Ghost Pendant

So, halloween is coming!
I decided I wanted to make something easy and small, not a complete costume, but I still wanted it to be something special, one of a kind. Last year I made a crochet ghost, and, I don't know why, but I really like the cartoon-like drawn ghosts. And this year, it's a ghost pendant, almost entirely made out of cardboard! You could also decide to go for a different shape, the steps would be the same. I hope you like it :)

To make a ghost pendant (or an other shape), you will need the following:

First, you need to sketch your design. You can already draw it the right size at this point. My ghost is about 4 cm/ 1.5 inch in height. I personally wouldn't make it bigger than that, I think this size is just right.

Next, take a dark pen and mark the final shape. It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it's traceable it's good enough.

The first step for making your mold is tracing your sketch on a piece of paper. Then, cut out the traced image and glue it on a piece of cardboard. 

Get your small knife and carefully cut around the edges of the paper. You can see the paper is a bit damaged, but that's alright, you don't need this part. After doing this, you can vaguely see the cutting line on the other side of the cardboard. If the shape isn't already completely cut out, repeat cutting the cardboard on the back, where you can see the line now. 

If everything went as planned, you'll now have your completed mold. You might say this takes a lot of time, but I prefer it above tracing the same image using the sketch. With this mold, you can quickly draw the number of shapes you need.

Using your mold, draw your shape. I ended up drawing 11 ghosts. 

But, there's a chance your shape is NOT symmetrical. If you don't want to keep painting because you have to turn one piece around and have the coloured side on the outside (still following?), you can just turn your mold around and draw an extra shape. This will be the first piece you're using.

Next, cut out all those shapes!

^{The last pic is just there to show you my shape isn't symmetrical.}

Start with the piece that is a reflection of the other shapes. Put it with the coloured side up. Add glue to the coloured side and glue on one of the eleven regular pieces with the coloured side down. Repeat adding the shapes with the coloured side down untill ther is just one left.

Befor glueing this on, take an eraser and erase the pencil lines that are still visible. After that, this piece can also be glued on. 

Allow the pieces to dry completely before moving on to the next step, before doing anything with the shape actually.

When your piece has dried completely, take a hammer and a nail. Choose where you want to make the hole and hammer the nail in. I would suggest doing this on a same kind of surface I did, you can actually use the soft ground between the tiles to hammer your nail in. When you're done, remove the nail.

For the ghosty effect, I used blacklight nail polish. I just polish the entire pendant with it, since jewelry is all I use that nail polish for. Try to get the nail polish on at once, polishing parts and letting them dry won't give the same ghosty result, it will look really stripy (that's what happened on the back of the pendant)

Using the CD marker, you can give your ghost a face. I did this after the polish because I didn't want the eyes to light up in the blacklight. Just draw some eyes and a mouth.

You could also make a second, different face on the back of the pendant.

Take a wire ring (or bend one) and add it to the hole you made. Take the solid ring and add it to the wire ring . Close your wire ring and turn it so the join of the wire is in the pendant, not visible.

Take a piece of string. Mine is already at the right size and has already been knotted. Put the middle of the string through the pendant.  Take the end of the string and pull it through the loop created in the last step. Pull it tight to get your knot.

That's it, you're done! I hope you liked it!

If you have made a ghost pendant (or an other awesome pendant using the same technique), I would love to see it! What can you come up with?