The One Pumpkin

The One Pumpkin by light.

Forging The One Pumpkin

You can find a high resolution graphic of the inscription on Wikipedia.  If you want one for your very own, this can be scaled to fit your chosen pumpkin.  Use a sharp craft knife and set aside an hour or two for carving.

Happy Halloween!

Eyeball Cookies

These little eyeball cookies taste as good as they look and they're looking right at you!  They come together quickly and are a great way to impress your Halloween guests.

Ingredients
1 cup salted butter, softened (use real butter or at least half real butter)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teas vanilla
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
red gel or powdered food coloring
2 Tbsp vodka
fine paint brush
green candy melts (I added a little bit of brown to make the irises muddy)
small piping bag
chocolate chips


Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Cream together the butter and powdered sugar, blend-in the vanilla.  Add the flour and combine until the dough is smooth and uniform.

Roll walnut sized balls and place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

Combine the vodka with enough red food coloring to give it a nice dark tint.  Use the paint brush to add random lines to make the eye look bloodshot.  The very top of the cookie will be covered so start brushstrokes there and drag the coloring down the sides, tapering down the lines and making branches wherever possible.

Bake 9-10 minutes.

Remove and allow to cool.

Melt the green candy melts according to directions and pour into a piping bag.  Cut the tip off, leaving about a 1/4" wide opening.

Pipe an iris and when cool enough to touch it, press it down flat.  Then quickly add a chocolate chip.  Allow the chocolate to set.

Creepy Eye-Following Pictures

I am decorating for Halloween!  My family room's theme is "Abandoned House" so I created some old-fashioned, creepy eye-following portraits for that room.  For full instructions and pictures, please visit my Instructables submission dedicated to the project.

Shameless Self Promotion

My little cauldron place card holders have now been entered in the Instructables Play with Clay Challenge.  Please vote for them!  I made them for fun (and for party props) but discovered this open contest for polymer clay creations.  I call it kismet!

I have many more projects for your gotthic, Victorian, steampunk and/or Halloween pleasure coming up in the next few months.  So follow me and keep an eye on this blog.

Aged Book: Most Potente Potions

This year's Halloween party will feature a Potions Lab for brewing up some amazing potent potables.  I have a number of things that will be included but the most important thing is the book of signature drink--err, potion, recipes complete with pictures.

To create the book I started with this little photo album.  The ring binding is not ideal for a medieval look but it makes the book easier to assemble and add to over time.  There may be a potion brewing contest, involving the invention of drinks using our bar ingredients and I'll be putting the entries from this contest into the book for later years.

To age the vinyl book and help it look like ancient leather, I took the following steps:

1. I conditioned it with baby oil, to relax it a little bit.  I don't know if this did any good but it didn't seem to hurt.
2. I sanded it.  I tried to hide the direction of my sanding but it was somewhat difficult.  This was not a big deal though, as other steps helped hide it.
3. I used a small grater and really roughed up the edges and raised surfaces.  This is what I would expect to happen in a very old leather tome.
4. I used the smooth edge of a butter knife to make ripples in the fabric.  I just pulled it across with the knife angled a bit.  This also stretches the fabric a bit and creates some more rough parts.
5. I kicked it around.  A lot.  We live in a slightly rural area so I kicked it and pushed it around on a gravel road.  This got it nice and dirty and helped cover the directional lines from my sanding by adding new random marks.
6. I polished it with brown shoe polish.  This was darker than some of the fabric and filled in the cracks and creavases with what looks like filth.  It also stained some of the stitching.
7. Stain it liberally.  I used some brown stain that I made by soaking coffee grounds in warm rum (what I had in the house).  I dripped, dabbed, and splattered that everywhere.  I added a little red and blue food coloring and repeated the process.
8. I tea stained the inside and sealed it.
9. I used permanent marker to ink the label.

Now I have it sitting out in the sun during warm days and, hopefully, it will fade all of my work a bit and add to the effects.

Cauldron Place Card Holders

These little cauldron place card holders are a fun Halloween decoration for spooky dinner parties.  They are made from polymer clay and can be customized with different colors of potion.  The cauldrons themselves can be made from a variety of metallic colors to match your theme.

