Halloween Art Party

I know, Halloween is a couple days gone by now, but it's been a busy week and I had to advertise the Central Washington Artists' Exhibition. Last weekend we had some friends over for a halloween art party. Last year we had a skull decorating party, which was part Halloween, part Dia de los Muertos, and part Rachel's on sabbatical and has been slip casting with her skull mold. 

Paper Jack'o lantern skeleton door greeter.

This year's party included collaborative mural drawing, with stickers for those who didn't want to draw. In preparation for the party, the kids drew a house, road and forest on a large sheet of paper. At the party kids could "help us haunt our house" by drawing ghosts and witches and spiders on the mural. They could also add ghost and pumpkin stickers to the mural. The kids seemed to enjoy it, though by the end of the day the mural paper was blowing off the wall. As I reminded the kids and parents, art (for kids) is about process, not product. The mural did not survive the weekend.

For some reason they kept adding pools of blood, on the road, on the house, etc.

Our monster slime supplies (and a candy spider).

We also had the kids make monster slime based on this recipe I found on Pinterest. It's like flubber or gak or other slimy goo that kids make. I think I made it in girl scouts years and years ago. Clear glue was really hard to find, so we tried blue Elmer's gel and that seemed to work ok. We let the kids add food coloring, so several batches were a horrible red color.

 

Kids mixing slime, clear slime with pumpkin and "boo" confetti

The kids mixed the slim and added Halloween confetti. They had fun and kept the mess pretty contained. Later, while the kids were playing and drawing, the adults enjoyed playing with the slime they'd left behind. The slime gradually flattens out if you leave it on the table, but then it can hold its shape when you pick it up, fold it or mold it.

"bloody": bat slime

Some of the kids also made spiders or cut out spiderwebs or sets of faces, skulls or cats in a circular pattern. There were also some skull drawings to color (because coloring calms adults, too).

Sucker spider and pipe cleaner spider