Tricks, Treats and a GhostlyTutorial!

Hal­loween is just around the cor­ner and I’ve spent the past few weeks work­ing on some fun designs and orders for the occa­sion! I’ve always loved cel­e­brat­ing Hal­loween and the Fall sea­son, even before I a child! Dur­ing those pre-baby days, I used to pre­tend my dog want­ed to par­take in all the fes­tiv­i­ties, as seen in this pho­to of our pump­kin carv­ing (just in case, the one in the mid­dle belonged to my dog)!

I also loved dress­ing up, but I was nev­er into the scary cos­tumes… I always want­ed some­thing fun and pret­ty! With the excep­tion of being Oscar the Grouch one year when I was grow­ing up (and some­times still when I’m over­ly tired and grumpy!), I remem­ber most of my cos­tumes cen­ter­ing around girly char­ac­ters, like Smur­fette, She-ra and Madon­na-types on more than one occa­sion. In the pic­ture above, we had an 80’s theme par­ty (my absolute fave decade!) and I was the girl from Flash­dance and my hus­band was Mav­er­ick in Top Gun!

And then the kid­do came… and she def­i­nite­ly seems to be fol­low­ing in my foot­steps. Actu­al­ly, she’s actu­al­ly sur­passed me, as I was nev­er a cen­ter­fold! She was dressed up as Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood in a Tar­get ad back in 2008!

Sup­plies you will need:

• Fon­dant dyed in desired col­ors ~ I used a beige for a more “vin­tage” look, but I def­i­nite­ly uti­lize white for more clas­sic Hal­loween ghosts.
• Rolling pin
• Round cut­ter ~ I opt­ed for a fluted/scalloped cut­ter to make it a lit­tle girli­er in this instance, but again, you can use a reg­u­lar cir­cle as well.
• Food safe brush & water
• Round tips (in this case, I used Wilton tips in sizes 12 and 3
• Small cut­ters for ghost acces­sories ~ I used a but­ter­fly cut­ter for the bow and a small leaf-like cut­ter for the mask. 
  • I find it very dif­fi­cult to locate small cut­ters, espe­cial­ly in the exact shapes I need, so the key is to be cre­ative and use what you have or can find to envi­sion some­thing new!

Start out by rolling the beige col­or into a ball (about 1″) and then using your fin­gers to shape it into a longer roll. If the fon­dant cracks a lit­tle, add a lit­tle short­en­ing to it and mas­sage it in to go back to shap­ing it. When done, place it on your table and make sure it sits upright.

Use anoth­er piece of beige fon­dant, rolling it out flat about 1/8″ thick. I like to use rolling pin guide rings to main­tain a con­sis­tent sur­face. Then use the cut­ter to punch out the round shape and apply some water to the bot­tom of it to attach it to the “body”.

Once you place the round cut-out over the body/roll, try to posi­tion your fin­gers so that it push­es some sides down, while allow­ing some of the fon­dant to stick out like a flow­ing sheet.

To make the mouth, uti­lize the larg­er tip to make an inden­ta­tion on the side you’ve deter­mine is the front of the ghost. Be sure to hold it more diag­o­nal and not straight on so you are only catch­ing the bot­tom side of the tip and not mak­ing a full cir­cle… unless you was a very surprised/scared ghost!

To make the mask, roll out the black fon­dant and uti­lize your cut­ter to punch out a small piece. With this leaf/oval shape, you can uti­lize the bot­tom of your brush to push in the mid­dle a bit of both the top and the bot­tom. Then you can use the small tip to punch lit­tle holes where the eyes should be posi­tioned on the mask.

Once cut out, apply more water to the mask and attach it to the ghost.

Hope you’ll have fun mak­ing some cute lit­tle ghosts of your own! Now to final­ly get to this year’s cos­tumes… only one week left! Hap­py Haunting!!!