A Haunting We Will Go!

Crafting in 3-D beats movies in 3-D three to one! At least I think so. See if you agree.

The love of my creative life is designing in 3-D with my 2-D style of art. Any time I can take my characters and get them in a three dimensional setting I’m in happyland. This is what I was able to do with Lettering Delights and the Costume Clubhouse theme. We made a less than haunting house and a playful graveyard scene, complete with tree, tombstones and iron fence as well as the little clubhouse members jaunting about.

These sets are available on LD as: Costume Clubhouse Haunted House, Costume Clubhouse Graveyard, and Costume Clubhouse Fences. Each set can be used together or separately for a variety of craft ideas as well as a center piece for your party or little vignettes throughout the house, classroom, or even office for the Halloween season.

Below are some photos of the house to share a few ideas of how the scene could be set up. The house is not complicated to put together with the pieces printed, cut and assembled with a little glue or double stick tape, it’s just a little witch-craft waiting for your creative hand.

When the house is assembled it measures about 11" high and 6" x 5" at its base. The shutters can either be attaches to the house flat or as shown here with them angled in a bit to make them more three dimensional. To make the little costume kids, simply print, cut and fold at their bases to make them stand. Then embellish a bit more with ghosts and jack-o-lanterns about the house.

To make the graveyard scene simply print and cut the pieces and assemble again with glue and a little string. I did choose to use black cardstock for the tree and the fence as I wanted both sides to be black on those pieces, so no printing was done on my tree or the fence (only the fence signs were printed and then glued into place—one side of the sign reads “trick or treat,”and the other side of the sign reads “rest in peace.”

To make the scenes of tombstones with bats and ghosts simply print, cut and fold at their bases to make them stand around your tree. I always use an index stock for paper crafting that needs to stand on its own and for this I used 90lb. stock.

For the “boo” and “eek” banners, I made them as you would any banner, only in miniature with black carpet warp string. You can use any string you like. I found that craft stores have a variety of options to choose from. I also used a tiny pinhole punch (or a needle will do) to make small holes in the tree for the banner, bats, ghosts and spiders to hang from, then threaded the string and knotted for the pieces to hang. I also used a bit of glue to secure the string into place.

I printed the bats, ghosts, owls and spider medallions from a lighter 24 lb. paper because I did not want those pieces to be too heavy on the tree and also because I printed them out in mirror image and glued the string between the pieces. This is the reason you will see those characters in mirror image when you get the Costume Clubhouse Graveyard set on LD.

Here are a few tips I want to share on assembling the fence that could help when putting it together. As you will see when you get the file for the fence, the fence comes with a .75" base that is intended to be folded at that location where the fence posts meet the base to hold the fence upright. If you want to use the fence for a two dimensional design, simply cut the base off about .125" from the posts, or right where the posts meet the base.

Because I wanted my fence to circle around the tree and house I also used a simple snipping technique on the base. I used a green cardstock for the grass and adhered that to a piece of poster board cut to the same size. I chose a 13.5" diameter circle for that base. Then after I cut the fence out with my Silhouette (but did not print, as I used black paper to have it black on both sides), I simply snipped the base every half inch so that the fence would curve around the circular green base when glued underneath to stand. See the sample below for explanation. I also used an 18 gauge wire to secure the sign post and stablize it when standing. I simply cut the wire to the length of the “Trick or Treat” sign/post and then glued, or it can be taped, to the inside of the post. It isn’t even visible when assembled. Okay, well, I did spray the wire black, sure, but that was easy and a quick fix. :)

Now it’s your turn to 3-D your creative self with these Halloween sets and let me know if you don’t agree that 3-D crafting is more fun than 3-D movies! Just click on over to the LD site and snatch up these 3-D aka: three-delightful sets and get the party started.