Non-food Crafties

As I've stated before, finding anything that could pass as a Halloween decoration isn't easy to do in a country that doesn't know much about Halloween. Sometimes this works out because if you have time and are creative, you can make some pretty groovy things on your own. I, however, am not terribly artistic or skilled, lack patience and definitely lack the time and organization for larger projects. That and I'm just really, really bad at following directions. Some sort of temporary dyslexia takes over, I swear.

Anyway, a site that I really like is The Anti Craft (www.theanticraft.com). Many of the projects on the site involve knitting, which I cannot do, but there are other projects as well. The archives are grouped together by Sabbats. Scrolling through the Samhain archives, I came across a project that takes cheap, mass-produced badly-painted figurines from the dollar store and turns them into creepy works of art.

Example:



Exhibit A is a badly-painted magnet from a cheap store in town. The picture isn't very good but the lighting kind of sucks. The magnet is stuck to the can of black spray paint that I used to cover the peaches-and-cream flesh of this happy couple on their special day.

A little black spray paint and some ceramic or acrylic paint is all it takes to turn that into this:






Isn't that better? Well, the photograph isn't, but the results are. I started repainting nativity scenes while I was home for the summer and plan to finish the next time I get to the U.S.