Salaric

I made this witch as an example of what sort of halloweeny things the scouts could make with pom poms, pipe cleaners and lolly sticks. All of the things used for the witch came from a Big Box of Spooky Crafts that I got from a shop called the Works last year. For the witch I used:

• One medium-sized green pom pom

• One sheet of black crepe paper

• One green metallic pipe cleaner

• One purple and black stripy pipe cleaner

• One purple glitter paint pen

• One medium goggly eye

• One small goggly eye

• One thin orange pipe cleaner

• One yellow lolly stick

• One natural wood lolly stick

• One thin red pipe cleaner

• A pair of scissors

• White PVA craft glue

• Sellotape

First off, I took the natural unstained lolly stick, which was for the body of the witch, and wrapped the purple and black stripy pipe cleaner around it about a third of the way down from the top. I then twisted the pipe cleaner around the lolly stick to fix it in place and I bent the two equal lengths of pipe cleaner into legs by putting them an ‘almost’ right angle where the knees would be.

I then added arms in a similar fashion by attaching the green metallic pipe cleaner about 1cm from the top of the lolly stick. I didn’t bend this one, but made sure that the arms were sticking out of the ‘side’ of the lolly stick body, whereas the legs were sticking out of the ‘front’ of the body.

I now basically had a ‘stick figure’ which needed to be dressed. I thought it would make more sense to put on the witch’s clothing before her head as the head would be too big for things to go on nicely over it.

I had a rectangle of black crepe paper which I cut in half; I then folded one half of it in half and cut a slit along the fold in the middle for the the ‘neck’ to go through. I then slid it over the lolly stick and made sure the fold lay over the pipe cleaner arms.

This, however, didn’t really work that well so I poked the palms through the paper so that it looked like she had little green hand poking out of her dress sleeves. This held the dress in place a lot better than before.

I then added the witch’s head by taking the green pom pom and cutting a slit in the bottom of it, squirting some PVA glue into it and putting on the top of the lolly stick. I then left it to dry for a while.

For the witch’s face I used two mismatched goggly eyes – I thought this would make her look more scary and demented. The eyes were self-adhesive, which was good as it made things a lot easier: all I had to do was peel the back of of each eye and stick it on where I wanted. For the mouth I cut off a 2cm long section of the thin red pipe cleaner and bent it in the middle so that it made a nice open angle, and glued it in place with the PVA.

I then cut out a semi-circle out of the remaining crepe paper and wrapped it around to make a pointy hat, gluing it one edge of the hat to the other using the craft glue. This was a bit messier than I would have liked. I then added hair using a purple glitter paint pen and basically drew on the hair and stuffed the hat on top of it. It then had to be left to dry for ages as the glitter pen took a long time to dry, which is one of the reasons I tend not to give them to the scouts for craft projects.

Whilst the witch was drying I made a broomstick for her. I did this by cutting the thin orange pipe cleaner into sections 3-4cm long and gluing them on the end of the yellow pipe cleaner. I was careful with the placement of the ‘bristles’ so that they fanned slightly. I then used a spare section of pipe cleaner to wrap around the end of the bristles that were on the ‘broomstick’, ie the yellow pipe cleaner. This made it look a lot neater and broom-like in my opinion.

Once the witch was dry I bent one arm so that her ‘hand’ was hooked under one end of the broom. I then sellotaped the end of the witch’s body lolly stick to the centre of the broomstick lolly stick, which meant the witch looked like she was siting on the broomstick nicely. I then bent the remaining arm so that she looked like she was waving.