To make each place card holder, you'll need:

• Aluminum foil (about 4" off the roll)
• Stiff wire -- I used 10 gauge copper wire but you can use floral stems
• Needlenose Pliers
• Wire Cutters
• Polymer Clay in the color of your choice to be the "potion" -- about 1/8th of a 2oz block
• Black Polymer Clay -- about 1/4th of a 2oz block
• A thin pointy object such as the end of a small craft paint brush
• A thin, smooth rod, such as a screwdriver, to wrap the wire around when creating your card holding loop

First, make a foil core.  It's possible to use polymer clay to serve as the core but I didn't want to waste clay.  Create the core by simply wadding up your foil into a ball.  Don't press it too tightly.  You want the ball to be about 1.25" across.  Then press the ball down on two sides to create a flattened disk.  The disk should be about 1/2" thick.  Poke a hole in the center of your disk.  You can use the end of your wire to do this but I used a toothpick.

Cut a 6" length of wire.  Using pliers, make a rough loop in one end and then bend the wire at a 90 degree angle to the loop.  This way, when the loop is laying flat on a surface, the wire is sticking straight up in the air.

Pull the straight length of wire through the hole so the loop acts as a stopper at the other end.

Roll your colored clay, about 1/8th of a 2 oz block of clay, into a ball.  Flatten it until it is about the diameter of your foil disk.  Pierce through the center of this clay with the end of the wire and pull the disk down over the foil. Smooth the edges of the clay down over the sides of the foil.
(It is possible to make the loops in the wire that will hold the card in this step instead of later.  See the last step for details.)

Bake this at the temperature and time specified by your brand of polymer clay, in a glass baking pan.  I line the bottom of my baking pan with paper.

Once this foil and clay creation has cooled, it's time to form the cauldron around it. Gather about 1/4th of a 2oz block of clay and roll it in your hands until it's soft and pliable.  Pinch off enough to make about a 1/2" ball of clay and set this aside.

Form the larger clump of clay into a ball and flatten it into a disk until it's about twice as wide as the foil disk.  Place the foil disk in the center and work it up and around the foil piece, as shown.  Pull the clay around the top and smooth the top edge.  Then press the clay to taper away from this edge and create the flared top of the cauldron.

Divide the rest of the remaining black clay into four equal sections.  Set one aside.  Roll each of the other three sections into a ball.  Place the balls on the bottom of the cauldron, evenly spaced, to serve as legs.  Then press the cauldron down, pushing in on the already hardened colored "potion" in the center of the cauldron, until it's level and the legs are pressed on well.

To create the handles on the sides, divide the remaining clay in two.  Roll each section into a ball and flatten slightly.  Press the end of a paintbrush or chopsitck into the the center of one disk and then, keeping the point in the clay, place it against the side of the cauldron and press the point in slightly to secure the handles.  Pull away the point.  Repeat to create a handle for the other side.

Bilge Water Bottle

This is a fairly simple bottle that I decorated.  I used a bottle, paint, dirt (yes, what you find in your garden), and some letter stickers to create this container which will hold whiskey at this year's Halloween party.  It's a 32oz Mississippi Mud Black & Tan beer bottle.  


First, I masked off the top section of the bottle.  Then, I applied letter stickers.  The goal was to use the stickers on the glass to mask off the letters, rather than keep them applied to the bottle.  The plan was to paint over these and then remove them to reveal the color and texture of the bottle.  The stickers I found were a perfect font so it didn't matter that they were glittery pink.  I used some of the leftovers to frame the label.  Once the letters were on, I coated it with a few layers of matte finish clear spray paint.  The paint sticks to the glass and, once dry, creates a "tooth" for acrylic paints.  It also seals any of the gaps between the stickers and the glass to prevent colored paint from bleeding under the stickers.  

Once this layer of paint was dry, I dabbed a few layers of beige acrylic craft paint over it.  When that was dry, I took it outside to a planter of beautiful dirt.  To create a textured, aged surface, I layered paint and dirt.  I sprayed sections of the bottle with the clear paint, tossed on some dirt, brushed off the excess and repeated until I had covered the whole bottle with uneven filth.  I sealed the top with clear polyurethane.

