my epoxy and used an emerald green alcohol ink. I lined up the glass pieces and poured the epoxy over it then sealed it into the shadow box once it became stiff enough to push it in.

I’ve been sick for the last few days and haven’t been able to do more than sit and use my craft stash. Yesterday, someone posted to the Bob’s Burgers subreddit with the gif of this scene and I really felt it and made this today. Featuring: Mr. Frond’s knitting needles and Repressed Memory Emily!

My 5 year old daughter recently saw Lilo and Stitch and asked if we could make a "scrump." In the movie, Scrump is a homemade ragdoll that Lilo carries around.

We made it with scraps and craft supplies we already had around the house and it turned out surprisingly well and was really fun! 

If I were to plan it and do it again I would fix stuff (smaller head, shorter legs, lower eyes and hair) but considering we were totally winging it, I am pleased, haha. 

My daughter played with Scrump the rest of the day and it even got a place set at thanksgiving dinner (we are Canadian).

I know it's not the best, but making it helped dull the pain of existence for a bit

we’re really into discovering place and genre lately, and i thought this would be fun. it was! it is! i teach high school english but used to be a college prof and used to be a kindergarten teacher. actually kinda the best combo for 9th!

Wish I had made the arms and roots glow but still liking how it came out. Spray foam and chicken wire🖤