spooky acorn babies

I love love love little people figures, and I think my favorite sorts are acorn babies. I think I saw the idea, using hazelnuts instead of acorns, in Feltcraft. Maybe not (all my books are still packed up, pending a bit more shelf building around here, so I can't check), but you wouldn't regret buying that fantastic little book... Anyway, the base is a wooden bead hot-glued to an acorn. I'm not usually a hot-glue fan, but the quick-dry and bulky qualities make it perfect for this project. The hole in a wood bead fits neatly onto the pointy end of an acorn, but it needs a bit of support to stay there. Some acorn varieties sit nicely in their original state (see photos in my last post for a happy example), but many, as liz r. commented in the last post, won't. I've found that just sanding the base a bit will usually provide a nice steady base; the acorn is thick enough at that point to stand up to it, structurally (aren't I punny?).

Acorn babies as nativities here (2008).
Acorn babies as little cute dudes here (2007).

But acorn babies as spookily cute Halloween figures right HERE (2009)!

Audrey made the ghost (a circle of white cotton), I the mummy (1/8" bias strips), and Marian this cheery little witch. I'm still hoping for a scarecrow...

We took a couple of process shots for the witch's little hat; they're mostly self-explanatory. I twisted the half-circle into a cone shape & inserted it in the ring (I traced a bottle cap for the outer circumference of the rim, snipped out the center, and cut the half circle just a bit larger. A bigger half circle would give you a taller crown; a smaller half circle would yield a shorter one. You may adjust the overlap to fit the cone into the rim at your desired height, so the measurements are quite flexible.), stitching them together into a sweet wee hat. The orange bow was, of course, Marian's idea.
I love how straggly Marian made her hair. At first, she glued individual strands of green string hair down in very neat bangs-and-back rows, then wanted it shorter, so trimmed. Then wanted it thicker, so added scattered staggers of strings for a deliciously witchy look.
Abby started a witchy, too. Guesses as to whether I'll make it to the post office with that and the outgrown baby clothes I'm sending her before Halloween? Afraid I won't be betting on me... I was such a better mailer when I had little stacks of etsy packages going off twice weekly. We did make her a wee hat, too.Oh, look how seasonal she looks next to our bright orange stack of parking tickets! (we always forget the street sweepers...)