Make a Halloween Countdown Calendar

Two months ago, in August, I decided I wanted to make a Halloween countdown calendar for my grandson. Two calendars, actually – one for him and one for his two year old sister.

I’m not one of those people who gets upset when Christmas decorations show up in July. I welcome them because I know I always plan way more projects than I’ll ever have time to finish.

Anyway, I did what I always do – I googled it. Well, not “countdown calendar” because I had no idea that that’s what they called. “Halloween advent calendar” didn’t provide any results for some strange reason. Go figure. But “Halloween calendar” did give me a couple of pics.

Like this one from Pottery Barn Kids, natch. Seemed simple enough. Looks like felt with little felt pockets. I put orange felt on one of my lists. I have several lists.

Somehow I never had that list with me when I was at Walmart. Imagine that – not having the list you want when you’re at the store. Or is it just me?

Next thing I know it’s September 30 and some brainiac at some point decided there should only be 30 days in September. Imagine that. A short month right before the holidays? Certainly wasn’t a crafter.

So, yeah, I could’ve run over to Walmart and waited around for some orange felt to be cut, orrrrr . . . I could just make it out of canvas, which is always in large supply around my house.

Without bothering to look up the Pottery Barn calendar I just cut a bunch of canvas squares. Sixty two, because I was intending on making two calendars. bwahahaha. Two?!?

Then I realized how big the canvas would have to be to hold 31 squares.

I cut a larger piece of canvas and made the executive decision that this would now be a brother/sister calendar.

Here’s where things got . . . weird creative. I already had orange spray paint so I knew the background canvas would be orange. I was thinking I’d draw little images on each square – monsters on the green, spooky stuff on the grey, and bats & pumpkins on the orange.

This was in the afternoon of September 30, I might add.

I won’t even go into why the background has a couple different shades of orange, including some annoying orange dots here and there. At this point the temps were in the high 90’s and there was no way I was headed to Walmart for more paint.

I’m hoping a two year old and five year old are gonna notice a few odd spots.

The Pottery Barn calendar had a tree, right? Ok. No problem-o.

I quickly painted the outline just like I did last year’s Spooky Tree. (psst, the tutorial works for trees that are not spooky too, just so you know.)

Fill in the trunk and the large branches.

And add some little branches. Quickly, because it was Septem . . . I already said that, didn’t I?

When I say ‘quickly’ I mean quickly.

See? Nothing finely detailed here.

I had some googly eyes and halloween foam stickers from my dollar store score and a black paint pen for the numbers and what I thought was gonna be monsters and all that.

Huh. I either had to make the numbers really small or just forgo the illustrations. I decided on the latter because I wanted to jumble the numbers so Santino and Layla could play a little ‘find the date’ each day, rather than have them all lined up.

Now, how am I gonna get the squares onto the canvas? Would white glue work? Maybe. But how long would that take? What about a glue gun? Nah, too many stringie-thingies.

Then I found this awesome stuff in my bag of tricks.

It just rolls on a nice line of glue. Perfect for painted canvas.

The green went up first, so I could spread them out somewhat evenly.

More dollar store goodies – a foam ghost and black cat.

Next up, the grey squares that aren’t actually squares because I cut zig zags in ‘em.

And finally the orange.

I could’ve stopped here. But I had more goodies. And it’s for Halloween and my grandson so here come more goodies.

As in googly eyes. Or whatever they’re called.

Some peeking out over a branch . . .

And definitely some in Mr. Ghost!

Then came the foam stickers. This is where your kids could really go to town.

(If you have older ones, they could certainly paint the tree and draw the numbers too!)

Spooooky spiders.

Witches on brooms. Booooo.

I didn’t think it was too spooky. But just in case . . .

Polka dot tape! I bought this stuff for, well, I don’t know why. It was just black and white and cute so I bought it.

I think it added the perfect frame to the calendar.

I’m still thinking about adding their names to the ghost and kitty. Yes, I realize it’s now October 4. Yes, I realize that we’re already late on the countdown. It’s all good. Santino knows his gramma. He’ll be thrilled to get a bunch of candy all at once, believe me.

Although I’m thinking that I’ll give the candy to their mom, not put it in the pockets. Something tells me that a certain two-year-old adorable little sister would just pick the candy out of the pockets all at once.

I’ll tell you one thing, I love doing kids crafts. Ok, crafts for kids. Details, details. It’s just plain fun, no matter what the date on the calendar says.

That’s #3 out of 31 Kids Crafts! Stop by again for some more fun, ok?

 

Colleen

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