There is no time of year that I enjoy doing crafty things with the kids more than the three month stretch between October and December. As soon as the weather starts to change, I am hit with a sudden urge to craft with anything I can get my hands on. I probably spend more time (and money!) at Jo-Annes craft store during those months than I do at any other time of the year. It was on a recent trip there that I spied a magazine on my way to the check out called Family Fun. After thumbing through it, I decided to buy it because it looked like it had a lot of fun Halloween crafts. It did not disappoint, and by the time I got to the end of the magazine there were least a dozen pages that I had bookmarked. One of them was for some little mummy, pumpkin and dracula key chains (link here).
To make them we needed the following supplies:
Pipe cleaners
1-inch Styrofoam balls
Key clips
Jute twine
Embroidery floss
Clear gel tacky glue
Googly eyes and other decorations
The kids both decided to make mummies, and things started out great. We folded the pipe cleaners and stuck them through the styrofoam head to make the body and legs. We added another pipe cleaner for arms, and started winding the embroidery floss around and around to cover the pipe cleaner. This is where some of the enthusiasm for the project started to die. Rowan could not get her floss to go where she wanted it too, and quickly got frustrated to the point that I had to do it for her. Killian was doing fine on his, but I quickly realized that I had totally underestimated the amount of floss we needed for this project. We actually had to run back to the store to buy more - I think to make just two of these little guys we went through 7 or 8 packages of floss! The heads were the hardest part as the thread tended to bunch up in one place and leave another totally bare. I think if we made these again I would use small strips of muslin or some other fabric. It took forever to finish them with the embroidery floss!
After the mummies were all wrapped up, the kids gave them faces with sharpie markers. Even though it took a lot of time to complete these, it was a fun project to do together and the kids were thrilled with the final results:
To make them we needed the following supplies:
Pipe cleaners
1-inch Styrofoam balls
Key clips
Jute twine
Embroidery floss
Clear gel tacky glue
Googly eyes and other decorations
The kids both decided to make mummies, and things started out great. We folded the pipe cleaners and stuck them through the styrofoam head to make the body and legs. We added another pipe cleaner for arms, and started winding the embroidery floss around and around to cover the pipe cleaner. This is where some of the enthusiasm for the project started to die. Rowan could not get her floss to go where she wanted it too, and quickly got frustrated to the point that I had to do it for her. Killian was doing fine on his, but I quickly realized that I had totally underestimated the amount of floss we needed for this project. We actually had to run back to the store to buy more - I think to make just two of these little guys we went through 7 or 8 packages of floss! The heads were the hardest part as the thread tended to bunch up in one place and leave another totally bare. I think if we made these again I would use small strips of muslin or some other fabric. It took forever to finish them with the embroidery floss!
After the mummies were all wrapped up, the kids gave them faces with sharpie markers. Even though it took a lot of time to complete these, it was a fun project to do together and the kids were thrilled with the final results:
