DIY Spooky Pipe Cleaner Friends

Welcome to day one of 31 days of Halloween crafts! Today we're going to be making spooky pipe cleaner friends.

Materials:

- bumpy pipe cleaners

- crepe paper

- vintage spooky faces

- mini props

- needle + thread

- hot glue

You'll need four segments of pipe cleaner with two bumps per segment. Take one and fold it in half -  these will be the legs. Give them some little feet by bending the tips.

Next take a second segment, curve the top bit into a little loop, and give it a twist to secure. This will be the head of your body.

Next, you'll take another segment, give your buddy a little bit of a neck, and then from the middle wrap it around to form two little arms. I like to wrap these around a couple times so that the arms are shorter than the legs, but feel free to bend it however you want. Using needle nose pliers, bend little loops at the tips so that you can put some props into your buddy's hands.

Next, take the legs that you made and, a little bit below the arms, attach them by winding the legs around the spine of the headpiece, wrapping it around the middle to give them a little belly.

Finally if you're making a cat, you may want to give them a tail, so use your pliers to create a nice little curly cue tail shape and attach it to the rest of the little guy. Just work the pipe cleaner until you’re happy with the shape.

Next, you'll need a few strips of crepe paper that are 1 inch by 9 inches. Use pinking shears to give one side of the crepe paper a cute little saw edge.

Stack the layers of crepe paper and with a needle and thread that's doubled and knotted at the end, sew a running stitch about a quarter of an inch away from the plain edge.

Fold and cinch the paper as you go and when you get to the end, tie a little knot to secure.

Next, glue the ruff to the buddy by putting some hot glue around its neck and carefully attaching the ruff without burning your fingers. Add another couple dots of glue to close up this seam in the back.

Next, hot glue the face of your buddy to your pipe cleaner head.

Optionally, you may want to glue your buddy’s feet down to a little piece of wood or something else to help them stand up.

Once the glue is hard around the neck, we can separate the crepe and get the ruff looking nice and fluffy.

I'm going to paint a little jack-o-lantern face on my Chinese lanterns to make them look like real lanterns and just put it in the little loop that we made before.