It's October and officially time to celebrate Halloween! I saw this cute skeleton bag from Papyrus the other week and I really liked the dangling limbs. But, I didn't want to spend $12.95. I'll be honest though, when all was said and done, I did spend that and more, but only because they were so cute and I ended up making more for all my friend's kids. This makes a great bag for trick-or-treating!
What you'll need:
1 black bag
1 large piece of cardboard
1 felt sheet
1 roll ribbon (something thin like 1/4" width is best)
1 bottle white paint
1 bottle black puffy paint
Glue gun and glue sticks
Colored glitter glue or paint (optional)
Step 1: Design your skeleton template. Make sure that the height from the head and hip bone will fit the height of the bag.
Step 2: Cut out the skeleton bones.
At first, I kept the pieces for the face and hip. I then spray painted the template and then carefully took the pieces off to make the black spaces.
In the end though, I decided against this because I couldn't get very clean borders.
Fail #1: I made mine slightly larger the first time, so I had to modify my template and add cardboard pieces to make the openings smaller.
I also experimented with different types of paints.
1. Tulip fabric spray paint with pump sprayer- This was nice because the paint was thick enough, but the sprayer would get clogged. Also, the paint would not come out very even. For each pump, you get one big spurt and then little dots of sprays. And then you have to keep pumping to make sure all the areas are covered. On the pro side, my thumb and index finger got a good workout.
2. Simply Spray soft fabric paint- This was nice on the one hand because I could cover a large area all at once. But, the paint was a bit watery and would soak through the fabric so that the bones looked like they had osteoporosis.
3. Acrylic paint- This was overall the best consistency. They didn't have any gadgets, just a basic bottle, so I had to buy a brush. I actually found this to be the best because I could control how thick I wanted to paint the bones and I could actually stay within the lines. The only downside is it's obviously more time consuming.
Step 3: I drew arms, legs, hands and feet on the felt sheet. I used the basic "bone" design, but made the leg bones slightly longer than the arms. I tried drawing fingers and toes, but they looked weird and they were also WAAAAAAYYYYY too difficult to cut out. I found a cute template with better looking hands and feet, so I used this design instead.
Step 4: Cut ribbon into 8- 3/4" length pieces.
Step 5: Apply glue to one end of the ribbon and attach to one arm bone. Apply glue to other end of the ribbon and attach second arm bone. Apply glue to second ribbon and attach to second arm bone. Apply glue to end of ribbon and attach one hand. Repeat with second arm/hand and legs/feet.
Step 6: Apply glue and attach arms to shoulders and legs to hip bone.
Fail #2: Make sure that your arms/legs are proportionate to the skeleton. This one had really small and skinny bones and looked funny against the large skeleton.
Step 7: Using the black puffy paint, raw in the eyes, nose, mouth and holes in the hip bone. Tip: For the mouth, I made one single line across and then 5-6 small vertical lines. This was much better than trying to make squares for teeth.
Step 8: Using glitter glue or puffy paint, write child's name on the bag. For girls, I added a matching color bow on the head.