Finally, I used tiny sharp tweezers to pull off the stickers and reveal the label.

Aged Paper Labels for Potion Bottles, Alchemy Labs, etc.

I enjoy making potion bottles, especially ones that look ancient.  However, an old-looking bottle requires a similarly aged label.  To create the effect of an aged label, I used a simple graphics program (in this case, MSPaint but you can use GIMP, Photoshop, etc.) to generate the label, then print and age it.  Because I want the printed elements of the label to look distressed (and because it's difficult to run anything but smooth sheets of paper through my printer), I aged the paper after the design was printed.

Some printer ink can’t stand up to this process.  The ink should be fairly color-fast.  Factory filled cartridges or those refilled with pigment-based ink tend to work well.  To check if your ink is colorfast, simply print something (or use paper you’ve already printed) and brush or splash water onto the printed page.  If the ink does not bleed, chances are your ink should work fine.  Try both black ink and color ink; you might find a difference.  If it does bleed, one way of dealing with this is to use a light table (or window in bright light) to trace your printing with pigment-based markers onto your paper (again, if unsure, test for colorfastness).


USING CLIP ART TO CREATE A SIMPLE LABEL

You can create an image for your label using a border or interesting clipart found online or in your own clipart collection.  On the left label for Syrup of Hellebore, I used a piece of scrollwork as the basis for the art.  On the right label for Powdered Root of Asphodel, I used and reoriented a single piece of scrollwork four times to create a stylized border.

In step one, I selected the scroll and turned it in the direction I wanted.

In step two, on the Hellebore label, I copied the scroll, pasted it and flipped it horizontally.  Then I made an oval and placed the mirror-image scrolls on either side of it.  In the second step of the Asphodel label, I copied the scroll, pasted it, flipped it, and repeated this for four sections to create the entire border.

Finally, I added the text part of the label and printed it.  I have, in the past. used a good brush-tip pen with colorfast ink to go over the printed lines and give a hand-quilled look.  This is another way to individualize your labels.

TRIM THE LABELS

The same label cut six different ways.

I suggest printing up several of the same label and subjecting them to variances in the aging and distressing process.  It’s hard to know exactly how these will turn out and this will give you a variety of choices for the final application.

Print the labels onto sturdy paper.  I used just plain white printer paper here and they turned out fine.  Before making them look old or distressed, decide how to cut them out.  It is important to give the paper label its final shape before aging it or the edges won’t seem as natural.  Cut it out or carefully tear it out.  Cutting can be done using standard scissors, fancy edge scissors, or other shape cutting tools.  You can either carefully trim it according to shape or give it another shape altogether.  See the picture for some different ideas about how to shape one single label.

AGING THE LABELS
To age your labels, lay them on a glass or ceramic plate.  Brew yourself some coffee or tea.  Drink your hot beverage but don’t discard the bag or grounds.  Instead, heap up the wet tea leaves or coffee grounds onto the labels.  Make a nice thin layer and extend it out past the edges of the label.  I tried several different teas and each gave a different effect.  

You can also mix up your leaves and grounds, laying them onto the label in different areas to give a really nice varied effect.  You can allow your labels to dry naturally like this.  This will give a light layer of color.  To deepen and intensify the colors you can put the plate in the microwave and heat for 15-30 seconds, depending on the size of label.

Starting from the upper left and going clockwise: coffee, black tea, mix of teas and coffee, green tea.

Allow the plate and contents to cool and then carefully remove the leaves or grounds.  You can either let the labels dry before moving on or you can begin augmenting your aged paper with distressed effects now.

DISTRESSING THE LABELS
Distressing, when done while the paper is still wet, will give a less defined edge to the drips and splatters you’ll be adding.  If the paper is dry, it will cause the first layer of coloring to bleed and create a darkened edge where the bleed ends.  Both are nice effects.

