Trunk or Treat Kit Course

1. Trunk or Treat Intro: Welcome to the what she making, trunk or treat kit. Hello, I am Shi Rams, I'm a mama, a maker, a creator, a craft czar. I've done many, many projects over the course of my crafting career. And in this course, you will learn how to make your own custom trunk monster and how to attach it. You will also learn how to make a custom monster poncho. Super, super fun. You can even make a little one for your little one if you would like. And how to make some monster snacks or some simple non food treats. So for your class project, I would love to see you make a monster and share your before and after pictures. So let's get started. 2. Trunk or Treat Overview: All right, I just wanted to have a quick overview of this trunk or treat it, because this does come in several steps. And I would love to just try to break down some of the steps with you. Let's just talk about it step by step because there are several things that we want to be able to hit during the course of this class. We are going to talk treats and poncho, but not in that order. Probably poncho and then treats for the monster. We're going to talk about the number of eyeballs, the accessories, as well as the color. And I'm going to give you a quick example like this one has three eyes. The one that I make in the tutorial also has three eyes, but you can choose any number of eyes. One big one could be fun as well. The poncho, we're going to talk about the colors and accessories on that and the treats. We're going to talk about different options for each treat. So that's the overview. Let's jump into the lessons. 3. Monster Foundation: Here are your monster supplies. Cardboard or presentation board and tablecloth packing tape. Paper plates, both color, black and white. A glue gun as well as party supplies. Let's talk about first things first. And that is the foundation for the monster. Now here I'm using some of our recycling. I have a large cardboard box from delivery that we had. You can also use a backer board. What are they called? The project boards, like you see a science fair, I'll put a picture here. But I'm just opting for this box and I'm going to use half of it. I don't do like I do. I ripped it in the beginning, but I'm going to get a clean cut from it. But the size you want to think about like the back of your trunk, I try to choose something between the 36 inch and 48 inch range. I can give you exact measurements, but that's going to depend on the size of your trunk or the amount of space that you're trying to cover. But basically you want something that's going to be big, that you can center in order to make a monster. So I'm going to cut from this cardboard a top half and a bottom half. Because the idea is that as your trunk, your open trunk is basically the mouth of the monster. The top half is the top half of the monster's head, and the bottom half is the monster's bottom jaw. And we're going to fill in accessories. Don't worry, I know that I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but I want you to understand the logic behind why I'm making the cuts that I'm making. I'm basically cutting two large rectangles. That one is going to be the top face part, the other is the bottom jaw part. They are about equal in size, although there can be some variation in that as well. Since I'm not making just a rectangle monster, I am going to quickly just eyeball some curves on the bottom for the jaw as well as the top for the head. You can be more precise with this, but what I want to stress during this project is that it is not about being perfect. This is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be a laid back project that you can put together that is going to have a large impact on how your trunk or treat. Turns out it's supposed to be low maintenance, high impact. I drew a curve right on the bottom edge, on both sides of my large rectangle. And then I just used a utility knife to cut the cardboard in those places. And I'm going to do the same thing on the top rectangle. Now that I have my cuts done, what I'm using here is just a table cloth from the dollar store. It's a large, rectangular tablecloth. This is, it's a low budget project, but it's going to have high impact. Just trust me on that. And this is the monster fur when I was talking in the overview about we have to determine color. This is what you need to determine color on. Here's where you can really get creative. You can choose to use one or more colors for the monster fur. I'm choosing a solid in both of my examples, the pink example as well as the one that I am working on here, I chose to make a big green monster. But it's up to you. You can do several strips of different colors or just stripes or even they have iridescent looking tablecloths. Now, sky is the limit with creativity on this. If you see, I'm just taking it and I'm unfolding it. Long ways horizontally so that I can tape it down in layers. I want a bottom layer of monster fur and a top layer of monster fur. I'm just laying it out with some help from Beyonce the cat. I'm just going to cut the tablecloth right at the edge of my top rectangle. And then I'm going to take the packing tape and run it across the top of that tablecloth and tape it down to the cardboard. You do not need a pet to help you with this project. You can totally do it on your own. But if you have a pet, please allow them to interrupt you as needed. Now, I'm going to take another sheet of the tablecloth. This time I'm going to measure it out against the rectangle again. But because of how I want this to overlap, I'm