big fun for halloween

We were browsing the Halloween stuff at Target this week and ran across a fabulous display of costume wigs made of foam. It's pretty amazing stuff. Simple designs made of built up layers.

 They look better in person and on Chris March's website than they do in my cell phone pics (I can sometimes get some nice shots outside, but everything gets washed out indoors). So after you take a look at the rest of these photos, pop over to Chris's site to see them in actual color.

I remembered Chris's work on Project Runway as soon as his site loaded up. The Big Fun collection is pretty much perfectly him.

 If I had more space in my house I'd buy one; they're pretty reasonably priced (under $20). But there's no way I'd be able to throw it out after the holiday. I'd just want to keep it, and, well, with the Kermit and Fozzie heads from Halloween last year, the Wild Thing head from Halloween two years ago, and the birthday robot from the kiddo's birthday party all still hanging around, it's already looking a bit backstage 'round here.

So you, go forth and be my proxy. Add one to your Halloween get-up (it'll be way cooler than some faux-hair thing your cat will be coughing up bits of a week later). And then frame it or something, because each of these designs is pretty damn fantastic.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

p.s. no pay or perks, here; I just like cool things made from simple materials.

robot party favors + bags

Time for more robot party fun! Today, I'm going to show you the party favors we put together for the kiddo's third birthday party. (You can find the robot cake post and a piñata post here and here.)

The favor bags are really simple. You'll need some silver-colored bags with handles, and some of this paper tape from the stationary aisle at Target.

I also used the circles I cut out of the party invitations (post coming soon!) cut in half for the eyes.  No tutorial required, just some glue dots (for the eyes) and scissors.

I had planned to use googly eyes on these, but some of the guests were under three years old. You can make all of your bags look the same if you want; I made each of our robot favor bags different.  Fun and smiley!

We left the bags mostly empty except for these sticker sheets from Amazon and some robot erasers from the Dollar Tree. (Several of the kids tried to eat the erasers [thinking they were candy] so I'd nix them if I had it to do all over again.)

The kids collected other favors for their bags during the party, like these wind-up robots we found at Eugene Toy and Hobby locally. You can find them in a local toy store too, I'd bet, or you can get them on-line (I'd skip the wind-up robots at Oriental Trading Company though. We'd ordered a box and half of them were missing pieces or didn't walk, and the rest broke really easily. Ditto the replacements they sent.).  

I made this silver-glittered Play-Doh using some party packs of Play-Doh I picked up after Halloween. 

I made the silver color by mixing the following colors with silver glitter and dividing into five containers: 2 white, 1 black, 1 green, 1 purple. 

To finish them off, I taped each one with the paper tape and labeled them with a fine-point Sharpie.

To make the robot candies, I found a robot candy mold  and cast three different recipes: gummies (using this recipe from Skip to My Lou; you can see the blue mix cooking in that photo above), chocolate butterscotch, and chocolate peanut butter (both by melting chocolate chips with either butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips).

I designed the packages in Adobe Illustrator, and stapled everything together with green staples.

The jelly bean packages were easier. I bought mixed beans in bulk and separated out the yellow/green/blue ones.

If you want a copy of the PDF file so you can print your own wrappers, leave me a comment below or send me an e-mail, and I'll get a copy to you.

With most party themes, there's a way to mix handmade and store-bought party favors to maximize budget and really personalize. The trouble I ALWAYS have is knowing how to plan my time well so that I'm not frazzled by the time the party rolls around.

Any time management tips? How do you narrow down party ideas and decide what to leave out?

Thanks for reading!

(p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that. clever you!)