7 Things to Make this Halloween

Today I thought I would share a round-up post of some ideas you can make for Halloween this weekend.  The recipes and craft projects are all quite easy to do, I've included some ideas using printables - which are great for last minute decorations or games as you can print them at home!  I would love to hear if you have any quick and easy Halloween diy projects - please let me know what you're making in the comments below!

Halloween Pumpkin Cupcakes

If you have been carving pumpkins and are looking for pumpkin recipes to try, these cakes are a delicious idea!  You can find the recipe here.

Halloween Cookies with spider web icing
I shared the recipe for these on Wednesday - I also included a tutorial on how to make a spider web pattern in icing.

Halloween Treat Bags

These Halloween bags are easy to make and great for filling with sweets and treats! I shared a tutorial on how to make them last year.  You could make them with coloured paper, or you could print Halloween themed patterned paper from my shop.

Carved Oranges

If carving a pumpkin sounds like too much hard work, how about oranges instead?  I tried these a few years ago - you can find instructions on how to make them, with a jelly filling, here.  When you've eaten the jelly you could put a little tea light inside the orange too.

Spider Web Games

I love the idea of playing Pin the Spider on the Web which Kristen shared on her blog; Ella Claire Inspired.  If I had children I would definitely want to make this up for them to play!  You could either draw your own spider and spider web, or print the free printables which Kristen shares.

Alternatively, how about making a spider web shape with washi tape on your floor and throwing bean bag 'spiders' at the web - scoring higher the closer to the centre the 'spider' lands.

Halloween Bunting

I made some late additions to my Halloween party printables collection, but they're available as instant download so you can print and make them up as soon as your payment has cleared.  To make the 'Happy Halloween' banner, all you will need is a computer, printer, paper or card and some ribbon to string up the flags!

Spooky Halloween Food Labels

I added some printable Halloween themed name place cards to my Etsy shop too, which you could also use as food labels at your Halloween party.  How about coming up with fun, spooky names for your food, such as Spooky Sausages, Creepy Cookies or Witches Fingers!

If you're looking for more inspiration, check out my Halloween board on Pinterest, where I've been pinning fun Halloween food ideas, diy decorations and more...

Follow Hazel's board Halloween on Pinterest.

Halloween Cookies - Recipe and Spider Web Icing Tutorial

Making spider web patterns in icing is a really effective way to decorate cookies and cakes for Halloween and they're actually very easy to do, children will love making these too!  Here is a recipe for making some simple shortbread biscuits, flavoured with cinnamon and spices as well as a tutorial on making the iced pattern...

To make the biscuits you will need:
9oz butter
2oz caster sugar
9oz plain flour
4.5oz cornflour
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon

To make the shortbread, first cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.
Sift the flours together with the mixed spice and cinnamon, then add to the butter and sugar.
Bring together the ingredients to form a dough and shape into a thick sausage.  Wrap this in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or put in the freezer for 15 minutes if you are short of time).
Divide the sausage into 16 equal slices.  Flatten and shape each slice into a circle about 3 inches (7.5cm) across.
Bake in an oven at 170°C / 325°F / Gas Mark 3 for 30-40 minutes, until light golden brown.

Leave to cool on a wire rack, then you are ready to decorate them...

For the icing you need:
icing sugar
water or milk
black food colouring

Make up a batch of white glacé icing with icing sugar mixed with either some milk or water.  You want the consistency of the icing to be spreadable, but not too runny.
Make up a smaller amount of black icing by mixing black food colouring with your icing sugar and a little water.  Then put the black icing in a piping bag with a small round nozzle (if you don't have a piping bag make your own from a greaseproof paper or a small food bag with the very corner snipped off).

It is better to decorate the biscuits one at a time, as you need to make the spider web pattern before the white dries.
First, spread white icing over the biscuit, carefully spreading close to the edges.
With your piping bag, pipe 4 black circles which gradually get smaller in size towards the centre.
Using a cocktail stick, drag through the icing from the centre to the outside edge - repeat this to form the spider web pattern.  I found that 7 or 8 'spokes' looked best.
Leave to dry and they're ready to eat!

If you like this Halloween idea, do come and look at my blog again on Friday - I'll be sharing some more ideas of things you could make this weekend!

Halloween Card

On Tuesday I released some new Halloween themed printables; I will be sharing some different ideas over the next few weeks on how you could use them - first up is this Halloween card...


Materials used in the card:
144x144mm white card blank
orange paper
black and white card
Halloween night sky scrapbooking paper (from this set)
Witch, cat and 'Trick or Treat?' digital stamps (from this set)
watercolour pencils
black and orange baker's twine
double-sided sticky foam pads
craft glue / double sided sticky tape
silver glitter glue
silver gel pen
black pen
hole punch

How I made the card...
First I prepared the digital stamps for printing; I layered the cat digital stamp so it slightly overlapped the witch image and printed them onto white card.  I decided to test out my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine's print and cut feature and was very impressed with how well it cut around the girl and cat - I'll be sharing a blog post about this another time!  You could cut around the image with scissors or a craft knife too.  The girl and cat were then coloured with watercolour pencils.

I cut a square of the night sky scrapbook paper, smaller than the card blank and mounted it on orange paper, then glued these to the front of the card.


The 'Trick or Treat?' word stamp was printed onto white card.  This was then mounted onto orange paper and I drew a striped border to match the baker's twine using a black drawing pen.  I threaded baker's twine through a punched hole before tying the twine around the card.

Using my Cameo I cut a bat silhouette from black card, you could also cut this by hand.  Drawing lightly around the very edge of the bat with silver gel pen helped it to stand out from the dark background paper.