going to tape it on the back. So I'm going to get like an inch, get it an inch above the top of the rectangle and just tape just that 1 " down on the back. And now I have several layers of tablecloth taped to my top rectangle. As you can see, it does need to be trimmed. The curved edges need to be trimmed into the shape. But what I'm going to do now is basically make the fur. I make the fur by taking the top two layers of the tablecloth and just cutting into it, cut strips. These do not have to be perfect. In fact, if they are jagged, that's even better. Because again, this is a monster, It's meant to mimic fur. It does not have to be the super straight, great cuts that you're making. It just needs to be cut in a way that it can look like fur. The important part here is to make sure you don't cut your bottom layer because you do want that layer to be solid in order to cover up the cardboard underneath. So the top two layers of the folded tablecloth are what you want to go into. And I've pulled this up just a bit in order to make a differentiation there. And I'm just cutting the most imperfect strips to mimic fur. And I'm continuing on the bottom layer. I had to switch around a little bit to make it more comfortable. So you don't exactly see. But I did want to mention that you do the bottom layer of tablecloth as well in order to get those strips cut to mimic the fur. And now I'm just trimming those curved edges on the, against the cardboard to make sure that I still maintain the shape of my monster head. This is how it looks when you have both layers cut with the solid on the bottom. But the top two layers of the tablecloth cut. I'm shaking it out just a bit. 4. Monster Face Details: Now let's talk about the monster's face. What I'd like to start with is eyeballs. Eyeballs are basically three levels of paper plates that you cut in different size circles. For my monster, I have white plates, black plates, and that's for all eyes. Then I chose to color yellow as like the accent for the eye. I've chosen to make three eyes. You can make one big eye in the center. You probably need larger plates for that. For symmetry, you can have four or five eyes. I chose three, but I'm just putting it out there that you can have any number of eyes for your monster. It's a monster. Have fun. Since I chose three, I'm going to get three white plates, three yellow plates and three black plates. We're going to cut these in different sizes for each color. As soon as I get these plates open, I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like. I'm going to start off with my white plates and I'm going to cut just within that outer ring. Now, depending upon the number of eyes you chose, you may choose to cut a different size, but I have smaller plates because I'm doing multiple eyes. Three eyes. As I mentioned, I'm going to start with this size. I could have used a whole plate, but I have another idea to accent the eyes that we'll get to later. So I'm just going to take each one of them and go around that outer edge. Now moving on to my yellow plates, I'm going to cut slightly smaller, whereas I went just around the outer edge of the white plates, I'm going to get that center circle of the yellow plates. You can choose what you want your marks to be. These do not have to be perfect circles either. Looks like eggs. Now we're going for eyes, and now I'm going to cut my three black pieces just a bit smaller than the yellow ones. I'm just eyeballing this, guys. Sorry, that was a dad joke. I'm just eyeballing it. But I am taking not quite precise measurements in order to determine the size of these eyes. Now, here's what brings it to life. Get another white plate and cut three small, small, little accent circles. And you'll see what I mean in a moment. But think about the roundness of a golf ball, like something around that size, maybe a little bit smaller. This is what gives it like that, cartoonish, a glimmer in the eye. There. We have our three eyes. All I do is hot glue each of these layers to the other. Before I do that, I am going to cut out a few other facial features and probably do all of my hot gluing at once, about the same size of what that last white circle was. I'm going to cut out some yellow ones and black ones. These are going to be like the monsters, little beauty marks or warts, but it's just little details like this. That don't take a lot to cut out that makes your monster really come to life. You want to have a little bit of personality in the face. I'm just cutting a random stack I may have ended up with, I don't know, ten or 12 of them. Of just those small circles that I'm not measuring, I'm cutting out roughly by hand. You don't want perfect circles. Again, this is a monster. There are things that should be imperfect about it. Jagged circles for the beauty marks, yes. Then a few black ones to sprinkling with the yellow ones. I also want to cut out some teeth and I'm going to grab some more of my yellow paper plates and do that. Now. You may want to pick up white paper plates for this, you may want to pick up some off white paper plates. I'm using yellow, you might maybe to make 1 gray because it's a monster like it should have some fun personality quirky things going on. I chose yellow and green. But because my monster fur is green, I chose yellow because it's on the opposite side of the color wheel. But you can of course, choose any color combination you like. You may want pink eyes and blue fur. Any combination you choose, of course for the teeth, I'm cutting them. So there can be like triangles. You can have them more curved. You can