How to Make an Emptying Trick-or-treat Bag Dress

Oh, how I loved turning a robust trick or treat bag upside down to size up my loot as soon as I returned home from a long night of door knocking. This dress captures that youthful excitement.

For Skirt:

A big puffy affair (from back of closet or thrift shop)
Sculpey clay: orange, yellow, white, black, green
Sculpey glaze
Halloween trinkets: skeletons, eyeballs, erasers, pencil toppers, key chains, etc.
"trick-or-treat" sized candy
batting
e6000 glue
pins: large and small
fake apples
Popsicle sticks
1" wood balls
Cellophane
lollipop sticks
floral wire (optional)
acrylic paint: red, tan, brown, orange, black

For Top:

Old shirt
Scissors
Chalk
Black marker

For headband and tie:

Project scraps
Old tie

Some treat-givers (dentists, health fanatics, people who watched frightening Halloween candy special reports on the local news) hand out trinkets instead of sweets.

1. Make the loot dispensed by the anti-glucose crowd by gathering items like plastic skeletons, erasers, key chains, rubber eyeballs, plastic vampire teeth and whatever else you could find.

2. Lay items flat, with the good side of each facing the table.

3. Apply a line of e6000 glue to adhere appropriately sized pins.

Everyone I know had a stomach ache after this part. You'll need bags of assorted treats (or a bunch of friends to save their neatly opened wrappers.)

1. Carefully open candy wrappers and remove contents. (Save the candy in Ziplocs for all of your sweet-toothed pals.)

2. Create the illusion that there's still something inside by stuffing each opened wrapper with batting.

3. Line the opened end of the re-stuffed wrapper with low temp glue and press shut.

4. Cut out felt and adhere to the back of each wrapper. (This step is optional.)

5. Use e6000 glue to secure a pin to the felt.

For those who have trick-or-treated at the bottom of grandma's bag.

1. Paint 1" balls with orange and black paint.

2. Wrap painted balls in cellophane. Twist at each end and trim. (You could further secure twists by wrapping a bit of floral wire around each end.)

3. Glue pins with e6000 glue to each sucking candy.

My mother always forced me to toss out the unwrapped goods like candy corn and candy pumpkins.

1. Make balls out of orange, yellow and white Sculpey clay. Make a bigger ball of orange for the base, a medium-sized yellow ball for the center and a tiny tear drop shape of white for the top.

2. Gently press shapes together.

3. Carefully roll to maintain a conical shape.

4. Bake and glaze each candy corn.

5. Apply e6000 glue and place pins.

1. Roll orange Sculpey clay into a ball.

2. Create pumpkin-like indentations with a clay tool or knife.

3. Make a small green clay pancake and pinch at center to create stem.

4. Fix the green clay on top of the orange ball.

5. Bake and glaze.

6. Glue pins to back.

1. Make snakes of orange, yellow and black. Roll together.

2. Coil it into a lollipop shape.

3. Puncture the clay with a lollipop stick.

4. Remove stick and save it for step 6.

5. Bake and glaze.

6. Glue lollipop stick inside pre-made hole.

7. Glue pin to back.

Okay, now I never actually received one of these in my bag, but I just love them.

1. Pour chocolate, caramel and cherry colored paint over fake apples.

2. Add clay shaped bits to decorate. Use shaved white clay for coconut, chop tan bits for nuts and cut out (with a pen cap) orange and black clay for holiday-colored sprinkles.

3. Stick bits on painted apple with e6000 glue.

4. Glue a Popsicle stick to top of apple.

5. Glue pins with e6000 glue to the stick and the apple.

I used pins for two reasons: 1) I'm not an adept seamstress. 2) Eventually I will find a new use for the pins and the skirt.

Now, it's as simple as this:

1. Pin your creations to skirt. Voila!

The top resembles an upside down trick or treat bag. Though I used an old orange shirt, you could also create a paper bag like sack with a brown shirt.

1. Turn an old shirt inside out.

2. Fold shirt in half and mark the center with chalk.

3. Draw a serrated edge with chalk, using marked center point for first "v."

4. Cut along the marked line.

5. If you are working with a long-sleeved shirt, cut sleeves off below the seam.

6. Place a piece of cardboard inside of the shirt. Work with the serrated edge on top. Write "Trick or Treat" in black marker.

Use your scraps! I fashioned a headband from a piece of cut-off sleeve and extra candy pins. I also made my boyfriend a matching tie by covering the bottom half of an old one with leftover treat pins. I secured a sleeve crafted like the shirt to the top part of the tie.