You can use brown vanilla extract, liquid food coloring, or watered-down tempera paints.  There are probably many water-based substances you can use as well to make the label appear as though it has been subjected to lots of abuse.  I tend to do most of my distressing with vanilla and yellow food coloring, and then add little bits of other colors spattered here and there.

If you don’t have a dropper for adding spots of color, use a small drinking straw (I like the narrow ones used as coffee stirrers).  Dip the straw in your liquid and then put your finger on the other end and you’ll be able to drip individual drops by loosening your finger pressure and letting air in this end.  For very small splatter marks, dip the end of a toothpick into the coloring liquid and dab the color on the paper deliberately.  

Tip your plate with the label on it to coax liquids to drip down the label, as it might if it were on the bottle at the time.

It’s also nice to dip the very top edge of the label directly into your liquid distressing medium where it will give a crisper color to the top edge making it appear as though liquid had accumulated here.

Allow all of this coloring to dry completely.


BURN MARKS
One way a label may have been inadvertently distressed over time is for the bottle it covered to have been hit with small sparks that burned it slightly.  Of course, some kinds of bottles may not have been exposed to fire so you might skip this step altogether.  For potion bottles, it's a nice little touch.  Burns could be in the form of small holes created when hot ash landed on the label and smoldered briefly.  Maybe the edge of the label caught fire in a ghastly potion-brewing explosion and burned a bit of it away.  Because some of these labels are very small, I decided against actually burning them as even a controlled burn might char more of it than it leaves behind.  Instead, I artfully cut the labels and used a permanent ink marker to “char” along the cut edges.

Roll, trim, reveal, "char."

To create a charred hole, you can fold or roll the paper around the point at which the hole appears.  Trim off the tip of this point.  Unroll the label and dab a brown marker along the edges.  Let the ink bleed into the paper a bit.  Finally, dab black marker along this edge but don’t allow it to bleed in as much as the brown.

These are some aged, distressed, and burnt labels.  They represent probably the most ancient and abused-looking results of this process and are a bit over-the-top.

SEALING THE LABELS
The label can be sealed with an acrylic varnish (but this is best done once it’s been applied to the surface of the bottle.  Use shiny or matte finish varnish depending on the look you are going for.

Another way of sealing the surfaced that I tend to prefer is to rub the surface with candle wax.  This gives a very uneven shine to the surface of the label which can be nice.  I have some old white candles that were once stored with a variety of other candles.  The other wax colors tainted the surface of the candles, making them grungy and perfect for sealing these distressed labels.  Just rub the side of the candle on the outer surface of the label.


APPLYING THE LABELS
The label can be applied with Modge Podge, craft glue, or spray adhesive.  Just apply a very thin layer to the back and stick in place.  Consider not applying the glue to one edge or corner.  Then, once it’s dry, curl the loose section, possibly tearing it a bit or making the edges ragged for a final flourish.

Syrup of Hellebore Bottle

This potion bottle project was created using eggshells and glue to cover a bottle.  The surface was then detail painted.  The process of using eggshells to create a cracked ceramic-looking surface is fairly time-consuming.  However, the effect is pretty good and the project goes much better when the bottle is covered a little at a time and allowed to dry between sections.

Step-by-step instructions for this bottle are available here: Eggshell-Covered Potion Bottle.

You can read about how I make these labels here: Aged Paper Labels

Green Gem Potion Bottle

This potion bottle is one of my kids' favorites.  It features a green gem, created using my Faux Gemstone technique which is set into a large black blob-like medallion made from polymer clay.  The medallion features tentacles which wrap around the bottle somewhat.  Two of them have been extended and wrapped around the neck of the bottle.  A similar green gem was set atop the cork stopper.

Although polymer clay does not permanently adhere to glass, the clay here has not been glued to the glass because it is wrapped around the glass, keeping it in place. 

The contents of this bottle are simply green colored water and vegetable oil.  The oil seems to have taken on a greenish color since I filled the bottle several years ago.  The strange bubbles in the top layer of the contents are the result of my shaking the bottle prior to taking the picture.  I have glued the cork permanently in place, making this a display bottle only.

