“Don’t Forget” a Halloween invitation!
October 18, 2012 by Bobbi
Lindsey, from Pillow Thought, isn’t a stranger around here. She has guest posted a few times and we adore her creativity. These creepily cute invitations makes me want to throw a Halloween party, or at least be invited to one this way.
Lindsey, take it away!
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It’s kinda like a “save the date” invitation but a Halloween version.
This is possibly the most EASY & CHEAP invite!
I just cut out the centers of each book the night before and left the rest for the next day.
WHAT YOU NEED:
- Antique Books – Thrift Store -spent $1 each
- Spanish Moss (1 bag) – Dollar Store
- Hemp Yarn – Wal-Mart
- Hot Dog – Grocery Store
- Shell Noodles – Grocery Store
- Hot Glue Gun/ Glue Sticks – Craft Store
- Brown Roll of Paper (1 roll)- Dollar Store in the school section
- x-acto Knife
- Printer to print tags on
- Lighter
- Scissors
You can totally use what you already have at home because the only thing I had to buy were the 3 Antique Books ($3), Brown Roll of Paper to wrap ($1), Spanish Moss ($1)
So, a total of $5 on the coolest invitations I have ever made!
I only made the book invitations for the people who live in town… we have other friends who are coming that are not nearby so I sent out digital invites for the rest. Not paying shipping and handling saved me some mullah.. I just hand delivered them on their steps… no ringing the door, just dropped it off like a little package.
I just printed out all the information I needed and burned the edges to make it look older. I also did this to one of the books that looked newer.
I put the whole hot dogs in the microwave, then cut them afterwards. I think I put them in for around 40 seconds. You just have to watch it as they are cooking because they will start to bust open.
I just kinda cut the fingers approximately the length of mine and I made sure they fit in the holes that I made in the book. I squirted ketchup onto the cut off finger nail bed
and used an extra hot dog tip to smooth it around.
I really liked the way my hot dog looked from the previous night, so you might wanna play around with a package and see how you like the coloring. You can also get a candle flame to it and see if you can get it burned. I tried with lighter but it hardly singed it…
For the nail, I looked around my pantry to see what items I already had that could work and I found these noodles and went from there. I used a knife to cut down on the noodle so it broke where I needed. You might have to cut the inside edge of the noodle too.
(use your sharpest knife)
(I just used a knife to cut the knuckle indentations)
Ok, so this is when I started to whip out the hot glue gun!
I didn’t want to over power the finger so i just got a pinch of the moss and glued some down on the bottom left & right hand side.
I used some hemp string/yarn to tie the knot on the finger..
this is the part where the “don’t forget” comes into play.
I hot glued the back side of the hot dogs down onto the book.
I also put them in the freezer thinking it would dry the ketchup faster. I don’t think it did, but it did make the hot dogs look all weird. Not sure which look I preferred better, but I figured they would be thawed again by the time they were opened.
I sealed all the books up with the hemp string.
Then I wrapped them in the brown paper and repeated the same deal with the string
Voila! You are ready for delivery!!
THINGS I LEARNED:
- Microwave the hot dogs for around 40 seconds. I think it totally changes the “look” the more hot dogs you microwave at once.. so this one might be trial and error.
- I had three different books from DI and one (the blue one) the pages were really old, which I liked.. but it made it a little harder to use the exacto knife on it with out ripping pages. You just have to be more careful on older books.
- By the way, this was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun to make!
Don’t forget to come say hello to me over at Pillow Thought!!
Thanks, Lindsey! That is so eerie, I wouldn’t be able to resist checking out the party
For another way to add some “eek” to your “chic”, check out how to wrap your mummy!
























Fund Idea, I’d blah…if I saw a finger though;) I’d love to see the people’s face that opened the invite!! Thanks for the post!!!
LOVE IT!! I’m totally laughing!
I love the old, sort of already creepy feeling of using the vintage books. The musty smell of the old books is an added sensory bonus!