Trick or Treat Sweets

Hi, everyone! Rebecca (ReboScraps) here with a fun little project I whipped up for Halloween. I know it might SEEM a bit early to think of Halloween, but I find that I like to have plenty of time for creating, cutting and pasting my finishing touches.

My Aunt Johanne, a fellow crafter, often says “It doesn’t have to be what it is!” What she means is that sometimes you can use something in multiple ways if you are open to what something could be, if you repurpose or reinvent it. With this in mind, I went shopping in The Hybrid Chick store, specifically looking for a template I could use for a Halloween treat box.

When I found the Carrot Box Template Set and Cutting Files by Kelleigh Ratzlaff, I realized the shape of a carrot is rather similar to the shape of… Candy Corn!

If you want to make this project, you’ll need:

• Carrot Box Template Set and Cutting Files by Kelleigh Ratzlaff
• Sunkissed Digital Kit by Dawn by Design
• Scoring tool
• Mono Adhesive Permanent
• Twine (or other ribbon or string)
• 1/8″ hole punch
• Font: Too Much Paper

I’m also going to show you the steps I used in Photoshop to add the layers for the different colors of candy corn. Let’s get started!

Candy Corn is orange at the large end, then has a stripe of yellow and a white tip. I want my “carrot” to have that look as well. Once I had the template open in Photoshop Elements, I used the Polygonal Lasso tool to draw a basic shape around what will become my orange layer. You can’t see it in this view, but the cutting and scoring guide included in the template file helped me figure out where to click when I was making my selection. I basically wanted it to be about the top 1/3 of the “carrot.” Here’s what my selection looked like:

Once I had my selection made, I clicked on the template shape layer in the layer palette on the right, then used the command “CTRL-J” to make a copy of that layer. By following these steps, the result is a copy of the layer that is cropped to include only the area that was in my selection.

Next, to make it easier to see what I was doing, I reduced the opacity of the full template layer. Below, you can see the full template shape (the gray area), the shape I cropped in the previous step (the black area), and a new selection that will become the next piece of the Candy Corn (the dotted lines).

Once this selection was made, I again made sure that the full template shape was the selected layer in the layer palette, and used the “CTRL-J” command to make another layer copy. Now, I have three separate layers in my template: the light gray, which will become the white part of my Candy Corn; the darker gray, which will be the yellow part of the Candy Corn; and the black area, which will be orange. At this point, you want to make sure that if you have changed the opacity of any layers, you return them to 100%.

Next, clip papers to each of your layers. I decided to give mine a fun look by using print instead of solid papers. Here’s my project at the end of the digital design:

Once designed, just print it out and follow the lines provided to cut out and fold the template, and use your favorite adhesive to glue it together. Add some treats inside, and ta-da! Halloween cuteness!

For finishing touches on my project, I punched small holes in the top of 2 of the tabs and tied my project with twine. I also added a tag I made using one of the elements from the Sunkissed Digital Kit.

Other Articles by ReboScraps:

• One Little Word Banner - May 22nd, 2013
• Travel Journal - February 19th, 2013
• Paper Roses Ornament - January 23rd, 2013
• Candle Wrappers - December 13th, 2012
• Holiday Place Cards and Napkin Rings - November 16th, 2012