Last Minute Paper Circuit Halloween Decoration

I know this is cutting it close for posting about Halloween decorations but it's quick and easy and cheap.

The items used for this decoration comes from two places that are dear to me: Circuit Stickers and the dollar store, specifically, Dollar Tree.

demonic rat stickers from Dollar Tree

The cool thing about Circuit Stickers and paper circuits is that you can easily use just one LED in random places. This particular random place is behind the eye of the demonic rat sticker.

The rat part of the stickers are "sculpted" in a 3-D fashion and the back is a flat piece of adhesive. I used plain copy paper to act as a barrier between the circuit and the adhesive, as well as adhere the circuit to the rat sticker. I didn't glue it all the way around so I could have access to the battery. I used Jie Qi's nifty paper battery holder.

I initially cut both pieces a little longer and then shaped it so the paper(s) wouldn't show. I did this while the rat sticker was still on its packaging. I just held the paper behind it and put my finger where it needed to be trimmed. It doesn't need to be pretty, just not seen from the front. (I don't know why Blogger isn't letting me format this the way I want so I have to go with flush right. Sigh.)

This is showing the access to the battery. This way you can make them in advance (yes, I know, I see the irony of that statement) and not waste battery power.

As I noted in the above picture, I needed to cut the adhesive backing to accommodate the battery. Because the rat is sculpted, the battery then nests in between the rat/front and the adhesive/back. And, in hindsight, I would have made the piece a little more narrow to keep as much adhesive area available as possible.

I apologize for not having a better "in situ" picture. Also for not knowing how to take a good picture to showcase an LED.

Another picture of the red eyed rat at the beginning of the post.

I hope this inspires you to make your own last minute Halloween decorations that has the added impact of LEDs!

If you're not familiar with paper circuits or Circuit Stickers, have a look at Chibitronics' website and then get their Starter Kit. You will not be sorry.

Some Halloween Cards

I posted some vintage photos as well as some alterations I made with them at PicMonkey in this post here. Then the real fun began. I made some cards (and one tag, which could be sent as a greeting so kind of a non-card card-like greeting communication).

artsy-like detail shot

materials used

another artsy detail shot

materials used 

if you don't have an exclamation point, use a "j" upside down and Sharpie to color in the "curve"

close-up with the tinsel glitter that bedeviled me

materials used

detail of felt embellishments

the table keeps getting smaller

see? now your work space doesn't seem all that bad now

Free Vintage Ephemera for Halloween: Spooky Ancestors

I scanned some vintage photos I have in my collection. I chose ones that had wear to them because I thought that would add to the eerie quality for Halloween crafts. I did a little bit of "clean up" to the faces and some of the backgrounds. OK, not a whole lot to the backgrounds. There's quite a bit of wear/damage on the baby photo but I kind of like it for Halloween. (Also, you can cut out the person and incorporate it that way into your art.)

A fun thing you can do is play around with them at PicMonkey. This is an online free photo editing program. (They also have a pay version that gives you added features and no ads.) You can use it to enhance your photos with exposure and color controls, for example. They also have overlays you can add to your photos such as text, hearts, stars, labels, and banners to name just a few.  And if that wasn't enough, they have really fun holiday overlays. I took the above photos and played with them a bit at PicMonkey. The following are the results.

Even though most of them used the Halloweenish options (Vampires, Witches, Demons, etc.), I also dipped into the Valentine and regular overlays as well. Be sure to use the erase feature if you only want to use part of the design (e.g., the bones in the babies hands are actually part of a skull and crossbones motif).

Go play and have fun!!!

In case you don't know how to get these images onto your computer: 

Windows OS users: left click on the image and choose "Save image as ...", change the file name to something that makes sense to you and then save it your chosen file saving place.

Apple OS users: hold the Control key while clicking on the image and choose "Save image as ...", change file name and save to chosen file. (I believe you can also just drag the image to where you want it to go but my Mac died a couple years ago and I can't be sure.)

Even the Sun is in the Halloween Spirit!

Photo credit: NASA/SDO

This is the sun doing it's imitation of a jack-o-lantern captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on October 8, 2014. This satellite was launched by NASA in 2010 to observe and increase our understanding of the sun. The areas that are brighter are where emissions of light and energy are stronger and are "markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona." (Fox, Karen NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Sure, you can scoff and say this is pareidolia, the human brain wanting to see something of significance in random patterns, but I would say you are vapid and a killjoy.

Go to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for some other cool images seen in different wavelengths, like this:

Photo credit: NASA/SDO

Free Halloween Printable: Poison Labels

Here a two printables that you can use for Halloween crafts or decorations. If you click on the picture, it will take you to Google Drive where you can either print or download the PDF. (You don't have to create an account or do any type of sign up process.) 

Have fun!!