choose to have them more rectangular, any shape that you would like. These are my cast offs that I looked at and thought, oh, these would make great horns. So I'm going to grab a couple of them and set them aside to be horns for my little monster. Well, very large monster. But anything like that that you feel like will add to your monster's personality. This is the time when there's no judgment. It's not a whole lot of cash spent. But you can have a big impact just with these small little details. Here are all my facial features and I am ready to hot glue. I have the head of my monster, just the top half. I'm going to glue my eye parts down with my little glue gun. And once I get the eyes assembled, then I'm going to put the eyes onto the monster fur. So I'm just going to go through those now that my eyes are all assembled. I'm just going to quickly try not to say eyeball estimate. Don't want to sound like dad jokes through this whole course. I'm just going to estimate placements. Okay? I'll say it. I'm going to eyeball placement for the eyeballs. I want it to be symmetrical. This, of course, is going to depend on how many eyes you choose, but also the vibe of the monster that you're going for. If you want them all to be crowded to one side, because that's the vibe of your monster, go for it. Have fun with this project. Once I determine the placement for the eyeballs, I'm just going to hot glue them directly to the fur. Now I'm going to go for some of the other features that give the monster a little bit more personality. I have these little curly cues that are the result of me cutting out the eyes, the yellow part of the eyes. And I'm just going to use those at the very top to make them horns. Trying to get the best angle to show you guys that I hot glued it from the back so that they would stick out over the top, the monster's head. Now I'm going to work out placement for those beauty marks that I cut out earlier. Again, I'm going for more personality, more facial features. I will put these about the place where you would put cheeks or blush. In fact, if you want to put like some red circles or pink circles, that would be appropriate to in this place, that's the face. 5. More Face Details: I realized that there are even more facial features that I would like to include to remind you, this is what we've added so far. All except for the teeth. But now I'm realizing, hey, my monster doesn't have any lashes. I feel like that adds so much. I love a girly monster here. I'm just cutting out the edge of some of those black paper plates. At first I thought, oh, maybe I can cut little strips, but that doesn't really work out. I'm going to cut small V's instead, And you can see that that gives just enough of the effect of separate eyelashes that it works for what I'm trying to do. So I'm going to cut out some eyelashes from the edges of this black paper plates. And here I'm just taking some more of my scraps. Because if there are eyelashes, of course I need eyebrows. So I'm going to cut out some eyebrow shapes. This is of course not necessary for every monster, but it's the sort of details that I want my monster to have. So I cut out three eyebrows. I cut out three sets of eyelashes, and I need to attach those. So to attach the lashes and brows again, I'm going to go in with my hot glue. I could have put these a little bit higher, but I thought that they fit. The lashes fit well just above the eye. If you want to have the illusion of a lid, like an eye lid, then you can maybe cut another crescent. Maybe even like a bright color to emulate eye shadow. And then put the lashes over that, and then the brow over that. But I think that I was getting just a look that I was going for by putting these lashes just behind the eyeball and then putting eyebrow over it. Now I'm going to go in with the teeth. So I'm going to hot glue those from behind the monster's bottom fur. At the bottom edge of this top half of the face. It's right about here that I realized that I had not cut out a nose. So I'm sorry that we did not do that facial feature yet. A nose is basically three humps up. Again, doesn't have to be perfect. And then you're going to do on the bottom. And you'll see the way that I'm cutting, what I mean. So I'm just going to use my scissors to guide for one, then I'm going to do for the tip of the nose, and then I'm going to dip back up again for the other nostril. And then round out the other side of that nostril. And that's a monster nose. I also decided that a little wart on the nose could add some nice personality, so I add that as well. Again guys, these features are up to you. Just add personality where you see fit and that is the top half of your monster face. 6. Monster Face Bottom: Now we are onto the bottom half of the monster face. This is the bottom jaw. We've already completed the top half of the monster head with the facial features. Now this is the bottom jaw. You'll find that everything that we've done, we've already done to the top half of the monster. So I'm going to move a little more quickly through this. So we've already cut this curve shape and now I'm going to tape down the tablecloth, cut it into the shape, and cut the strips to make the fur. And here is something that I had to go back and do to the top half, but I realized that I wanted this fur to be more rough and furry looking. So I'm going through each of the strips and I'm peeling them apart. Remember, you only cut the top two layers, so there's still a bottom layer to cover the cardboard. But those top two layers that are cut, I'm just going and pulling them apart and crumpling