Needle-felted candy corn hairclips

I still haven't managed to get back into the swing of making things much but last night after the kids were in bed I decided it was time to have a go at something I've been thinking about for a while. Candy corn isn't something I really knew about before we moved to the US, but over here it appears everywhere as soon as the summer is over. It brings backs good memories for me of our first Halloween over here even though it's horribly intensely sweet and can give me a shocker of a sugar rush. I've spoken to a few people who say they can't eat it anymore after overdosing on it as a kid and I do try and keep the kids away from it if I can, but inevitably at this time of year a few pieces sneak in here and there.


I've been thinking about making candy corn hairclips for Freja for a while because the shape fits really well with those snappy clips. I was going to just cut the shapes from coloured felt but last night I decided to try needle-felting instead.


I formed the basic shape from white roving and then added the orange and yellow stripes, then stitched them to the clips. The first one I made is larger and more shaped but does look rather huge. I tried to make the second one smaller but in doing so lost some of the shape. I think they'd probably look cuter on smaller clips but I didn't have any, maybe I'll try and pick some up when we go shopping next. Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and if Freja doesn't like them I might steal them for myself.

Our Halloween Costumes

 

Can you tell what we were supposed to be?

Our neighbours had an adults-only Halloween party on Saturday night which was a great opportunity for us to go out for once, because I was able to pop back to Magnus when he woke up. Peder's costume was made with a cheap poker set, an old waistcoat of his (which he has been hanging on to since I've known him!) and lots of hot glue. Mine was made from some pretty shimmery blue fabric, a kit of foam fish (which Freja helped stick together) and some safety pins. If you haven't worked it out yet here's a clue - we were supposed to be a typical British fast-food meal...

Going batty.

I've volunteered to host a Halloween party for one of our playgroups but at the moment, apart from our 5 little pumpkins collected out and about, we have hardly any decorations. I could go out and buy a whole load of plastic rubbish that we stick up once and throw away, but I thought it would a lot nicer to try and make some decorations that we could use year after year. The kids coming will be mostly aged 3 and under so I don't want anything too scary, I think I'll mainly stick to cut-out shapes like pumpkins, ghosts, owls, cats.

These bats are the result of my first attempt. I just cut out the shape from felt and used my new glue gun to stick them onto a clothes peg. The peg works well to hold the body part rigid and makes it easy to attach the bats around the house. It was pure fluke that the felt I had was just bigger than the clothespegs so none of the peg shows when they're up (I considered painting them but decided they didn't need it). The felt is cheap non-wool craft felt with purple sparkly bits running through it. I'm quite pleased with them, might have to go and find some more cheap felt in Halloween colours, I'm saving my nice wool stuff for the Betz White workshop which starts next week.