Look no further if you're looking for a robust, small hinge that you can DIY for your art or craft projects. This  instagram viral workhorse of a hinge is easy to make out of a few scraps of wire. You just need a pair of pliers and other common household tidbits.
You can use these hinges for kinetic sculptures, tabletop gaming terrain, or for the mini walnut boxes I wrote about here.

If you want to use walnut shells for crafting, it's a great trick to be able to split them perfectly in half without destroying one side. This can be especially difficult for the walnuts I get from the grocery store around Christmas! This method is fairly consistent in helping me crack a walnut without breaking the shells, but I do still get a few failures.

Here's how to make a fake but GORGEOUS mystical crystal geode with no actual crystals, no resin, and no molds. In fact, this project is mostly dollar-store foam board and hot glue sticks. 

I turned my geode into a plant propagation station, but you could use the same techniques to make a kick-ass book nook, magical fantasy miniatures, or epic tabletop gaming terrain!

Check out my previous tutorial for a deep dive into the techniques I used on this project. There's a complete supply list over there.

The template for the donut shape I demonstrate is a FREE DOWNLOAD. No need to stick to the template though - you can make a geode of almost any shape or size!

The template for the freeform shape I demonstrate is a FREE DOWNLOAD. ​You can use this technique to make a prop station of just about any size and shape - no need to follow the template!

Words will go here.

Last year, I made a Krampus figure - which I love - but Krampus was not my "first love" of Christmas monsters. No, that title goes to that bouncing monster tamed by Yukon Cornelius in the 1964 stop-motion Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie: The Abominable Snowman (aka The Bumble). 

Listen: It is not fair that spooky season only lasts for one month. The Christmassy people get ALL of November AND December, and I don't think that's right. But some of the cool kids got together and formulated a plan to add some yuck to your Yule: Spooky Christmas. 

Last year, to put some creepiness into my Chrismas, I built pop culture's favourite Christmas monster, Krampus. You can check out the build video here.

Popularized in North America by Michael Dougherty's 2015 movie,  Krampus has long been a feature of Germanic/ Alpine Christmas traditions. There, the anthropomorphized goat character is celebrated as St. Nicholas' evil counterpart who punishes naughty children.  There are regional variants, but these physical characteristics of Krampus are generally consistent: cloven hooves, goat horns, sharp teeth, carries chains, and he has a basket on his back (for carrying away those naughty children). I wanted to incorporate these qualities into my sculpture so that I could stay true to Krampus' folklore.

Sock gnomes can be cute, but you know what's cooler than a sock gnome: a sock Mothman. Let's make one. There's a complete step-by-step video tutorial here!

If you're here, you probably know who Mothman is, but just in case you don't, Mothman is a humanoid cryptid hailing from West Virginia who was first cited in 1966 in the town of Point Pleasant. Several people reported seeing a large gray man with red eyes and 10 foot wings. These sightings were reported around the same time as the tragic collapse of Point Pleasant’s Silver Bridge, which seemed to both validate the sightings and tie them to the bridge collapse. Was Mothman here to warn us about the bridge?

Like its gnome counterpart, you can get everything you need to build a sock Mothman at the dollar store. You also need some scissors, glue, a hot glue gun and a scrap piece of cardboard. Any old thin cardboard will do. 

I've provided a free template below which includes the wing and wig pattern I used.

This is the second year I've made my Halloween pumpkin as a tribute to the the late Canadian rock poet, Gord Downie. I call it Gourd Downie.

Below is the template I used to make the hat. You may need to resize it if you want to make your own. It's fairly straightforward, but if you want some brief instruction on how to assemble it, there's a 1 minute video tutorial  here.