them up. Just balling them up in my fist in order to make it more wrinkly, more fur like. Now, I'm going to put on the facial features that I cut out earlier. These are ones that are going on the bottom half of the face, those beauty marks that we put a set on the top half. I'm going to go back in and put another set on the other side, just for symmetry. You can leave it asymmetrical, if you like. But I was looking at mine and thought I want to put something else on here. So I'm putting a set of three beauty marks on both sides of the bottom half. And you'll see later like, oh, where did that other set of beauty marks come from? On the top half, I went back in and put those on. Of course, I have to attach the teeth in the same way that we put them on the bottom of the top half. We're putting these on the top of the bottom half of the jaw. I didn't talk about this in the other one, but I am really eyeballing the spacing. They don't have to line up perfectly, they don't even have to be evenly spaced because we are choosing to do a monster. It is up to interpretation. You can have a bunch of teeth together, make a big gap, put some other teeth on the other side. You don't have to make this perfectly, you know. Don't get out your ruler and your tape measure and try to get them like exactly 4 " apart. It does not have to be that way. Just eyeball it and have fun with it. So here is the top and bottom of our trunk. Or treat monster. Now we can move on to the next lesson. 7. Monster Poncho: So this part is completely optional. But if you would like to make a poncho to go with your trunk or treat monster, here's how you can do so. I'm going to start with my paper plates to make another set of three eyeballs with a set of lashes on each one. So I have three white, three yellow, three black paper plates. And I'm going to cut those out. And go ahead and hot glue them together. Assemble the full eyeball In this moment, here are eyeballs all assembled. I'm going to put those to the side and move on to the main portion of the poncho. I have another rectangular tablecloth. I'm going to first measure how long I want it on my body. This is going to be different for everyone depending upon your height and preferences. Right where I have it at the top, I just right across in order to make a net hole. You see I have a net hole at the top and now I'm going to go in. It's folded in half, the table cloth is fully open, folded in half length wise. I cut a neck hole at the top. I measured against my body, and now I'm going to trim it where I would like it to fall. This is not an exact measurement. I just looked in the mirror and said, okay, about here. So I should cut off x amount, like it looks like I need to cut off about a foot and a half. And that's just what I do. Again, we are not going for perfect here. We're going for fun and easy. First, I'm going to trim that bottom. This is the basic shape of your poncho. Now I'm going to cut those strips to mimic the monster fur. It's almost like car wash strips, but more so monster. Or to mimic monster fur in this moment. Again, don't cut the pets, but let them interrupt because that's what they need to do. Just continue all the way across to as soon as you can in order to get all your strips. I do. Fairly high. This again is another preference. You might want to cut up closer to the neck line when the way it was falling on me. I thought like, oh, this would be cool to have like the top hit where my regular shirt would hit, and then at the bottom it would be more like the car wash effect or a monster fur effect. I've set up a piece of cardboard a little higher up. And I'm just going to arrange my poncho over the top of the cardboard. Because when I adhere these eyeballs to this poncho, I don't I don't want the hot glue to melt through to the other side. I'm just putting it so that only one side is accessible and the other side is behind the piece of cardboard. I'm going to figure out placement. I'm trying to go for eyeballs across my belly because I just think that eyeballs across my chest could be a little weird looking. Again, this is all up for personal preference. But I'm going for eyeballs across the belly and I'm going to hot glue my previously assembled eyeballs directly to the poncho. And I'm going to use a little party feature. I know I said at the beginning like, oh, you're going to need party decorations. So this is where I take a party decoration and just rearrange it or cut it apart from the string of other things that it was attached to and make it like a little bow tie at the top of the poncho. So here's my little party decoration. Tho those are the things that you're supposed to peel and they become like a little tissue paper puff ball. I just didn't peel it all the way. I just opened it enough so that it could resemble a bow tie. And I'm going to just hot glue it to the neckline of my poncho. And here's how it turned out. 8. Monster Treats & Toys: So let's talk monster treats. So I'm going to start with non food treats because I know there are lots of parents out there that would rather not give their kids candy at a trunk or treat. I have things that I can kind of turn into eyeballs in order to fit with my monster theme with multiple eyes. So I have some balls, I have a yo yo, anything really that is circular and playful would work. Actually, any kind of trinket that you pick up at the dollar store would work if you just stick some eyeballs on it. So I'm going to go for a simple version just with the white of the eye and the center. And I'm going to cut those pieces out and assemble them, and then adhere them onto the giveaways. Alternately, you could just buy some googly eyes. They come in a variety of sizes that could be fun to put different sized ones on your different treats. Now onto food treats. I made these in a previous year. They are just oriole cookies that are put together on a lollipop stick with candy melts and candy googly eyes. So if you have candy googly eyes, you can go and find them at Michael's or order them from Amazon. You can put all of those things together or you can buy eyes. They now have gummy eyeballs. There are eyeball, drink bombs. There are all sorts of things in order to allow you to have just a full range of things that fit with your monster eyeball theme. 