Valentine the Voodoo Pincushion

Are you spending Valentine’s Day alone after a nasty break-up? Then why not exact your revenge on that no good so-and-so with a little old-fashioned voodoo? Valentine the Voodoo Pincushion is the perfect outlet for all sorts of frustrations, even if you haven’t been spurned by a lover. With a little bit of felt, thread, stuffing, and crafty know-how, you can have your very own voodoo doll to puncture to your heart’s content. Full instructions are included by Indie Spotting.

Bleeding Heart Cupcakes

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know how much we enjoy cupcakes over here at the Happy Seamstress (in fact, the last three round-ups included a cupcake recipe), so it’ll come as no surprise that we’re going to list one here. However, instead of your traditionally pink-frosted heart-shaped confection, this recipe from yumsugar allows you to make an anatomically correct heart cupcake, complete with oozing strawberry jam blood.

Anti-Valentine Cards

Do you feel that the messages on the cards you buy in the store don’t fully convey the range of your feelings for this holiday? How about printing out one of these free Anti-Valentine Cards by me(ish) for someone you care about (or hate, as the case might be)? They cover the whole range from understated to painfully direct with messages like “Happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day”, and the less subtle “Valentine’s Day Sucks”.

Bleeding Heart Martini

This next recipe comes from Martha Stewart Living, of all places. Originally intended as a Halloween cocktail, the Bleeding Heart Martini is a fun twist on your traditional gin and vermouth martini with the addition of a pickled baby beet, which lends the drink a bloody hue. It would make a great cocktail to serve at an Anti-Valentine’s Day party, or simply to drink alone during a quiet night at home.

You can also find a fairly comprehensive list of other delicious cocktails to serve on this anti-holiday at Latina (you just have to scroll past the lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day-themed drinks). My personal favourite is “Adios Motherf-er”, which contains vodka, tequila, rum, and gin!

Grouchy Love Bug

For the folks who aren’t a fan of Valentine’s Day, but can still appreciate a little cuteness in their lives, you can make some chocolate-strawberry grouchy love bugs with little “Love Stinks!” signs. Wing-It Vegan offers extremely comprehensive instructions on how to dip your strawberries in chocolate, make and attach those little antennae, and decorate your love bugs. I would skip the cutesy “I (heart) U” bugs, however, and make a whole army of frowning grouchy anti-love bugs.

Dalek Embroidery

If you’re feeling a little bit nerdy, you might want to try your hand at stitching this adorable scene of a Dalek (from Dr. Who) attempting to exterminate a balloon heart. Sarah from Trying to Enjoy Life based this embroidery on an anti-Valentine sketch (which, unfortunately, is not linked from the post). It would look really fantastic in a cute frame!

Bleeding impaled heart ornaments

Continuing with the hand-stitched theme, why not make yourself some of these felt bleeding heart ornaments. Katie Canavan of Under the Red Umbrella has only posted the pictures of her creations without instructions, but I think that anyone with some basic stitching skills would be able to reproduce these without too much hassle. However, if you’re feeling lazy and would rather support an all-around crafty lady, you can also buy some from her Etsy shop. These would look great hung on a vase full of dead branches… sort of like an Anti-Valentine’s Tree!

Cupid Shot in the Back cake

For those of you with awesome cake decorating skills, and an extreme dedication to truly hating Valentine’s Day, you might want to try to replicate this hysterical cake from Cake Central. It’s decorated with a fondant dead Cupid who was just shot in the back by one of his own arrows. The expired cherub is surrounded by flames, just in case it wasn’t painfully obvious that the baker isn’t a fan of this holiday. And just to make it even more sacrilicious, it’s made from Devil’s food cake with chocolate cream filling.

I hate Valentine’s Day

Finally, if you’re willing to go all the way and make Anti-Valentine’s Day a permanent fixture in your life, you might as well pick up a copy of I Hate Valentine’s Day (on Amazon or Barnes & Noble) by Bennett Madison. It’s a humorous guide to surviving the schmaltziest day of the year, whether you’re single or in a relationship. You’ll learn how to avoid the people and places who tend to make the holiday that much more unbearable, how to celebrate the holiday in alternative ways, and even how to score a last-minute date. And really, at just a couple of bucks, this book is a steal.

Spooky Cupcakes

Cupcakes are appropriate for any occasion. Instead of serving tons of packaged candy at your Hallowe’en party tonight, try serving up some of these delicious holiday-themed treats. Studio 5 has instructions for pumpkin, witch, spider, ghost, and mummy cupcake decorations. My personal favourites are the eyeball cupcakes shown here, made with marshmallows, life-saver candies and tiny black jelly beans… and of course red icing for those creepy veins.

Fanged Pumpkins

If you don’t have the time or patience to carve out a regular jack-o-lantern, try making one of these fanged pumpkins from Martha Stewart. They’re made by cutting one hole for the mouth into a smallish pumpkin, inserting some of those cheap dollar store plastic fangs, and using a couple of thumb tacks for eyes. There’s even a video tutorial, in case you need it explained in explicit detail.

Glow Stick Lanterns

There’s nothing quite like eerily glowing things to complete your Hallowe’en decor. To make a glowing lantern (or a bunch of them!) just activate some glow sticks, which you can get for cheap at the dollar store or pharmacy, cut the tips off them, and dump the contents into a glass jar. Then swirl the jar around to evenly coat it.

Wriggling Snake Wreath

Here’s another one from Martha Stewart: a wriggling snake wreath! From a distance, this would look like a regular wreath, but once you get close, you can see that it’s a squirming mass of creepy snakes, perfect for scaring trick-or-treaters! It’s also really simple to make. Just attach a bunch of rubber snakes to a simple grapevine wreath using floral wire or by coiling them around the wreath.

