Toilet roll bat fun

This crafty doodad was inspired by two people who blog on the intertoobs. The body of the bat was made after seeing the gorgeous little halloween creatures made by Katie Steuernagle from Matsutake. Soooo flippin' cute!

By folding the bottom of the tube in the same way, but perpendicular to the top of the tube you get quite a nice bat body shape for hanging up.
The kids got nice and filthy with black paint, painting up the bat bodies... I think the bat wings were inspired by a card that was made on Makes and Takes a while back. They used some tissue paper to thread through a card to make bat wings, but we didn't have any black tissue paper, so we used black constructions paper. Folded it in half to cut the bottom of the wings into shape... Then concertina folded them up. I cut a couple of horizontal slits on either side of the bat bodies to thread the folded up wings through, and then unfolded them and curved forward the wings to make them nice and full looking. The tip of the top of each wing was folded back to give it a bit of a more batty shape. Red sticker eyes were stuck on and then they got hung up in our kitchen with the rest of the artwork for a few days. Batgirl loves them.
Until Halloween, when we took them out and hung them on the porch to frighten trick or treaters. They made the Happy Halloween sign themselves too and are very proud of it indeed!Because the bodies were made out of toilet roll tube, the ever resourceful hubster was able to put together a little circuit involving flashing LEDs and a battery pack to stuff inside. Voila! Spooky flashy red bat eyes!

If you fancy trying that part yourself then you can check it out on his blog Fangletronics.

I hope you all had a lovely halloween! I'm loving American halloweens. It's such a big holiday for the kids. Sorry to be posting some of our halloween crafts after the holiday, but we're always last minute with such things, and I know that if I don't put these things on the blog now, then I will have lost them by this time next year.