Halloween Project #7: Ghost and Gravestone Cupcakes

I'm buckling down, really. But Gabe's homework requires Halloween crafts, and he asked for my help, and I can't just let him down, now can I? This week has been crazy, though. What started out as "Maybe I could get some photographs of things you've already made", turned into "You should bake a bunch of great things!". It's not that I didn't want to, but there was certainly quite a bit of work required for everything I did. Other projects will be posted this week when they're all put together properly.

Anyway! Our project for today is actually rather simple, and I didn't do anything homemade, but you can make your own frosting and cake if you should desire. With just a few ingredients you can have a haunted graveyard!

What you'll need:

- Cake! I used a chocolate box mix, but what you choose to use is not important to this project.
- Nutter Butter Sandwich cookies
- White Chocolate (24 oz should do the trick), divided into 2.
- Black food coloring (I used Icing Coloring for this one)
- Green food coloring
- Black Decorating Gel
- Hot cocoa powder (Optional)
- 16 oz. Can of white frosting, divided into 2.

1. Bake your cupcakes in white cupcake liners according to box/recipe instructions.

2. While your cupcakes are baking, melt half the white chocolate (be sure not to overheat it, or your chocolate will seize and will be ruined. Melt for 1 minute in microwave, then in 15 second increments until it is smooth. If a few chips remain unmelted, just stir until it is smooth). Cover a baking sheet in aluminum foil. Dip Nutter Butter cookies into white chocolate, and place on aluminum foil. Refrigerate or freeze.

3. Melt other half of white chocolate the same way, slowly add in your food coloring until your chocolate is gray. Once again, dip the Nutter Butters in on both sides, and laying down on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil. Refrigerate or freeze.

4. With your frosting divided in two separate bowls, dye one half green, and the other half black. To get a good BRIGHT green color, I added some yellow drops until it was less bluish green and more like grass.

5. After your ghosts and gravestones have hardened, remove from the fridge/freezer. Write "RIP" on the gravestones, and give the ghosts faces with the black decorating gel.

6. Frost your cupcakes, half in green, and the other half in black. Sprinkle hot cocoa powder over the green ones to be 'dirt'. If you'd like, you could make all of the frosting green, so as to make a 'haunted graveyard', but there are plans for haunted house cupcake liners in the near future so the ghost will have a place to haunt. It is entirely up to you, of course, as making cupcake liners will be a lot more work.

When you frost the grass, be sure to make the frosting very 'rough' so as to mimic grass, and keep the black very smooth so as to mimic a floor.

7. Using a spoon, dig a small sort of 'ditch' in the center of your cupcakes (this will prevent the cupcakes from cracking in half), then place the graves and ghosts in their appropriate cupcakes.

8. Indulge!

I didn't realize how fantastic this was going to be until I got to eat one of the gravestones that broke in half. Apparently Peanut butter + White chocolate is ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. I was very pleased, and the fact that there is a moist chocolate cupcake to go along with it makes things even better.

Coming up this week I have stencils, my first cake -pops- and a haunted house to put that ghost inside. While I am rather tired, I can't wait to see how everything turns out!

Halloween Project # 6: Viking Hat and Beard

Well guys, here you go. As promised, one full-on amazingly badass Viking get-up. As I write this, my eyes are drooping and my whole body feels numb with exhaustion. I'm finished with day 7 of a 9 day work week, and I can honestly say that this project got me through most of it. It kept my spirits pretty high, my hands busy and my mind occupied on other things besides...well, work.

This whole project took about 6 days, and I'd say overall it cost me about $25 to do (although worth every penny when Gabe put it on and the thing actually fit). I'm sure one could also do it for cheaper, but I used Caron Simply Soft, which runs about $4.50/skein. You could easily use Red Heart for $2.90/Skein, I just wanted it to be as nice as I could make it (I tend not to skimp on yarn when it's a gift).

Unfortunately, $6.50 of that expense was purchasing the pattern, so unfortunately I can not provide it for you here, it would not be fair to anyone, especially the creator of the hat.

If you would like the pattern of the hat, it can be purchased through Etsy here.

If you would like the pattern for the beard, you can get that for free on Ravelry here. However, as I stated in my last entry, throughout the beard I used long rows of fringe to make the beard more realistic, then added 'sideburns' so they could properly connect to the hat.

If you're looking for something to get you through a long week, or something to keep you warm and silly through the winter, I definitely recommend both the hat, as well as the beard. Both of these pieces were equally fun to make, and I had a ton of fun getting a laugh out of my co-workers by explaining to them that I spent my day crocheting a beard :)

Here are some more detail shots:

I added a button to the inside of the hat, and a loop at the end of the 'sideburns' so the beard can be attached or detached whenever you want.

Hat, sans beard.

I'd never used 'fun fur' yarn before, and although it looked quite sparse and difficult to use at first, it ended up being rather easy and fuzzy.

This was a great project, and I definitely recommend spending the $6.50 to make it (or if you're really crazy, you can just improvise based on photos).

Hopefully next project will be something great, but I'm not sure what yet! I hope you guys got a little bit of inspiration from these pictures, and I can't wait to take more 'action shots' of this as Halloween approaches :)

Viking Beard

Gabe being a fantastic model

While this beard may seem as though it's in the spirit of Halloween, it really isn't. My lovely boyfriend had his birthday last week (it was the 1st anniversary of his 29th birthday!), and while a sushi dinner was probably sufficient, I still felt as though his 30th should be bigger and better. For my 22nd birthday, he spent 50+ hours making me a digital painting of Mermaid Fairy Princesses, so I thought I should make him something, too.

The idea came about on the night of his birthday when we were looking through Ravelry patterns together, and it all came to me in a beautiful clear picture when a friend of mine posted a picture of a 2' long crocheted Viking beard to a crocheted Viking hat on my Facebook wall. So we decided that was what was going to be made.

I used the beard from this pattern as a kind of 'face cozy", then proceeded to take groups of 4 strands of yarn and pulled them through like fringe on a scarf throughout the beard. I used about 160 groups of this 'fringe' to make different layers of 'hair' on the beard. I used a little over a 315 yard skein of Caron Simply Soft to make this, but I think it was completely worth it.

The Viking Hat will be next, probably done in a few days or so :)