RedThreadDIY

With all of my pumpkin posts for making your own awesomely creative pumpkins, I totally forgot to include the pumpkins that my friends, family, spoon, and I have carved up over the years! We got our stencils from Zombie Pumpkins, which is an amazing site with a huge collection of awesome stencils. I’ve been using them since I started carving in 2006. Here’s our pumpkins for Halloween ’09!

2009:

My Oogie Boogie Pumpkin

Caroline's Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Pumpkin

Rob's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pumpkin

Spoon's Boo Pumpkin

My Edward Scissorhands Pumpkin

Spoon and Tobor hangin' out at the end of the night

2008:

Spoon's Batman Pumpkin

My Gremlin Pumpkin

My Michael Myers Pumpkin from Halloween

Spoon's Barack Obama Logo Pumpkin

Spoon's Attempt at Barack Obama's Face and then Giving Up

2007:

My cousins Jennifer and Ashley, and my brother Patrick's Pumpkins

Broseph Patrick's Odd Pumpkin

2006:

Spoon Carving the Mario Pumpkin

Spoon's Mario Pumpkin

Spoon's LCD Pumpkin Insides

Spoon's LCD Pumpkin

Krista's Puking Pumpkin

Krista's Puking Pumpkin

Krista's Puking Pumpkin

2005:

Spoon's Bat Pumpkin

Spoon's Bat Pumpkin

Oh, how I love them I’m so mad that we didn’t take good pictures before the year 2005! ARGH!

OMG! I SO wish I had all of these resources sooner! Here are some amazing hair and makeup tutorial links that I’ve been collecting. They are so much fun! Almost as fun as making your own costumes! Enjoy!

Hair Tutorials:

• Easy 80′s Big Hair Tutorial on Youtube from PurseBuzz
• Ava’s Halloween Hair Tutorial: Beauty Choice
• Halloween Party Sexy Hair Tutorial on YouTube from I Love Gerardo
• Pin-up Snow White Hair Tutorial on YouTube from I Love Gerardo
• Sweeny Todd’s Mrs. Lovett Hair Tutorial: DeathToll1912

How to Make Pippi Longstocking Braids: CraftZine

Beehive Hair: Martha Stewart

Medusa Hair How To: Martha Stewart

Makeup Tutorials:

• Fake Blood Recipes: Halloween Web
• David Bowie Makeup Tutorial: Bella Sugar
• Check out Kandee Johnson’s YouTube page for excellent tips for applying Halloween makeup for many different costumes! The videos are entertaining and fun to watch. Just go to it! She has tutorials for the following:

Barbie Costume Makeup
Oompa Loompa Attack! Makeup
Twilight Twist Vampire: Special FX
Edward Scissorhands Costume Makeup
Cruella De Vil Costume Makeup
Tinkerbell Fairy Costume Makeup
Pretty Fun Geisha Costume Makeup
Cyndi Lauper (80′s Rocker) Costume Makeup
Jem (80′s Cartoon) Costume Makeup
Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman – Batman) Costume Makeup
Cleopatra Costume Makeup
Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland Costume Makeup
Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) Costume Makeup
Jessica Rabbit Costume Hair and Makeup
Pin-Up Hairdo

She’s planning on posting these soon, too!

Marie Antoinette
Betty Boop
Jasmine
Snow White
Sleeping Beauty
Cheshire Cat
KISS
Alice from Alice in Wonderland
Sexy Vampire

L.E.D. Eyelashes Costume: Fashioning Tech

Theater Effects: Lacerations: Instructables

I GOTTA try some of these out! I wish I had a kid solely to experiment with makeup and hair styles on them, hahaha.

If you know of ANY other examples or tutorials, please comment below so I can add them to this list. Thanks!

Photo Credit: Katie Cowden on flickr

My original idea for these was to follow the Lowe’s tutorial that I gave in my earlier post here, but after starting the tutorial, I found that they left out a LOT of details that would have helped me so much if I knew what they were beforehand. So – here is the Halloween Lighted House Ghosts Tutorial – RedThread style!

Materials Needed to make 1 Ghost:

• Wire Tomato Cage (My dad had a TON of rusty ones that he needed to get rid of. Instead of throwing them away, this is such a great use for them!)
• 75-100 Clear or White Christmas lights (I found mine at Home Depot for around $2.50)
• A 6×9 foot drop cloth (to cover the cages with)
• Black Permanent Marker, felt, or leftover fabric (to make your ghost’s face!)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors

Step 1: To make your ghosts not have “pointy” heads when you put the drop cloth on,  bend in the tomato stakes as shown below:

Step 2: For each ghost, wrap a wire tomato cage with your string of clear or white lights. Lowe’s suggests clear rope lights, but I think those are more expensive.

Step 3: Cut a 6‐ x 9‐foot drop cloth to approximately 41/2 x 7 feet to cover the tomato cage.

Step 4: When I draped my drop cloth over the tomato cage, it looked HORRIBLE! It didn’t drape well. It really looked like a piece of garbage, and not like a ghost at all. So! What to do? Bring out your glue gun. “Shape” your ghost the best you can – I shaped him with creases and hot glued the inside of the cloth so it would stay. I made him look perfect in the front, and glued together all excess drop cloth to the back (which won’t be seen, so don’t worry about it!)

Step 5: I used leftover black cotton fabric to cut out a face and hot glued them to my ghost. I liked doing it this way because I could see what it would look like before actually adhering the fabric. Don’t have scraps? Use a black permanent marker to draw eyes and a mouth.

Step 6: Plug the lights into a secure grounded outlet. I made three ghosts and connected them all together, so I only had to connect the three to one grounded outlet.

Step 7: Enjoy your lawn’s masterpiece! Who needs $50 light-up ghosts when you can do it for under $5?

Click here to view my entire picture set on flickr.

Questions? Comments? Other ideas? Make some of your own? Let me know!

Looking for more tutorials for Halloween decorating? Check out my ‘Halloween’ category on the right hand side of this post!