Since we moved to a new house this year I needed some new ideas for my Halloween decoration. The last few years I had the porch and a walkway to decorate for Halloween. This year I have a longer porch - but not a great walkway to work with yet.
I first found an idea in an old Lesisure arts book "Sew No More - Holiday Decor". This from part of there hard cover book series. The idea found was to make large standing ghost for the porch.
In their version The ghosts were holding candy corn pieces with beads. I was looking for something to say Halloween; so I went with "Trick or Treat". I think I'll mix it up over the years with "Happy Halloween" or other things. Another thing I did differently was the heads. These ghosts were meant to be inside or well protected. The orginal idea had the ghosts heads made of poly fil and batting. I decided to go a little different. I was able to make Paper mache heads with balloons. This was a great project because it allowed my daughter to get involved.
So here we are getting started. I used a great recipe from family fun - paper mache recipe. It was easy to use and made a lot and could be saved for a little bit. 
Here is Katie showing off her work. 
and all of the finished pieces.
You might be thinking, there are only 2 ghosts there. Well we used two balloons there, and two more in the trees - pictures and info to come later. We also had a fun experiment with a pinata; which is another story for another day.
We used these balloons and did the next week a quick coat of white paint, so that alot of the newsprint wouldn't show through the fabric. I then took these heads and filled them with spray expanding foam. I did alot of experimenting here. I think next year when I fill them I'm going to have them upside down to begin with. When the heads were sitting in the boxes to be filled the foam didn't expand up as much. but I noticed when I tilted a few the foam moved more the way I wanted it to. This gave my heads with some wieght that when I covered them with fabric they didn't collasped and they held up over the season. I plan on making new each year, since the only thing I don't think will last is the heads.
At this point you can see the head on the tomato cage frame. The book suggested a 36" frame - but at the end of season I could only find 54". I think in the end it was better for me because they stood out better. I duct taped a couple of 5/8" dowel rods as arms to the head - since there was no bar to use there.
From there it is add the fabric. I love the way fabric is coming these days. I was able to buy basic white muslin at Joann's in 108" width. This meant for the 2 ghosts I got 6 yds, and with a coupon wasn't that bad. Even better I'll be able to wash the fabric when I take the ghosts down and reuse for next year - no plastic! I drapped the fabric over the frame and took some black grosgrain ribbon to tie a bow at the neck.
The words were an old project I love. Back a few years ago I saw a banner in made in Leisure Arts "Spirit of Christmas" book. They took illustration board and cut out letter made from blowing up a font to 600 pt. Well I took this idea and traced the letters on to fun foam and then cut out the letters. This way they are water proof and wear a little better. I then took my scrapbooking eyelets and made holes at the top for some yarn to hold the letters. I'll do another post about this later - since I have done these letters for many projects. Either way, they held up and look good to use for next year.
Enough about these - I'll do more posts on the rest of the decor shortly.
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