Thursday, September 17, 2009

Pumpkin pencil topper AKA non-candy Halloween treats

Super Easy Halloween Pencil Topper

My 3 year old has EE and is primarily tube fed. Read: he can’t have candy. He also started preschool this year. He wants to participate in all the fun parties they do in class. One thing they do is bring in candy to share with the other classmates. Since he can’t have candy, I whipped up some cute and simple pencil toppers.

Felt is the easiest material to sew with. You don’t need to worry about fraying edges or fancy stitches. I whipped 25 of these up in an hour.

2 gather your supplies

  • pencils
  • orange, green and black felt
  • E-6000 glue
  • template

Super Easy Halloween pencil toppers

Rough cut two layers of orange and your template. Cut a green stem and sandwich it between your orange layers. Put your paper template on top.

tuck in green stem

Pin the layers making sure the stem is held in place.

pin layers

Shorten your stitch length. You are going to sew right through your paper and the short stitch length will make it easy for the paper to come off. (No, your needle does not like sewing on paper. You should change your needle often anyway.)

shorten stitch length

Sew right on top of the template. Follow the lines for the outside of the pumpkin. Do not sew around the stem, just where the stem and the pumpkin meet.

sew around lines

Your paper should easily pop right off because of the close perforations.

pop off paper template

Carefully trim around the stitches. Make sure that you do not cut through the green stem.

carefully trim around stitches

Cut your eyes and little smirk out of black felt.

cut out eyes and smirk

Using E-6000 and a toothpick, glue the face on. I like a little smirk, don’t you?

glue on face

Snip a small opening at the bottom of the backside. Be careful not to cut through both layers. This is where the pencil will go in.

snip small opening

Apply E-6000 around the eraser and shove the eraser into the pumpkin. I twist as I go and make sure not to get glue all over. Push the pencil up into the pumpkin.

apply glue around eraser

Give them out to your favorite preschoolers!

finished topper

Anjeanette

Falling for Fall

26 comments:

Lisa said...

Very cute. Thanks for the tutorial.

southerninspiration said...

Aww, those are adorable, and a very nice alternative to candy!!!

Suzanne

Jen~ Lipstick and Laundry said...

"SEW" super CUTE!! Love it...

RootsAndWingsCo said...

LOVE IT!!! In our school district we are not allowed to send candy for Halloween. In fact they can only have two "sugar" parties a year. They usually have those at the Winter Break party and End of the Year.

I am not even allowed to send cupcakes, cookies or anything like that.

I love that these are so easy and cheap! I like the smirk too.

Katrina

LollyChops said...

What an awesome tutorial! Thanks for the tips about shortening the stitch length to get the paper off! That makes perfect sense and I never thought about it that way before!

Mr Puffy's Knitting Blog: said...

It's adorable! Thank you for the template and great explanation for those of us who are not experienced with making these type of crafts. I'm thinking it could easily be made into a cute brooch for the teacher too :)

Ferrers Locke said...

Ahh, non-candy Halloween ideas. Thank you!

Timmarie said...

Love it.

Sondra said...

Very cute as usual. I'm surprised that you cut out the face in black felt. That would make me cuckoo cutting them out and glueing them on. I think it would be easier with black puffy fabric paint.

I love the tutorial...It gets my mind a whirl of all the possibilities year round. Hearts, Shamrocks, Flowers, Snowmen. I've given pencils before... but this is such a cute way to dress them up! Thanks!

Sondra said...

OH yeah. I forgot... Poor little thing... No candy? Do you go trick or treating? I think this is such a great awareness, because I know there are many children who can't have sweets. Thanks for the reminder to make things kid friendly for everyone - and cute too!

amy @ Life in Pink Hi-Tops said...

Those are the cutest! I am sitting thinking of making them for my kindergartener's class.....Thanks for sharing!

Amy said...

Dear Anjeanette,

These are adorable!

Love,
Amy

Angie - treasuresfortots@gmail.com said...

This is so cute! Thanks for sharing!!

Sandra said...

These are really cute! I like doing non-candy treats for my son's preschool room, too--I think I've just found this year's contender :). Oh, and sometimes I find that normal paper can be too thick when I sew on it so I've found that using thin phone book paper is perfect!

RootsAndWingsCo said...

Thaks all for your nice comments. As a little note to Sandra's last comment...
I sew on paper all the time and never have aproblem. If you have your stitch length set to very short, it always works out beautifully for me;)

Anjeanette

SumnSutton said...

Love this idea!!! I wish my son was old enough to be in school to take these as his treats...So fun, thanks for sharing:)

ndninla said...

I love this Tutorial! Thanks so much for sharing. I love how your just sew over the template, great idea.

GunnyMom said...

Great for handouts! I will use my Sizzix Pumpkin die and also try foamies as well as felt. I do crafts with Seniors w/Dementia and this will be a good project for them. Wewill use glue instead of sewing.

rebekahweckerly@gmail.com said...

honestly!!! this is sooo cute!!! I will be making these for sure!

Coley said...

Too cute! My son has special needs and some of his classmates can't eat candy so this will be perfect! :)

Noreen said...

I have found some great ideas on your site, and have linked to
several of your creative projects. These links will help you be found more easily. I would really appreciate it if you would link back to me to make my site more easily found, also.

Here is a link to my page with your project:

http://www.craftlinky.com/kids-pumpkin-crafts.html

Thanks for sharing all your creative ideas!

Patte-mon said...

Hi, I am Pat from Malaysia. I have linked this article to my handcraft tutorial collection at http://handcrafttutorial.blogspot.com/2009/10/pumpkin-pencil-topper-aka-non-candy.html.

If you are not happy with this, please let me know and I will remove it from my blog. thanks.

Anonymous said...

very adorable!!There are so many things about Halloween which I didnt know! Check how much you know!!

Angie - treasuresfortots@gmail.com said...

I made Pencil Wand party favors for my daughter's birthday party using this tutorial! Again, thank you so much for sharing!!
http://treasuresfortots.blogspot.com/2009/10/pencil-wands-star-pencil-toppers.html

Michelle said...

Oh my goodness these are adorable!! I was going to give out stickers to the kids in Emily's class, but now I have to make these..they are just way to cute not to :0)

Thanks for sharing this amazing idea!!

Unknown said...

These were really nice, great work, I personally like the way yo did this, I think that it might be difficult but you really did a fantastic job, awesome, I really appreciate your work.


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