Candy Corn Cookies

Candy corn is by far my favourite Hallowe’en treat. It has that perfect mix of texture and flavour that I find absolutely irresistible. These chocolate dipped candy corn cookies, created by Be Different Act Normal, look almost as good. They were created by adding orange food colouring to a simple sugar cookie dough, cutting the cookies into triangles, and dipping one end in white chocolate and the other in dark chocolate.

Hallowe’en Crackers

Crackers aren’t just for Christmas anymore! With a toilet paper tube, some coloured crepe paper and a few Hallowe’en-ey decorations, you can create these adorable Hallowe’en crackers, again from Martha Stewart (she’s just full of good ideas!). Then fill them with lots of tasty candy!

Toothy Jack-O-Lantern

If you have a lot of time and a ton of ambition, you can test your carving skills by attempting to emulate this impressive Jack-O-Lantern. This work of art was seen at a local coffee shop and snapped by Leya at Curious Bird. I love that toothy grin, and using the stem for a nose is a really original idea. If nothing else, this is great inspiration!

Space Invaders Cutting Board

From Captain Sideburns (you gotta love the name!) comes this fantastic and well-executed Space Invaders cutting board, made of precisely-cut cubes of high quality wood, glued together with FDA-approved food safe glue. Check out his blog for the instructions.

NES Controller Coffee Table

This kicks so much butt on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. This coffee table made by Ultra Awesome is not only an impressively accurate representation of the classic NES controller blown up to giant proportions, but it actually functions as an NES controller! If you want to nerd up your own living room with one of these (and who could blame you) you can get started here.

Lego Halloween Costume

Check out CraftZine for the instructions to make this awesome/adorable/slightly strange Lego costume made of a box and plastic food containers. All you’ll need to do is find a kid to bully into wearing this thing…

Giant Super Mario Quilt

This one might just put my Mario Sweater Vest to shame. This is well over 6 feet of geeky goodness in the form of a crocheted quilt. Me like!

Underpants Gnome

I’m a huge fan of South Park, so I was so happy when I saw this cute crocheted Underpants Gnome. Based on the cuteness, you’d never guess that he’d want to pilfer all of your underpants. But it’s always the cute ones you have to look out for…

Cross-Stitched Super Mario Map

Another Mario-themed entry, this elaborately detailed Super Mario map made by the Cross Stitch Ninja is so impressive it almost takes my breath away. Even more impressive is that the Ninja made two others: Super Mario 3 World 1 and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

“Apple” Pie

I love visual puns, even more so if it’s also a dessert! Bonus points for the incredibly intricate latticework inside the apple. Find out how to make your very own here.

VHS Toaster

Finally something useful to do with those obsolete VHS players. As a bonus, now you can actually encourage your toddler to stick bread into your VCR! Learn how to make one with this tutorial from Instructables.

Where the Wild Things Are Amigurumi

I can’t get over how beautiful these crocheted characters from Where the Wild Things Are…are. Just look at how carefully the different textures of yarn were chosen and combined, and not a single detail overlooked.

jQuery Pumpkin

Finally, for you fellow coding nerds, is this pumpkin featuring a jQuery pun. See one more here, featuring yet another deliciously nerdy coding pun!

Jumping Frog

From the CraftZine blog comes this tutorial for making an adorable and slightly ridiculous jumping frog out of some paper and a paper clip. MacGyver would definitely approve. What better way to spend a snowy afternoon than by making a flock of spring-loaded frogs and racing them across the room?

Embroidered Logs

These embroidered logs from Design*Sponge would make any living room feel outdoorsy and cozy. A great project to get your power tools out for.

Recycled Hurricane Lamp Cover

Check out this tutorial for a great way to use up old paper towel tubes. This would look great alongside the embroidered logs above, or as a cluster of three different-sized ones on a mantelpiece. I found it on the talented Patricia Zapata’s blog, which you should definitely take a look at—you’ll find a lot more inspiring crafty stuff.

Crocheted Master Shake & Meatwad

Learn how to make this crocheted Master Shake doll from Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Instructables. Get the free pattern here. And while you’re at it, make a friend for him with this free pattern for a crocheted Meatwad.

Nerdy Perler Bead Coasters

Get your nerd on with this tutorial I found on the Cthulhu Crochet and Cousins blog. You’ll learn how to take a screenshot of your favourite video game character and turn it into a usable coaster.

Jell-O Fruit

Fill some hollowed-out orange, lime, and lemon peels with Jell-O with these instructions from the NotMartha blog. She says she loves food shaped like other food, and I would have to agree! It looks like so much fun, especially the weird orange slices filled with blue Jell-O.

Knitted Nautili

Fill your house with some cute creepy-crawlies with this free pattern to knit three nautili (or is it nautiluses?) from Knitty. Why not make a bunch of them and hang them from a mobile for an adorable under the sea-themed baby’s room?

Embroidered LED Froggie

Embroidery gets geeky with this tutorial from Sternlab, where you can learn how to combine LEDs into your crafts. You can also buy LED sewing kits from the online store. Why do I have a sudden urge to make a light-up Disco Stu jacket?

Paper Colbert and Paper Conan

Create your very own paper Colbert or Conan O’Brien with four free templates from CubeeCraft.

A Tiny Gingerbread House

To round out this cabin fever round-up, a tutorial for an actual cabin. Well, sort of. It’s an adorable tiny gingerbread house that can perch on a mug of hot chocolate. A great way to warm up on a cold day! This one also came from the
Not Martha blog, and she gives you ideas for lots of different rooftop decorations (my favourite is the crushed candy cane).