Spooky Moon

Whenever I see an empty peanut-butter jar, I see the head shape of Frankenstein’s monster. Yeah, welcome to my brain.  I’ve seen several versions of the pb-jar luminaria on Pinterest, mostly with cute jack-o-lantern faces. I wanted to  upscale that a teensy bit, using my love for iconic movie monsters. I’m thinking of doing a whole set, but for now, you just get Frank. Yes, I know the monster didn’t have a name. It’s in honor of one of my favorite all-time animations. It’s short, click.

You will need:

–Empty, clean, peanut-butter jar with lid
–Black Paint
–Decoupage glue of some sort. I use liquid matte medium from Golden
–Green tissue paper
–Glue gun
–Vellum or clear full-sheet stickers to print on
–Two twist-off plastic caps. I used water bottle caps.
–Corrugated cardboard scraps

Paint the lid black. I’m using cheap craft paint. It was at this point I realized I was wearing one of my favorite shirts. I changed before disaster struck.

While that’s drying, cover your jar with tissue paper. Using a brush, lay down a layer of medium. Put tissue on top, then go over the tissue with more medium. I like to tear rough pieces, and encourage wrinkles, as I like the texture. Avoid the lid threads.

I took a picture of Boris Karloff’s classic portrayal, posterized it, and erased everything but the facial features. Would you like to use it? Go for it.  After some fiddling with sizes, it got printed on to clear label paper (Avery 8665–it’s kinda frosted, but I love the stuff). Because I have a lowly inkjet, I put a coat of matte sealer on the sticker before doing anything else.

Cut around the face in a natural shape (no sharp edges) and attach to the jar. Don’t worry about the edges.

They get covered with a little more tissue paper to blend them in.

Trim the bottle caps at the top and bottom edge so they fit the pb jar better. I should have done this before I painted them, so I wouldn’t have to do so many touch-ups. Do as I say, not as I do. Trim, then paint.

To create a gluing surface in the caps, I stacked and hot glued a couple bits of cardboard. Add your caps low on each side of Frank’s face, and you’re done! Stuff a few battery-powered candles in him and get spooky.

Raffle status: sure, I’ll ship Frank.