Sunday, October 30, 2011

Halloween Ideas...before it's too Late...MAD SCIENTIST



Mad Scientist Party Favors

These are my AWESOME Mad Scientist Party Favors....I'll show you how I did them...
These are my party favors this year. They are skeletons bought from the dollar store. So, since it's a garland and four came to a pack....this makes them a quarter a piece. I bought some simple white fabric from Wal-Mart along with fray check, and some buttons for the lab coats and I was set to make my party favors.
This gives you the general idea...they would be tied together with black tulle. I LOVE this idea!! Original and yet goes perfectly with my theme.....since I was dressed up as a mad scientist myself!!
I came up with the pattern after prototype 1,2 and three had failed. They looked more like marshmallows instead of lab coats. This design came to me a few days before the party and I knew it "should" work and have less seams, which meant less sewing (which was very important when you are making twenty barbie sized lab coats)
Prototype 3....better yet flawed!
I cut them out five thick at a time...good thing I have good fabric scissors.
This is all the lab coats cut out and ready to start being sewed.
I would take each one fold it in half then sew down the left and right side of the "T".
The turning them inside out was the hardest part because I had to use a stick to get the arms inside-out. They were too little for my fingers.
I had to cut up the front of each one before I put in the skeleton in. The only bad part about the skeletons were that there arms were not movable and stayed to the skeletons side. So I had to put the coat on the arms and then shimmie it up on the shoulders.
The cut across the top is for the collars. The skeleton only had a back bone for a neck so this design worked best for the muscles-less skeleton.
I had to fray check the edges because of the cotton fabric. Then I glued on tiny buttons (two for each lab coat) and glued the lab coat part that overlapped. That way they would be permanent. I had almost exclusively black/silver skeletons but had one set of tan/green skeletons.
I even made a lab coat for Fred....my purchase while in my hometown...I even have a picture of him seatbelted in the child seat of the shopping cart. I need to get my mom to send me the pic of him in the shopping cart. It was really funny and we were having a great time hanging out as sisters and Mom. I really need that picture!!!!
The Skeleton's with their labcoats and their test tubes....ready to be party favors! If I had done a sit-down dinner, I would have had each place set with one of these with their name on the test tube.
For one of the side dishes I bought sterile, disposable petri dishes online and then made jello to fill the petri dishes so they looked like microbiology agar. I made Cherry, Raspberry, Lime and Peach petri dishes! I even had bug juice on the side to grow on their agar (AKA cool whip).


Jell-O Petri Dishes ready for the party!! They were a hit!!
Tons of flasks and graduated cylinders full of colored water to set the laboratory mood on the kitchen island. It was VERY festive...complete with black light and a ghost lampshade. I even had lit candles this year...good thing it was adults only. Everyone could put their side dishes and desserts on either table....the kitchen island or the dining room table. They were only a few feet apart.
Some of the side dishes were GUTS (AKA spaghetti squash) 
Swamp Water....seriously....it's delicious! It is actually Cherry-Limeade flavor....I know it looks gross but, it is SO YUMMY! 
The table was set with everything mad scientist and flanked by the urns filled wtih moss and black sticks.
Remember this score from Michael's for last year's urns for $13. 
Then they were painted silver metallic. 
Then glazed with pitch black glaze. I used a foam brush to get it in the crevices and then used a cloth to wipe it off. While wiping, the glaze gets all over the rest, even if I hadn't put it on that spot with the foam brush. Then let it dry and it's ready! Now I can use these for Halloween and Christmas. 

