How to make a fairy... I mean goblin

For some reason, my mad crafting skillz are ON FIRE this Halloween. We made goodies for a party yesterday and they were spooktacular. Har har har.

My friend Deb requested directions for my Halloween goblins... and because I am too lame to figure out a way to post them anywhere else, I am doing it here. If these goblins look familiar, it could be because my mad crafting skillz are actually about equal to those of an eight-year-old and I am "repurposing" my fairy-making supplies for the fall season. Because? I am green like that.

Lastly, as I was typing up the directions, I realized that you'd have to be smoking crack and hallucinating goblins (does crack even make you hallucinate? I may have just lost all of my street cred) in order to understand my lame-ass directions. So I did a photo tutorial. And if you're not interested in making crafty goblins, stop reading now, because that's all you're going to find here, folks.

I have to say, after getting the first one going, Carlie was able to do the rest on her own, so this is definitely a good "busy" project for kids that you do not have to stand over and micromanage. And it costs next to nothing.

Materials: chenille sticks (aka pipe cleaners), faux flowers (ours are fabric from the dollar store. plastic would work too), yarn for the hair (tho in the spirit of spookiness, we used dollar store spider web and some of the plastic flower leaves on the goblins) and wooden beads (for the head). Oh, and a fine tip Sharpie to draw the face. And option ribbon or fabric scraps for embellishment. If you're putting wings on, you'll need glue. (Goblins are wingless).

STEP ONE:

Cut off a piece of the chenille stick. About "that much." The short part will be the goblin arms, the long part will be the body and legs. So cut off about 1/3, or just shy of 1/3. It's not an exact science, people.

STEP TWO:
Fold the long piece in half and slip it through the wooden bead so that you have a loop on one end and the two loose ends on the other. Those loose ends are about to become legs.

STEP THREE:
Insert hair through the loop. We used chunks of dollar store spider web and left over plastic leaves. For Christmas fairies we used yarn scraps.

STEP FOUR:
Give the "legs" a tug to cinch up the loop to hold the hair in place. IF YOU PULL TOO HARD, the bead will come off the end and you'll have to start again.

STEP FIVE:Take apart your faux flowers. Any kind will work. The ones we were using were kind of bow tie shaped and were layered two "bow ties" per flower, so we used two per goblin. Tulip shape works too. And we've used rose pedals as well. It really doesn't matter.

STEP SIX:
Thread the "legs" through the whole in the middle of the flower pedals and the flower pedals now become the "skirt." After you get the skirt where you want it, you can tie a knot in the legs to keep it from slipping down, or give the legs a twist. Doesn't matter, you won't see it under the skirt. For more manly fairies at Christmas time, we did some with leaves instead of flower pedals for more of a toga or loin cloth look than a skirt.

STEP SEVEN:
Wrap the small piece of chenille stick around the "body" and draw a face on the bead. Ta da. Goblin.

OPTIONAL:
We used some brown ribbon scraps on these, because Carlie wanted them to have a shirt. If you were being true to the art of the craft (hahaha), you would glue the ribbon neatly and not leave big jaggy looking hanging off parts, like we did. But we're spooky like that. Also, if you were making fairies vs. goblins, you could at this point glue two leaves from your faux flowers to the back of the fairies for "wings." Our goblins are glueless. So basically, we saved the life of a horse with our jaggy looking hanging off parts. (Do they really make glue from horses?)

Here's the goblin we just made, hanging with another goblin who has faux leaf hair. And also has the little plasticy part of the faux flower, the part that held the petals to the stem, as part of her skirt. They're goblins, there are no fashion rules.
THE END.