Halloween Treat Bucket

I wanted to share this adorable Halloween treat bucket that I just finished! I just love the way it turned out. I got the inspiration for this project from Tami Sanders, who is a designer for Reminisce. (Ok, so it wasn't just inspiration, it was more like I copied her project wholesale.) Here is a link to Tami's blog where she featured this project last month: http://tamisanders.com/2009/07/20/reminisce-day-2-of-cha-sneak-peek/ I fell in love with the project and rushed down to Hobby Lobby to buy everything I needed for it.

Like so many things in life, this ended up taking much longer than I expected, but it's finally done, and it's not Halloween yet! Anyway, the shot above is the front of the treat bucket; the two opposite sides use different papers and trims. Here is a shot of one of the other sides:


Although Tami didn't post actual instructions for her project, I just kind of figured it out using the picture that she posted. Like Tami, I used a small, unfinished wooden waste paper basket from Hobby Lobby for the base. I adhered a purple dot paper to all sides of the wooden base, then added the shaped paper pieces along the middle of each side. The border trims were precut and self-stick, so all I had to do was measure the length I needed, peel the backing off, and stick. You could use about any border sticker for this, or you could use borders you cut yourself with a Cricut, Quickutz or other die cutting system.

Once the borders were in placed, I inked the edges of everything with a black ink pad, then coated all four sides of the container with glossy Mod Podge, putting on three coats until the whole thing was shiny and beautiful. Can I just say that I LOVE glossy Mod Podge? It is the greatest stuff! For the pleated trim along the top of the bucket, I tore long strips from a sheet of coordinating paper, and placed the strips on a sheet of waxed paper. I then gave them a couple of coats of Mod Podge. Once they were dry, I pleated them in a random fashion and ran a line of stitching down the middle to both hold the pleats down and to keep the pieces together. When I was done with this step, I had one long strip of pleated trim. I attached it to the top of the bucket with a hot glue gun, following the line of the wooden container.

Next step was a few coats of glossy black craft paint for the big wooden letter "T." (The big wooden letter came from Hobby Lobby, too.) Once that was dry, I used a white pigment marker to make stitching lines around the edge, and tied a few pieces of colorful ribbon to the stem of the "T." I made the white base for the rest of the word "Treats," inked the edges, and adhered that to the container. Then I hot glued the "T" into place, and hot glued on the other letters, which are just black chipboard. The little wooden pumpkins came in a package of about 20, already painted and ready to be used. I hot glued those on, along with some Making Memories "Word Fetti" word stickers, to finish the focal point of the container, the word "Treat."

Here is a close-up of the big wooden "T" and the chipboard letters:


Finally, I hot glued two wooden pumpkins on the other three sides of the container, and put a couple of coats of Mod Podge over the sticker words, the white word base, and the chipboard letters. I did that simply because they would have looked sort of weird if I hadn't done it, since everything else on the container had a glossy finish.

I left everything to dry overnight, and that's it! So, I guess I need to go out today and buy some Halloween candy, huh? I'm super glad this project is done, because this afternoon the kids and I are going to carve pumpkins, and I'm going to try a "medium" level design of a grim reaper kind of skull. The last time I tried something more complex than your typical Jack-o-lantern, I got some of my cuts too close together the whole face of my pumpkin collapsed. Which actually didn't look that bad. So, maybe I'll have a cool carved pumpkin picture to post in a day or two. In the meantime, thanks again to Tami Sanders for the inspiration for this fun candy bucket!