fall and halloween d-i-y ideas

I cannot wait to work on fall and Halloween crafts for October, but before I do, here’s a recap of the fall and Halloween ideas I designed last year.  If you didn’t get a chance to make any of these creations last year, I hope you try them out this season!

My most favorite post was the one with the Halloween balloon body parts.  Doodle on balloons to create creepy eyes, bloody brains, and witch’s fingers:

Make cute little phantom place cards by drawing faces on pumpkin seeds:

Cut out and fold an itsy bitsy spider treat box with the very first printable I designed and shared on this blog (and it was my very first tutorial ever):

Grab a tupperware bowl, four corks, scraps of paper, a pen, and some raffia and create this witch’s candy-filled cauldron with broomstick:

You know I love me my packaging, so here’s another printable!  Fill this harvest corn treat box with…you guessed it…candy corn!  (I think this is still my favorite treat box out of all treat boxes I’ve designed for this blog to date):

Your little ones can make art of autumn grains with this wheat and corn décor made of exactly that: wheat (pasta) and corn:

And the most popular fall tutorial I made last year was the carved butternut squash centerpieces:

Oh, and I almost forgot: I did a whole week of pumpkin experimental recipes last year:

         

My favorite from pumpkin week was the pumpkin panna cotta:

And, I almost forgot, I designed and baked a ginormous woven cornucopia cracker for Thanksgiving:

Enjoy!  More fall and Halloween ideas from me coming up in October!  And I have a birthday GIVEAWAY coming to you this weekend!  paper, plate, and plane is very soon turning 1.  And I am very soon turning 1 year older.  I am excited to host a special giveaway to celebrate the occasion(s).  Stay tuned!!!  😀

art of autumn grains

I teach several after-school and lunch-time programs throughout the week and have the good fortune of being in the company of young children on a daily basis, even just for an hour or two.  One of the many things I love about teaching is the free access pass to a labyrinth of art-clad school halls.  There’s nothing as refreshing to the eyes as beholding children’s work.

I realize, despite all of the technology and gadgets and gaming and software at a child’s fingertips, when it comes to kids, art doesn’t change.  In fact, it isn’t at all different from the art I used to make years back (okay, more like two to three decades back).  Kids are still making art from beans and pasta, as we did when we were kids, and as our kids’ kids will be doing.

I thought it would be fun to make bean art with a theme for fall —  appropriately, the harvest.  Now when it comes down to children’s art techniques, the subject is often forced to be as irrelevant as possible to the medium.  I remember when I was six years old, my bean art was of a galloping horse, its mane spiraling with mung beans.

For this craft, I felt it apropos to abandon our childhood paradigm of obliging imagination and, instead, make things out of what they really are.  Corn art out of corn.  And wheat art out of wheat (well, more technically speaking: pasta.  Semolina is really just a fancy name for wheat flour!).

I really had fun with this one!  It took me back decades.