Sweet table set up tricks for your Halloween treats

Are you hosting a Halloween party this weekend? Here's a few of my tips and tricks for setting up a Halloween sweet table. 

Tip no. 1 - It's okay to use an assortment of different containers and cake stands to display your treats. If you are going to use coloured dishes just try to keep them all to one colour so that the colours of the treats will take centre stage. 

Tip no 2 - Keep your treats simple and don't stress about having to make everything yourself. I used a combination of store bought treats (donuts and two-bite brownies) and combined them with some easy to make treats (candy bark and a chocolate covered cereals) and bulk food candies (gummy worms and candy covered popcorn).

The candy bark was so easy to make using melted chocolate and assorted candies and sprinkles. I was inspired to make my candy bark after reading the recipe in SheEntertains magazine.

Whenever I don't have time to make brownies I buy one-bite brownies and decorate them with store bought cake icing and sprinkles. Everyone just assumes that I made them myself. 

Trick no. 3 Use some Halloween decorations in your set up that work with the colours of your treats. I added pumpkins that I decorated!

Tip no. 4 - Try to elevate some of your serving containers so that everything is not at the same height. I used a few wood slabs in my set up - stacks of books or set up boxes will work too.

I decorated a number of pumpkins this fall using paint, glitter, tissue paper, chalk markers and gold paint markers. You can see some of them here and on Instagram.

The gold polka dots on my pumpkin were created with gold tissue paper and mod podge. It took me less than 15 minutes to decorate the pumpkin and all of my polka dots are the same size!

Here's a quick tip for cutting perfect tissue paper circles - use a paper punch! I find that it is easier to punch three or four sheets of tissue paper along with one sheet of text paper. 

I hope that your weekend is boo-tiful. 

Vintage book projects no.1 - fall pumpkins

I have had a love affair with old books for quite a long time. And I am always looking for unique ways to re purpose them. I was inspired by a picture of a "carved" book earlier this year and knew that I had to try to make a pumpkin book for fall decorating in our new home.

If you'd like to try to make one of these yourself, this is what I did ...

1. You will need an old book and an exacto knife. I used a dictionary for this project because I liked the yellowed pages.

2. Cut the book pages from the cover being careful to leave the pages glued together.

3. Draw out the shape the you want your final pumpkin to look like. You have to think about how your pumpkin will sit so you will want to leave a small area at the bottom of the pumpkin flat.

4. Using the shape that you drew as a template, start cutting the pages with the exacto knife. You will want to cut in sections. Take your time. When you get to the end of the book and have cut all of the pages, you may find that some of the pages were not all cut to the same size. That's okay, don't panic ... you can always go back and trim some of the pages.

But just like when you were 5 and tried to cut your own bangs ... try not to be a perfectionist and over cut!

5. To make the pumpkin into a 3D shape, I glued the first and last pages together using gel medium and 6. used paper clips to hold the book pages together until the gel medium was dry.

You can decorate the top of your pumpkin with a branch. I also added leaf shapes that I cut out of green felt and some pieces of twine.

These pumpkins are great for fall decorating and can easily be added into your Halloween decorating as well.

If you are looking for more Halloween projects pop over to Creative Bag's blog. I have been posting Halloween packaging, food decorating and party ideas over there all month. There are some free downloads for Halloween packaging here and here. 

I know that a number of people have been inquiring about my workshops. I don't have any mixed media or art classes planned at this point. The only workshops that I have planned for the rest of this year are free holiday packaging and party workshops at Creative Bag. The workshops are usually on Thursday nights in Toronto (close to Yorkdale Shopping Centre). If you are interested in attending just send me an email and I will add you to my email list and notify you when dates are available.

Pumpkinfest

yippeee ... it's "Pumpkinfest" weekend and I'm so excited that my girls are still into fall fairs and family traditions. Pumpkinfest takes places in a small town near our cottage called Waterford. We have been going to this for over 10 years and we always attend on Saturday so that we can watch the parade. I found this amazing article today on taking Halloween photos, you can find it here, and it reminded me that I should get my camera batteries charged up today so that I'm ready tomorrow!

I was looking through last year's photos and I realized that I better look for Robyn's pumpkin hat ... not just because I know she will want to wear but if I don't find it today I will forget tomorrow and we'll have to buy a new one at the fair (if they still have them!).

Do you have any Halloween or fall traditions at your house? Let me know in the comments section ... I'd love to hear how other families spend their time together!

And for my studio friends ... this has been a busy "short" week for me because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Most of my time in my studio has been spent working on a website to promote my classes and workshops at Scrapbook Queens. The site went "live" yesterday although I'm still working on it and adding dates, etc. but at least it's a start! It's a free wix website (so easy to create if you are a beginner like me!) ... please check it out at www.wix.com/lorrieeveritt/studio and let me know what you think!