Pitch Black Glaze of the Metal Paint 
I put a foam circle down in the urn after I had put some sand in so that the sticks couldn't fall to the side and had to stay in the middle. 
The urn was filled with sand, the foam circle and then filled the rest of the way with sand. I then pushed the sticks down in the sand. 
The sticks were sprayed black to be in the festive halloween spirit!
The sticks were added to the center of the urn. Now, the only thing I needed was moss and it was added around the sticks to create a truly authentic look. 
I found all this different types of moss at the dollar store....I was already there buying skeletons and found the moss...SCORE!! 
I love that I can use these urns for my halloween party and for other things as well. They are really multi-functional.
Behind the table was a window filled with x-rays! They were SO RAD!! You can purchase them online or get them from somebody in the medical field. You never know until you ask!
The last part of the night was GAME TIME! I made-up a game(every year I do a different game and haven't had to RE-DO a game yet...you never know...I may run out of ideas) using a periodic table and each "element" had a game to play. (You can see it vaguely taped to the tv on the opposite side of the room. He white poster board below it was for the pictionary words)
I titled the game: Halloween Periodic Table of Elements. Each color section of elements was a different game: Science Experiement, Pictionary, Charades, True/False, and ABCD questions.  Each team took turns picking an "element" and then playing the game they picked. They had to "pictionary" a halloween word or phrase, charade it, or answer a question. My favorite was the science experiements.
 I got the science experiements off a kids easy science experiement webiste. One of the science experiments I came up with myself...... a molecule race making the structure we all had to make in junior high school. Each team had to use toothpicks and gumdrops to try and built the tallest molecule structure in three minutes....MAN...talk about competitive!! The winning team won by a gumdrop. It was really close!!
I wish I could invite all of our friends but, sadly our house can't fit them all. I guess that's a good problem to have....too many friends. Still.......I wish we could have invited more.
Behind the table I had X-rays that were lit from outside by my husbands work light. It looked really cool until they started falling if we hadn't put that one up with duck tape. I guess they are too heavy for cheap masking tape. Oh well, it looked cool before they fell down. Most did stay up.

It was an awesome MAD SCIENTIST PARTY!! I know it's probably too late to do these ideas this year but, it's never too early to start planning for next year!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha....Ha Ha Ha Ha (Can you hear the thriller voice here.....)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!

Cassy Final

Custom Beatiful Blue Chairs

These were a custom order from my friend. She wanted to have beautiful blue chairs to go with her light wood table. She picked a custom color that was two shades darker than her wall color. It turned out beautiful!! 
The chairs are mid-process getting primed. 
The chairs were sprayed in a dark primer because the paint color would look better with a darker primer. 

This is the first coat of paint. I did two coats of paint and four coats of sealer because these are dining room chairs and are going to have high usage. I wanted them to be really durable. 
The chairs are all done with four coats of sealer. I had to redo one of the fronts of the back of one chair. So it took me a few extra days to finish that chair before I could take her the set of chairs.
When I got the custom paint chip color and put it next to my dining room chairs....it was REALLY similar to my own dining room chair color. Her's had a hint more of green in it but....we almost have the same chairs....she has good taste in colors!! Ha Ha 
The chairs look different when they are paired with a light colored table and bench top versus pairing it with a black table (like mine)...both looks are really pretty but, pairing it with the light wood gives a nice light and airey feel. Very Pretty! 
The one chair is different yet really similar. With the same paint color, it helps tie them together even more. 
I love that the bench ties the table top in to the set. Just perfect! 


The blue looks even more blue in bright sunlight. 


I snapped a few photos when I delivered them to her house.

I love this set!! SOOOO pretty!! I love how the chairs contrast with the beautiful wood floors.

The bench customizes the whole look by having the table top's light coloring and the blue color of the chairs. 
I love how the blue chairs bring contrast and interest to her dining room. I should have got a picture of the table against the wall color but, maybe she will take a photo for me. (wink, wink :)

The chairs give such a custom look to the dining room! Personal and perfect for their family! 
Thanks for letting me do this custom set for you.....I really appreciate you giving me a two year deadline...thank goodness it only took me two months instead of two years. (You might remember previous posts of me being able to sand only one chair a day after exercise because I was already sweaty and these chairs had so much detail that they were quite the workout! Plus the baby was usually napping/or still happy then and I could get one chair done before it was time to shower and get the baby ready for the day) I don't think I've ever taken this long on a project....EVER...but, it was nice being able to work on this in my free time around my babies schedule! 
My friend LOVES her new chairs and bench and they look PERFECT in her dining room!! Hopefully this is the start of a beautiful friendship...with projects that is!! We are already good friends! 
The bench coordinates so nicely with the table. It pulls the whole look together!!
Remember this BEFORE.......

TO THIS AFTER

B  - E - A UTIFUL!!
Cassy Final

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