Mini corn husk broomsticks

As Halloween is approaching fast we thought we would make some mini decorations to hang on our spooky Halloween tree. After the crops were harvested on our allotment we had a lot of corn husks left over so we have decided to use them.

First take a small stick and wrap the dried corn husks around one end, any small twigs or raffia will do if you don't have any corn husks. Then trim the ends to an appropriate length for a broomstick, we have cut ours at about a couple of inches.

Tie the corn husks to your stick tightly, we have used copper wire as we have quite a lot of it but any string will do.

Snip up from the bottom to give the little decoration an authentic broomstick look. We gave ours a spray with the glitter spray to finish it off with a magic dust sparkle.

That's all there is too it, all that is left is to hang them on the spooky Halloween tree when it is put up.

Last year we made corn husk dolls and a corn husk sunflower wreath with our left over corn husks. My youngest daughter has also been crafting this week with these leaves and I will be back soon to show you her wonderful creation.

Spider webs for Halloween

 Halloween / Samhain is one of my favourite holidays, I love how spooky the house looks with broomsticks propped up by the front door and witches hats hanging on the hat pegs in the hallway. All cobwebs in the house get a reprieve for a few days and the smell of pumpkin lanterns wafts through every room.

    The children have been really busy crafting scary things for Halloween, we have had to find crafts suitable for a 2 year old to join in because she absolutely loves everything crafty the messier the better. Yesterday we made cobwebs with great, big hairy spiders in them. Do you think they look spooky or just rather cute?

    We have used conkers to hold the wooden skewers in place as we have many hanging around thanks to our Autumn collecting, but you could also use large crafting polystyrene balls, clay or indeed anything round you can find. Then the conker was covered in glue and rolled in wool that has been cut up very small so that it was all fuzzy. Pipe cleaner legs were added and googly eyes. The web part was very simple to make as you can see, it is easy to wind wool around the skewers. This does tend to slip a bit if played with too much, so some discrete dots of glue would hold this in place if you choose to.

 They are now ready to hang up on the wall to scare people for Halloween. My husband also helped our son to make a PVA glue cobweb. He drew out the web shape in glue on a laminate sheet and left it to dry overnight. Once dry it could be peeled off the laminate sheet, and stuck on a window. The thinner you can get the web the better here as it tends to spread out a little, but it looks very effective.