Potion Ingredient Jar Set

These old jars were purchased off ebay as they are, with distressed lids.  Because I don't know what these bottles originally held, they couldn't be used for any spices that might go into food so they can only be used as props.  I filled each with something that looked like an ingredient and printed up labels on sticker paper.  I used a font that I liked to print the name of the contents and went over this with a permanent brush-tipped marker to give them a hand-quilled look. A basic black border is all that these required.  Anything else would have seemed like too much.  The ingredients and their labels are as follows:

• Dried Doxy Venom: turbinado sugar
• Beetle Eyes: black dragees (bought in a cake/candy decorating shop)
• Dessicated Rat Brains: bulk-purchased dried garbanzo beans
• Bowtruckle Skin: thin bark stripped off fallen branches
• Asphodel Leaf: tarragon
• Knarl Quills: pine needles cut to roughly equal lengths

Knotwork Potion Bottle

The purple started out as an eight-sided spice jar.  I started out by covering it in a layer of polymer clay.  To accomplish this, I rolled out the clay and covered the jar with the single sheet.  Then I poked this layer with pins.  Using my hands, I pushed the clay up against the jar tight while excess air was pushed out through the holes.  Then I smoothed over the surface to hide the holes.

I stamped out the design on another piece of clay and attached it to the original piece before firing.  To do this, I rolled out the piece of clay and dusted the surface with cornstarch.  Then I dusted the surface of the stamp with more cornstarch and pressed it into the clay.  I blew off as much cornstarch as I could before adhering the stamped section using a little liquid polymer clay.  I smoothed down the edges of the added piece using my finger. 

The bottle was then baked and the stamped section was later highlighted by covering it in black acrylic paint thinned with a little water and cleaning it off the top surface before it dried.  The neck was wrapped in twine and the twine ends finished with beads.  A brown polymer clay "tag" is also hung from the neck.  I intend to replace this with a piece of wood labeled using a wood burner.

Erumpent Horn Bottle

This magical ingredient bottle looks like a stick of dynamite because it contains something just as destructive, an Erumpet Horn.  I started out by covering this tall bottle in cleaned egg shells.  Working in sections, I brushed some glue in a small area of the bottle and pressed down a large piece of eggshell.  Then, using a toothpick, I spread out the pieces on the sea of glue to create a sort of mosaic pattern with tiny gaps.  This process was repeated until the entire bottle was covered.  Once dry, I painted over the entire surface and then antiqued it using acrylic paints and glazes.

Then, I drilled a hole in the original screw-on lid and covered it in polymer clay (sans the hole) and baked it hard.  To create the fuse, I strung beads and pulled the strand through the hole, securing it from the inside by tying a knot around a bead inside the lid.  The label was made on my computer, printed onto ivory paper and the front side rubbed with a candle.  This gave it a protective coat and made it appear old.  The complete text says: 

Potentially Explosive!
Do not use around small children, farm animals, empty fields, shoes, acorns, wands, fires, cheese, owls, gold, silver, copper, glass, ceramics, iron, alcohol, toothpaste, certain species of rainforest toads, toenail clippings, or blood.
Purchaser takes this into custody at his or her own risk.
Have a pleasant day!

Gold Potion Bottle

This is the first in my series of potion bottles, created out of a variety of elements.  I use a lot of polymer clay but I've been known to use other substances including egg shells to create the look I'm after.

The base is a clear glass Christmas ornament.   I bought the cork at my local hardware store from the bulk bins.  The hardware store's bulk bins have inspired a number of projects of mine.  I covered the ornament in gold polymer clay by carefully pressing pieces of clay all over the surface and smoothing out the clay as I worked.  This was baked and other clay embellishments were added using liquid polymer clay to bond the baked and fresh pieces:

• A twisted rope of clay formed into a circle allows it to stand up.  Another was added to the neck of the bottle.
• A slightly different shade of gold polymer clay was rolled out, coated with cornstarch, stamped with a cornstarch dusted rubber stamp, and placed in the center before baking on the clay.  (Once baked, I was able to rinse off the cornstarch which worked as a mold release.) 
• I added a silver-backed flat glass marble made using my Faux Gemstone technique.