Halloween Countdown Calendar

Let me start by saying that this was a very difficult project to photograph - it's just shy of two feet tall! When I put all of the lights on inside of it, it gets very bright in here too. I've tried to take some pictures of each section to show you a little of what I did, but it's definitely not a full blown tutorial. 

This Halloween Countdown Calendar was my entry into Dreaming Tree's Summer Challenge. If you follow the link, you can see lots of amazing examples of beautiful 3-D papercrafting.  The challenge was to combine files from two or more Dreaming Tree projects to make a unique, custom project.

Here's a picture of the whole thing, all lit up:

I used elements from seven different Dreaming Bundles to create this colorfully spooky countdown. Working from the top down, I used the bat from the top of the Vintage Halloween Screen in  Lily's Halloween Decor bundle as the crowning element to an upside down Tick Tock Clock from the Making Time bundle.  

I used a Cricut spiderweb for the face of the calendar as I needed a web with 12 points on it since I was adding all 12 months.  The months were cutout in vinyl using a free font called Burton's Nightmare from dafont.com.  The 31 is from the same font.  The rosette in the center of the spiderweb came from the Compass Gift Box in the Good For Guys bundle.

The clockhand is from the Tim Holtz Idea-ology line - I coated it with orange Stickles to give it that wonderfully sparkly finish.  The skull and crossbones pieces are also by Tim Holtz.

The center section was actually really fun to create, but the photos didn't do a great job of showing it.  There's a new Heidi Swapp product available at select Joann's stores which is called Neon Glow. It's an 8 foot coil of battery-operated, vibrant neon wire. I used the lemon lime color to make a neon frame for my glittery ghost.  Here's what the neon looks like when you turn it on. There are two blink settings too!  

I took a video clip of the neon while I was building the project because it was so much fun to play with: 

Here's another picture of my ghostly ghoul while I was working on the middle section. The ghost is from the Shudder Shutter card from the Holiday Hauntings bundle and I have him suspended in an elongated Halloween Cookie Box which was a freebie from Dreaming Tree.  I modified the cookie box to get it to fit into the project. The idea was to make it look sort of like a pendulum in a grandfather clock.  

The bottom section is the same Tick Tock Clock as used in the top section, only this time it's right side up.  I used the frame from the front of the Lucky 7's Slot Machine in the Vegas Road Trip bundle to create the countdown window.

The word Halloween came from the Candy Dish in the Frank and Friends bundle and the 'Days To' is the Burton's Nightmare font again.  The mirrored stars from Tim Holtz were tinted with bright green alcohol ink and added to the front for some extra sparkle and interest.  

I think that about covers it from top to bottom. I've included a few more extra photos below. I really enjoyed challenging myself to create this crazy project and now I have a fun Halloween decorative piece I can use for years to come.  

We're 91 days from Halloween as of today, so there's plenty of time to create some more spooky projects.  Thanks for stopping by!