When I saw a picture of cheesecloth ghosts, I was enamored by the effortless way they floated and wanted to try to make some myself for Lucky's Halloween Birthday Party. I am a pretty crafty person, and love to challenge myself to do new things. There are whole blogs dedicated to pinterest fails, and the following project is neither a complete failure nor a complete success. I ended up with something that is fun in the end, but was not nearly as pleasant as I thought it would be when I pinned the original idea.
In my pantry I had 2 yards of cheesecloth, which would be enough to cover two of my ghosts. I hoped to make three, but I'd rather have two covered ghosts than three short little ones. I hoped to make a tall and short ghost.
For the goop, I started with half the recipe, 1 cup water and 1/2 cup cornstarch. Our microwave is on the way out, we've noticed that it takes longer and longer to get things to heat up. I knew that even though I was working with less volume, that it would likely take more than 2 min to cook. I did stick with the 30 sec increments, though. Boy oh boy was I surprised when all of a sudden the very liquid starch went from a liquid to a solid after the 4th increment!
I'm not that patient, but I also didn't want to burn myself. So I tried to wait patiently to let the cornstarch mixture cool, but I didn't want to wait so long that I missed my chance.
Dude, I almost hope that this is my first pinterest fail. Adding the corn starch play dough to the cheesecloth was pretty easy, but I got corn starch globs EVERYWHERE and it became very stressful. Let's just say that Keith was less than happy with me as I started crying for help and covered myself and the dining room in hardening goo. (Ultimately that was easy to clean up, but it felt like a disaster at the time.) This was not a project that was easy going... and even if the ghosts do work I'm not sure I'll replicate it. Eventually, I was able to get the cheesecloth on top of the balloons but I was not sure if I had coated the fabric well enough for them to stand up on their own. Only time will tell.
I have a pinterest fail! Well half fail, since one ghost worked great and the other one totally failed. The tall ghost collapsed when I removed the balloon. I don't think the sides of the ghost had enough starch. It was only the wide base of the shorter ghost that allowed the floppy top to stand up.
As for the ghost who survived, I feared that adding felt eyes to it would ruin the shape. The top did cave in a tiny bit as I added the felt eyeballs with elmer's glue.
I'm not too sure how well the eyes will hold, but oh boy does this ghost look cute!
My mom loved the ghost and wanted to try to bring him home, but I knew that he was so delicate that there was no way he would survive even if put in a box. Just moving him one more time cause the top to cave in a bit so I tossed this ghost.
So since I had 50% success, does that make this project an F? I will never be making these ghosts again, so it was certainly a fail for me in that respect. Plus, there is always this guy who didn't make it.
 |
| FAIL! |