9. Trunk Assembly: Okay, now let's talk assembly and putting it all together. For assembly, you're going to meet some scissors, a screwdriver, and some twine or string of some sort. Of course, that beautiful monster that you just made, thinking from a range of an open trunk, this is what you're going to attach to the top, to the top of the trunk. The bottom to the bottom half of the trunk. So I take the screwdriver and I get to the cardboard, and I use it like all. Basically, I poke a hole directly into the cardboard in two places. Again, you guys heard me say it in this lesson. In all of these lessons before, I'm not measuring, I am eyeballing. This is meant to be an easy project, so I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. I just want a place where I can put my twine through in order to tie my monster directly to my vehicle for the trunk Or treat event four holes go in a top hole and a bottom hole for either side of the monster. And then I take a generous amount of twine. It's probably too, I'd rather have too much than not enough. And I'm going to put that through just like threading a needle, put the twine through the holes that I just made on both sides. And I'm going to do the same thing with the bottom half of the monster. Both the top and bottom half of my monster have been sufficiently twined, now I'm going to take it to my vehicle. The idea here is to pick a place that is really a personal preference. You can have your monster head sit a little bit higher or sit low. Just think about how wide do you want the monster mouth to be. I find that up high is some impact from far away because it sits higher than other things, maybe around in the parking lot. So the kids notice it more. But down low, it seems like you're reaching more into the monster's mouth. Like it has a different kind of visual effect. Like you're reaching right into the monster mouth in order to hand out the candy. Right now, I'm tying the two ends of the twine together. And I'm going to give you a closer look later on just so you can see how I tied it. But I'm tying those together and I'm making sure that I'm happy with the placement of the top of the monster head. This may also depend on how much wind is in the area on the particular day that you may have a trunk treat, or what you're using your giant monster for. You can also use your license plate. So remember your car, the trunk is open. As you can see your license plate. You can loop the twine around it in order to get a higher hang for the top of that head. But right now I'm just tying it right to just like a slip knot right to the sides of my trunk, The mechanics of the trunk. And here I am with the bottom half. And believe it or not, it's going to tie in a similar space. You can play around with how you want to tie it exactly. Even that looks interesting, like the monster's bottom jaws a little high up. But you want to determine like, okay, where do I want this to fall? Where do I want it to hit? And there are no wrong answers, guys wrong answers. No bad way to do it. None of this is meant to be the most perfect thing you've ever seen in your life. I'm not happy with that particular placement 'cause I like a little bit of opening. So again, if you're doing this, you're in the moment the kids are running around, you're setting up for trunk or treat. Take a moment. You can untie your slip knot. You can retie it in a better position. But it's, again, not meant to be something that is stressful and needs to be perfect. It's just a matter of personal preference and putting together something that you and the kids around can enjoy. So I've tied one side and I'm going to tie the other. My jaw is a little bit cricket, but I'm going to go in and adjust that, but even guys, it's a monster. Even if I left it like this, it still looks kind of cute. It's a funny thing, and I'm sure the kids would enjoy it. I feel like I should name this monster, but this is just a close up of how I tied to just right to the arm of where your trunk opens. The top is a little bit higher and I'm going to go around to the other side to show you that both the top and the bottom are tied in similar places. Just regular knots. No scouts knots or anything like that. Nothing super complicated. And that's it, that's my cute little monster girl for a trunk or treat assembled, ready to hand out treats directly from her jaws. And here I am matching my trunk with my poncho. 10. Thank you & Offer: I just wanted to say, thank you so much. I hope that you got a lot out of this course, that you send me pictures of your trunk monsters. I can't wait to see them. And I just wanted to offer my creativity journal. It's called Unleashing Creativity, the Inspiration Journal. It's available on Amazon. I will put a link in the description box. But if you need to get unstuck creatively, this is a good way. Thank you again for joining me for this course.