Baby’s First Halloween Crafts

I love the holiday season and I am especially excited to start family traditions as we have become a family of three.  Crafts with E are obviously a shoe in.  We will probably do monthly crafts throughout the year (at least) but knowing me, they will be in higher quantity from October-December.

Halloween is our first holiday with E, so I had a combination of “crafters block” & an over abundance of ideas…it was overwhelming. But I finally narrowed it down and decided on two simple crafts to start me off:  footprint ghosts & frankensteins and bumpkins!

I had done a footprint craft in September, so I had a little experience with what works and what doesn’t which was helpful but I decided to give something different a whirl (why??). For whatever reason, E loves his changing pad.  I don’t know if it is because it is comfy or because it is next to a large mirror, or because it is high off the ground but he is almost always happy in it.  So that was my location of choice to break out the paint (bonus — wipeable changing pad so mess ups are a breeze to clean up!).

Getting “pretty” footprints of an active, squirmy baby can be difficult so I suggest getting way more than you think you will ever need! That way you are pretty much guaranteed to have a handful of successful ones. I normally just do one foot at a time and print it on a piece of construction paper (about 3 times per page).  It’s good to preplan what you’re going to make in order to coordinate paint & paper colors!

I used white paint (duh) on black construction paper for the ghosts & green paint on black construction paper for the frankensteins.  I honestly hadn’t decided what I was going to do with the green ones before starting, so I only did a few. In hindsight, black was probably a poor background color choice, but oh well!  I was pretty lucky and ended up with plenty of “ghosts” to choose from!

I added a little detail — ghost eyes and frankenstein eyes, hair & neck prongs (?? lol what are those things called), glued them to a piece of cardstock, added a super original saying and voila!  He’s teeny little feet are so adorable.

I had plenty of successful ghosts left over so I decided to make some Halloween cards to send to the grandparents & great-grandparents (#momwin). I cut a piece of cardstock in half, folded those pieces in half, modgepodged the ghost on & added another super original saying!  I sent the (g)grents some of our fall photos in these cards and they were a HIT!

ffffffgggbnhjtggtttttggggqw <– – lilly decided she was going to help.

Mike was not as convinced when I told him about the bumpkin plan, but I slowly got him on board! I needed his help in order to be successful because E hates being cold, like his mama. But his version of cold is like under 80° lol so he is a super fan of the hair drier.  He could sit around and coo for hours if we just kept that dang hair drier on him!  So right before bathtime, we stripped him down and did some naked tummy time (win-win). Mike kept the hair drier on him and I painted his bum orange.

I used cardstock and slowly pushed it against his bum trying to contour it as much as possible. I did it four times, two of which I considered kind of looking like pumpkins (see above about planning on doing extra, 50% success rate isn’t that hot) before Mike & E started pushing bath time lol.

*low quality video of Mike judging me for your viewing pleasure*

After they dried I added some details and YET ANOTHER super original description.  Since there was two “pumpkin shaped” imprints, I decided to try two different designs…still not sure which I prefer??  Either way, they are freaking adorable.  How can you beat a bum print of a newborn?!?