Showing posts with label make mini Halloween figures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label make mini Halloween figures. Show all posts

19.10.15

DIY glow-in-the-dark Halloween board game



At last! A board game for the mini Halloween figures I made yonks ago. This was always the plan - it's just taken me a very long time to get round to it.  If you'd like to make the figures, the pumpkin and the witch are here and the ghost and vampire bat here.

To be fair, the glow-in-the-dark part is a bit of a novelty; I just really wanted to get some glow-in-the-dark paint. And it does glow, though not quite enough to read what's on the squares in the pitch black, and certainly not enough for me to get a decent picture. Sure anyway, it all adds to the fun, and the game works fine without too.

You'll need:
a cereal box (at least 28cm high)
glow-in-the-dark paint (optional)
good black felt tip (like a Sharpie)
ruler
scissors
toilet paper tube
paint
LED tea light (optional)
sweets (optional!)



1. Open up the cereal box - use the creased lines to help you draw a square 28cm x 28cm. Don't cut it out yet - easier to paint the whole square and draw lines when it's like this - less mess as well!


2. (Optional) Paint your square with a few coats of glow-in-the-dark paint.


3. Use the ruler to measure and mark points 3.5cm along all 4 lines. Then join them up with the black felt tip to make a grid. (3cm was too small and 4 was too big - 3.5 seemed just right)
Cut it out.


4. Now the bit that my kids really enjoyed - coming up with the good square/bad squares. Kind of like Snakes and Ladders, with an evil twist. We did a few miss-a-goes too. And my daughter came up with the idea of having some Trick or Treat squares. If you land on one you can have a sweet. I did try to point out no one was likely to want to do a trick with sweets on offer, but anyway!

Here are most of ours - I bet you could come up with even more gruesome ones.

Good squares: Halloween! +5, Jump on a broomstick +2, Drink witch's brew +1, find a black cat +3, Zombie party! +3, Full Moon! +4, Win a gruesome ghoul contest +4

Bad squares: Spell backfires -5, fall into a cauldron -3, Phantom flu -2, turn into a frog -3, lose your head! -4, and the worst of the lot, 'Zapped by a Ghostbuster! Back to the beginning'

Miss a go: get stuck in a web, catch Hog warts, fall in a slime pool

5. Write on your squares, (use different colours if you want) making sure you don't have for example, a +2 landing on a -2, sending your figure endlessly forward and back, like being trapped in limbo, FOREVER!!


6. Fill the numbers in around the good and bad squares (make sure you include them in your counting)


7. The winner is the first one to reach the haunted castle at the end of the game. It's made from a toilet paper tube. Cut out a door shape at the bottom, and make short, evenly spaced cuts around the top. Bend back every other flap to form battlements.


Use nail scissors to pierce a few holes in the tube and cut thin slits for windows. Then paint.

We popped a LED tea light (from IKEA) inside, to give it a ghoulish glow.


We've all played, even the grumpy teenager, and it's been great having a bit of time and a bit of fun together. Doesn't happen as much as I'd like these days.

Now looking for other things to do with the glow-in-the-dark paint.... Tempted to put 'tidy your room, or else...' on the 13 year old's wall, so it mysteriously appears at night.

Too mean? :)



Linking up with Trash 2 Treasure and Creative Mondays


29.10.13

Disco downer and easy-make mini Halloween figures

The school Halloween disco..
My 8th school Halloween disco.
Not a favourite date in the diary by any stretch, but of course the kids love every mad moment of it. I've been especially bah-humbug about the whole thing this time, because they're at new schools, and I'd let myself believe we wouldn't have to go. No such luck. They've been on the phone to their old friends haven't they, and then the pleading and begging started. To be fair, I got some good bribery mileage out of it - homeworks have been done, rooms have been tidied, so can't complain really.

And I like Halloween, minus the crazy, sugar-fuelled, ear-splitting dancefest.
We usually do a family night of party games sometime during Half Term - all the old favourites, like dunking for apples, getting sweets out of a pile of flour with your teeth, and best of all, trying to bite doughnuts off dangly strings, which is hilarious. If you haven't had a go at this for a while I urge you to string up some buns..


Making the room look spooky is always fun. Love all that stuff. The Bat Mobile from last year is still swinging from the light in the toy room, though missing a ghost and a few bat wings. There have been plenty of other loo roll creations since then, and I've also gathered up an impressive hoard of egg boxes, so that's what we've used to make mini Halloweeen figures.


If you'd like to have a go, you'll need an egg box with the cone bits down the middle like this.


Cut one out for a bat and paint it.


Fold a piece of paper in half and draw a bat wing, using the fold so it opens up. Glue onto the back.
We used bits of white paper for the eyes and teeth.


Spread a decent layer of glue where you want the face to be (a glue stick is good for this). The eyes are little triangles coloured in with a green highlighter pen. The fangs are triangles too, joined together with a tiny rectangle. If this all sounds too fiddly I'd suggest going for a non-black bat, and using felt-tips, or a tipex pen if you have one.


For the ears, colour in a thin strip of spare card from something like a cereal box. Cut two longish pieces from it and snip them into points at one end. Make slots on top of the bat's head and push them in.


Take another egg box cone for the ghost, and glue down a few layers of white tissue, making sure to keep the tissue flat on one side, so you can draw a face.


Chop off all the bits hanging over the edge and snip what's left to make it look raggedy and ghoulish.


I'll post the witch and the pumpkin instructions v shortly. Hang on to that egg box!

Plenty more spooky pics over at The Gallery.