American Crafter Round 1-Sound Activated Halloween Pillow

Today I am SO excited to be posting my Round 1 project for the American Crafter competition, hosted by Amy at Naptime Crafters. This rounds theme is Halloween!

If you are popping over from Amy's blog to check out the tutorial, HELLO and welcome to Love Sweet Love! If you're here from anywhere else I'm so happy you've come on over to check out my project and if you like what you see, I would so love it if you could make a quick stop HERE and put a vote in for me and my pillow! :) The best part about this competition is that you can vote for THREE (3!) different projects so head on over and vote for your 3 favorites! You don't have to have a blog, be a blogger, or even like blogging ;) to vote-everyone's opinion matters!! And I promise...the other 14 halloween projects are Drop. Dead. Amazing. These girls do NOT mess around. Seriously you HAVE to go check them out!!!

My entry:
Sound Activated Halloween Pillow

You can see the quick and simple version of my project at Naptime Crafters, but if you're looking for a detailed how-to...here ya go!

1. I Cut the burlap to the size I wanted the pillow to be (including a few extra inches for seam allowance)
2. I ironed mine flat so there wouldn't be weird creases in the pillow since my burlap had been sitting folded up in a closet for awhile.
3. I sketched a quick design on paper and then used pins to outline where I wanted everything to go so I could keep track as I went about adding the different elements to the pillow.
4. I printed out a stencil on my cricut and then used a black permanent marker to print it onto the pillow.
5. Ta Da! :)

1. I purchased half a yard of black lace and grosgrain ribbon from Hobby Lobby (still have a little less than half leftover)
2. First sewed on the black lace and then sewed the ribbon directly up the middle of the lace.
3. I intentionally left a couple inches of the lace/ribbon strip on either side of the burlap so that it could be sewed into the top seam of the pillow, leaving a nice clean line.

1&2.I then stuffed the pillow with polyfiber that had been given to me by my BF (but it's super cheap at JoAnns-especially if you use a coupon!)
3. With the leftover lace, I made a flower by cutting a small circle of felt and then hot gluing the lace to it, starting at the outer edge and circling around and around toward the center until...
4...it was a full circle! I then added a sparkly, silver brad to the middle.

I love that the flower comes out at you to add a little dimension to the pillow and the lace gives it a different texture!

BUUUUTTTT what good would a 'Happy Haunting' pillow be if it wasn't slightly...haunted?! That's when I had this idea...

1.I took a too-spooky-for-my-taste grim reaper decoration
2. Removed the sound activated device (that when activated by sound, responds by making eeeerie noises and glowing RED!!!)
3. Inserted it into the pillow
4. Cut a small square of posterboard to insert the small LED's into-and used electrical tape to hold them in place on the back of the poster-so that they wouldn't shift around and get lost or smothered by the polyfiber inside the pillow.
5. LASTLY, I cut a small hole around the on/off switch so I can choose which neighbors I'd like to scare up until Halloween :)

Happy Haunting!

Thanks so much for popping over for a looksy today! Now go cast your vote HERE -I'm contestant#10 (pretty pretty pleeeease, it would mean SO much to me!) and I'll see ya back here Monday with more October MaDnESs! Have a Sweetly Lovely day my lovelies!

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