It’s nearly Halloween, and you know what that means, right?*
Spooky decorations are needed, that’s what. It’s definitely more fun if you can make your own, and when you have a terrifying infant in the house already, it seems a shame not to incorporate it. Baby wanted a ghost friend, so here is how I went about making a creepy doll ghost.
First of all, you need something (or a pile of somethings as I have here) that can take on the vague form of your doll.
For the record, my pile contains: a roll of duct tape, a jug, a lemon squeezer and a silicon egg poacher. The arms were trickier. The first version with wire coat hangers was too unstable, so I used these tentacles instead, and attached them with clothes pegs.
Once I had the form assembled I draped the whole lot with cling film.
Now for the ghostly fabric. I used muslin, as I had some in the house already.
Medical gauze or very thin cotton would work well too.
I ironed it to remove creases and draped it over the form.
This is the stuff I sprayed it with. It’s a fabric stiffener.
I haven’t tried using watered-down PVA glue, but I bet that would work fine too.
I gave it three coats of the stiffener, using a hair dryer to speed up the drying process in between coats.
After it had dried I lifted it carefully off the form. A ghost is born!
It needed some eyes, so I cut those from a piece of leather and used white headed pins to push them in place.
Baby was so pleased to have a playmate.
Please make sinister ghost playthings of your own, we’d love to see what you come up with.
*Halloween is Heide’s birthday! You don’t need to get her a present, buying a book would be fine instead.
