Halloween craft party......

I was up to 1am Wednesday night preparing templates cut out of lino squares and getting the bags of scraps into cardboard bins and plastic tubs ready for the big event........and sorting out my crafting paraphernalia, I managed to get plastic table coverings from the Scrapstore.

I decided to make witches out of old Costa coffee cups from the Scrapstore, I made a template to cover the cup and photocopied a reflected witches head that could be coloured in and stuck on top... I then drew witches arms and photo copied them ready to be coloured....
once she was assembled a blob of glue gun on the top of the cup and her cape could be attached.

A black flappy bat made out of card was my next creation, I also cut the templates out of lino squares (they are easy to draw around and are almost indestructible) and stuck on eyes using sticky back plastic, the wings were cut out of another piece of card and they can be stuck to the wall, or hung on a piece of string from the end of a bamboo stick.....

The whizzy witch was coloured in and stuck onto a circle of card that I then glue gunned onto a silver dish, I cut out a couple of stars.....

Unfortunately I completely forgot to take a photo of the hall after I had set up, and before I knew it people were arriving, children clamouring to make and do, and Danny man seemed to have this inane habit of not looking where he was going and walking into tables.....

we started at 3pm and (some arrived at 2:30) and everyone had snacks and drinks at 4pm and then we carried on making till 5pm, which really became 5:30 as the children did not want to leave and the 5 parents that stayed seemed to be having tons of fun too.......

The witches were very popular, a couple of the boys made daleks, and some of the girls made pots and pumpkins and their were even a couple of finger puppets, the bats were very popular.

I was astounded by how many of the children that wanted everything done for them and looked at me with disbelief when I said they needed to go and cut it out or draw round something or even colour something in.... is this due to to many gadgets to play with and they have never learnt how to make and do things?

All the children were year 5 and above, apart from one little sister that came, and they all had a wonderful evening and even though it cost me to hire the hall and to purchase the scrap it was well worth it. I would do it differently next time in the fact that I would ask for a donation to go towards the cost of the hall. One of the parents that stayed to help did ask parents collecting children for a donation but most had no money on them but some had a pound so I did get £7 towards the £25 cost.

All in all it was a lot of preparation and hard work but the end result was worth it, they all had a great time and made some thing for Halloween and hopefully learnt something new.