4 Simple Halloween Whimsies

I did dream of showing you some awesome spooky photos of these pieces in action, but it hasn't turned out as planned. I was fooled by this photoshoot into thinking I could take night-time images, but using my camera (good but obviously not good enough), a tripod and the self-timer (sadly I have no remote), and having to waddle slowly back-and-forth between the camera and my chair, led to a serious lack of success.

So for now, just some straightforward daylight shots, and then I am charging others with the task of getting some better photos for me!

1. "Hands" Veil and Hairclips

I wanted to make fairly simple, quick,easy projects, and this definitely fits into that category. I also wanted to work with materials I had available to me in my craft supplies or my existing Halloween decorations. I can't remember why I bought them originally (possibly there was no particular reason), but I had a lot of these skeletal hands.

I paired them with a thin strip of veil, just for the eyes and perhaps the nose, as in this 1950s-style evening hat.

I did put a longer strip of veil than I intended, meaning that the hands can reach further around the head. I was aiming for them to just sit above the ears on both sides. The effect, however, is not bad!

I'm not going to go into tutorial detail here, but you could easily make this yourself, and use any kind of Halloween prop on the ends. They are just glued to alligator clips (with a layer of felt in between, which does help them stick better and give you something to sew the veil to) and the veil cut to size, gathered at the ends, and sewn to the felt.

2. "Tears" Hairband/Whimsy

The other concept I knew I wanted to explore for Halloween was felt shapes on veils. One manifestation of that idea became this headband veil with tears of blood.

Getting the positioning of the tears correct is the hard part, and the scale would be very different on different people (and is very different on my mannequin too!). I would cut the tears smaller if I made it again.

The shape and other trims on the headband are inspired by a 1950s one from AWW, although I only added a bow to one side rather than both.

As you can see, the tears are also very much about the angle too!

3. "Blood" Hair Flower with veil.

Another felt cut out idea was, of course, drips of blood from the corner of the mouth. How could I resist? I paired this with a deep red hair flower to keep to an elegant vampiric style.

As with the skeleton hands, the veil is gathered at each end and attached to the clips, with the flower attached on top of the clip at one side.

I'll show you the two half-decent images I took last night, but you can see how fuzzy they are! They do show that the blood drips look better on a real person than the mannequin (in my opinion).

I did not edit this green in! It was legitimately provided by frog-shaped green fairy lights! (Very spooky.)

I did, however, use PicMonkey's lovely Halloween themes to play with the background in this one.

4. "The Birds" Whimsy

I've been wanting to execute this idea for a long time now! I watched "The Birds" at my local cinema this year, and thoughts have been simmering in my brain ever since.

The fabric "flower" on top is one I removed from a little knit bolero cardigan, and I think it looks much better as part of a whimsy than it did in its original place.

As with all of these, there is plenty of room for adjustment that shifts the position of the felt shapes to find the most flattering look.

As these were quick projects, I've just glued the felt shapes to the veil, so forgive me for that laziness and ignore the visible glue in the next photo!

I was bursting with Halloween ideas. I wanted to make them all! It was hard to restrict myself to just a few that I could achieve quickly while I finish off my last pre-maternity-leave pieces. So I have a lot of ideas left over for next year!

I look forward to being able to show you some better photos of these later, but for now I hope they provide some inspiration for the Halloween season! I'd love to hear if you try any of these for yourself, and hear all about your costumes, whatever they are, so I can live vicariously through others!! (I'll be at home on the couch, "costumed" as a large tired pregnant lady.)