Halloween Crafts & Art Projects

I first heard of this technique through Martha Stewart, but am sure it pre-dates her. Tin punching has been around for centuries. Here is my first Jackolantern made with a can:

How to make your own:

• Fill a large clean can with water and freeze it. I used a jumbo sized soup can, but want to try out one of those huge #10 cans soon.
• When frozen through (wow, that’s cold) : Punch your design with regular Nail and Hammer. I prefer to wing it, but you can draw a design on the can beforehand if you desire. Stencils could also be used. Don’t worry about marking the can, we’re going to paint it anyway.
• Let the ice melt and dry your can.
• I used white spray paint on the inside of the can to increase the brightness of the design.
• I painted the outside with black spray paint because I just want the design to show up in the dark, but you could paint it orange or other colors.
• Put a candle or flickering electric tea light in the can.

Here’s what it looks like in the light:

The awesome thing about this is that you can use it with your outdoor decorations year after year, unlike a molding rotten real pumpkin jackolantern. Have fun!

The Discovery: 

I once read of someone making prints using the foam trays the butcher uses at the grocery store. I didn’t really want to go begging for trays from the butcher, so I started to brainstorm other materials that might work as well. After several failures trying to carve craft foam with exacto knives I discovered that just about any indentation in craft foam would show up in a print. Using this discovery I made my first successful craft foam print for my luminary project (read about it here), the Jackolantern you see above. I’d like to share with you some of my discoveries so you can make your own Foam Prints.

The nice thing about making Foam Prints:

• Craft Foam is cheap! - unlike linolium blocks, you get a sheet of craft foam for just over a dollar and easily make 4-8 prints from it.
• Craft Foam is easy to work with! - linolium blocks are far easier than wood to cut and craft foam is infinately easier than linolium.
• Super Fast - most of the prints I’ve done so far took only 15-30 minutes to design. You could spend more time if you wanted to try for intricate details.
• Good Resolution - Nothing is going to compare to the detail you can get in a painstakingly carved lino or woodcut print, but the resolution on Foam Prints is far better than I would have guessed.
• Even a Child - This is a great way to introduce kids to printing. All they have to do is draw, you can do the braying and printing part.

You will need:

• Brayer : there’s no getting around it, you just have to have one to make prints of almost any kind.
• Block Printing Ink : you can use acrylic paint, but the ink is well worth the effort of a trip to an art store.
• Thick Craft Foam : you can use the thin stuff (I’ve tested it), but the thicker definately has its advantages.
• Something to Print On : paper is obvious, but you can also print on just about any flat surface.
• Tools for "Drawing" : see below.

"Drawing" Implements:

Some of the tools I’ve used and their effects.

• Medium Tip Ball Point Stick Pen (the cheap ones that come in a 10 pack) : this is the tool I used the most. It makes nicely defined, thick lines in the craft foam. The drawback is that it has a tendancy to round out any and all points you try to make with it. Stick with the stick pen for children.
• Exacto Knife : used for several things. First, you can cut out large sections in your design. Second, you and poke it into the foam to create a dappled line effect. Third, you can "slash" the surface of your foam without cutting into it to create hairlike effects. You can also draw with it if you want a finer detailed image.
• Other Pokers : experiment with other objects to make impressions in the foam. I tried many of my scratchboard tools, for example.

Making Your Print:

1. Cut your Craft Foam to the size you desire for your print. Use the object you want to print on as a guide.
2. "Draw" on the Craft Foam with various implements to design your print. See heading above on various tools.
3. Trim the Craft Foam to your design if desired.
4. Roll ink out with the brayer on a flat, non-porous surface (like glass). Get the brayer coated well and evenly, but not too thick.
5. Bray your design with ink.
6. Lay the design face down on the object you are printing and press down with your palm over the entire surface (not too hard, just firmly).
7. Carefully lift / remove the design.
8. There may be enough ink on the design for a second print.
9. Repeat braying, inking and printing until you have the desired number of prints.
10. Let the prints dry overnight and clean your brayer with water.

The prints are fun on their own or as a part of card making, scrapbook projects, collage etc.. Have fun and post your prints and experiments in our new Thirteen for Halloween Gallery.

Example Prints:

Larger versions of all the example prints can be viewed and downloaded in my Blockprints Gallery.

Sea Monster

Quirky Bat

Cyclops

Skull with Bowtie

Rue Morgue

Spectre | Phantom

I love luminaries as a Halloween outdoor decoration . . . but, there are two main problems with luminaries:

1. Luminaries are as much work as any art project to make and you need a lot of them to get a good effect.
2. October is a notoriously bad month for moisture and luminaries are made out of paper. In my experience the paper gets soggy and so you only get one use out of them.

So, as I see it, in order for me to go to the trouble of making luminaries I was going to have to come up with a streamlined, inexpensive process for making them. As a bonus, it would have a reusable aspect to it. Here’s my solution:

Step 1 : Make a foam stamp by taking a piece of thick craft foam and drawing your design on it with a medium tip ball point pen (think the cheap ones that come in a ten pack). Press hard with the pen to make a good impression on the craft foam. Cut your design out using regular scissors. Use a brayer to role acrylic paint (OK) or printing ink (better) across your design. Complete Tutorial on Foam Printing

Step 2 : Place your inked foam stamp on the inside of a laminating pocket (available in any office supply area, I got mine at Walmart) and press your palm over the entire back surface.

Step 3 : Carefully lift the foam stamp off the laminate and make another imprint if there is room on the laminate for it. Let dry.

Step 4 : Feed the laminating pocket through a lamination machine (I purchased mine for less than $30 at Walmart).

Alternate approach : If you don’t care about reusability, you can print directly onto white paper bags. You can still reuse the stamp next year if you wish.

Below is a comparison of the two approaches when lit with an battery powered votive. On the left you have the laminated sheet tucked and taped inside a white paper bag. On the right, the image has been stamped directly onto the white paper bag.

You will notice that on the left the image is as I drew it because you can place the laminate in either way. When you print on the bag directly you can only get a mirror image, as on the right.

Don’t want to buy a little laminating machine? Though I haven’t tried it, you might try printing onto transparency film as an alternate to laminate and then sealing it with Mod Podge or an Acrylic Sealer.

Things I would have done differently (and since have) :

1. I would have made sure the orientation of my design matched the bag (portrait, rather than landscape).
2. I would have trimmed my stamp closely to the image I drew rather than in a zig zag pattern. I think it obscures the design and makes it harder to tell it is a pumpkin.
3. I would have use printing ink rather than acrylic paint - the acrylic dries really fast and does not spread as easily. You can get the ink at any decent art store - one tube makes a lot of prints.

I will write a more detailed account of my adventures in foam stamping in a future article.