This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was white. I’m sure I’m not the only one who took the theme white and combined it with upcoming Halloween and thought… hmmm ghosts. We did a stiff fabric technique to make our ghosts. I have seen this done before with gauze but thought that might be too difficult for the kids to handle so we used light weight muslin.
First we built a base to drape our fabric ghosts over. I cut the tops off pop bottles, blew up a balloon, taped the balloon over the opening and slide a skewer though to give some arm definition.
We ripped the fabric (wanted a torn, frayed edge) into squares big enough to cover our forms. Then we filled a large bowl with equal parts Elmer’s Glue and water. We soaked the fabric in the glue mixture, wrung it out and then draped it over the form. There was lots of “ewws and yucks”… it was very sticky! They spread out the fabric over the form (I had to help hold the form up – it was top heavy, maybe a can or a rock in the bottom of the pop bottle would have helped). After the fabric was spread out nicely, we left it to dry over night.
A couple days later we added googly eyes with tacky glue, removed the ghosts from the frames, and threaded string in the center of the head for hanging (fishing line would have been nice but I just had white thread on hand).
I was afraid they might not hold their form since we used such a large piece of fabric but they really did. One was a little bit limp, but it was the last one in the glue bath and just didn’t get enough coverage. I made a little more of the glue mixture and brushed it on the following morning, let it set up and all was well. I think they make great, spooky ghost decorations on the front porch. I hope they stay dry enough!
LOL – Just after the outdoor photo was taken and I typed the above post, it started to rain. The kids were really worried about their ghosts getting wet so we decided to move them indoors. They are currently haunting the pass through from our dining room to living room.