I attached the witch, bat and 'Trick or Treat?' tag to the card with double-sided foam pads to add dimension.  Finally, I added a little silver glitter glue to the some of the stars on the background paper.

New Design Release - Halloween

Today I'm excited to be releasing a new collection of printable Halloween designs in my shop on Etsy! If you follow me on Facebook you will already have seen the sneak peeks I shared for some new designs I have been working on... digital stamps, scrapbook papers and an invitation design.  I will be sharing some ideas for using them over the next few weeks - I would love to see what other people make with them too, so if you buy and use any of these please feel free to share your photos by emailing me, including a link in the comments below this post or on my Facebook page! 

I had great fun coming up with ideas for this set of digital stamps!  The set includes 3 children dressed up; as a witch, mummy and ghost, with 3 smaller images; a cat, bat and pumpkin and 3 messages; 'Boo!', 'Happy Halloween' and 'Trick or Treat?'.

Each image comes as a separate jpg file (with a white background) and as a png file (with a transparent background).  The transparent backgrounds of the png versions mean that they can be grouped and layered to create different combinations of images...

I designed a set of Halloween scrapbooking papers which could be used with the stamps - there are 8 papers in the set which includes a starry sky with moons and bats, spider web designs, chevron, striped, star and quatrefoil patterns...

I also designed this invitation with my witch and cat drawings on a spiderweb background - it could be used for Halloween parties or birthday parties.  As with all my invitation designs, it comes with personalised text and is sent as a digital file which you can either print at home, or take to your local printers...

You can find these designs and more of my other Halloween themed printables in my hfcSupplies Etsy shop.

DIY Tutorial - Halloween Treat Bags

Today I have a diy tutorial to share with you to make little paper bags – perfect for Halloween treats!  It’s a simple and quick project to make with minimal supplies.  I made this tutorial for Halloween but you can make it with any paper you like – these bags would be great for so many other occasions; for giving gifts at Christmas or Easter or as party bags at Birthdays!

You will need:

• patterned paper (I used A5 sized pieces of my Halloween scrapbooking papers printed onto 120gsm paper)
• glue
• optional; baker’s twine, tags (I used my Halloween cupcake toppers printed full size and half size)

1.  Fold your paper into 3 sections – one narrow strip and 2 equal sized sections.
2.  Glue the narrow strip, so that it is on the inside
3.  Fold up the bottom of the bag – varying the position of this fold will alter the depth of your bag
4.  Open out the bottom fold to create 2 triangles
5.  Fold up the lower section of the bottom piece – fold it past the middle
6.  Fold the upper section of the bottom piece to overlap the lower piece and glue down
7.  Open out your bag
8.  You can seal your bag in various ways – I have folded over the top then punched a hole through the bag and tied it with black and orange baker’s twine, with a tag

If you like the papers I have used in this tutorial you can buy them from my shop – my Halloween range of printables includes scrapbooking papers, cupcake toppers, bunting and more.  I also sell coordinating baker’s twine.

Delicious Halloween Pumpkin Cakes!

I don't usually like eating pumpkin but these pumpkin cakes are delicious and they're perfect for Halloween!  This batch was baked yesterday based on a family recipe, I've decorated them with a fun spiders web pattern and some of my Halloween printable papers.
 

To make the cake you will need:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon (I also add a little ground nutmeg and mixed spice)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup pumpkin, cooked and cooled

For the topping:
icing sugar
milk or water
orange food colouring

Heat the oven to 180C / 350F / gas mark 4

The recipe I was given says to mix all ingredients together and pour into a floured tin.  I usually mix the dry ingredients together first, then add the beaten eggs, then the oil and finally stir in the cooked pumpkin.

I find the easiest way to cook the pumpkin is to heat it in the microwave for a few minutes until soft.  If the cooked pumpkin is very wet drain some of the liquid away before adding to the cake mixture to stop the cake from being too moist.  This recipe only uses a little pumpkin - if you're not making anything else with it the spare pumpkin (raw) can be cut into cubes and stored in the freezer, ready for baking another time. 

 

Pour the mixture into a tin or individual cupcake cases and cook for 25 minutes.

When the cakes are cooled they're ready to decorate!  Make some glace icing with icing sugar and milk or water.  Take some of the icing and colour for the spider web pattern, leaving the rest white.  (I gradually added a little yellow and red colouring until the colour looked right.)

Spread white icing onto a cake then pipe orange rings onto the white icing.  Using a cocktail stick draw lines through the icing, from the centre to the edge of the cake to create the spider web effect.  It's best to decorate one cake at a time rather than ice them all in white first.

I think the cakes look great with just this iced pattern on, but to finish these ones off I have also used some of my Halloween printables.

The designs were printed onto card, then cut out by hand.  The cupcake toppers can also be cut with a 2 inch circle punch.  For the circles, sandwich a cocktail stick between two circles of card and glue together.  I also used some of my new Halloween flags - for these simply fold in half with a cocktail stick glued in the centre fold.

Early Halloween

This year I'm making an effort to be prepared early for the holidays - so I'm starting with Halloween today...

I have designed a new box shape to use with my Halloween patterns.  It is a top opening box measuring 8.5cm wide, 11cm tall and 3.5cm deep.  This template is a versatile design as you can use it to make a gift box or a bag. To make the bag instead of a box simply cut off the top flaps, punch some holes in the side and thread with ribbon to make handles.

Each box template also comes with a coordinating tag...

The boxes come as 2 printable sheets - one box features lots of creepy spiders in black and white and the other box has black cats and bats in black, white and orange.  I think these designs made as gift bags would be great for filling with sweets and treats at Halloween parties!



These boxes are available to buy from my Etsy shop - more non-seasonal designs will be available in this box shape soon too!