Happy Bat Tavern - A Project from the Artfully Musing 2015 Halloween Event

Hello everyone!

I hope you have had a chance to visit and be inspired by Laura Carson's (Artfully Musing) 2015 Halloween Event.  It is just amazing!!  The badge for the event is over in the right side column, but here's a direct link to the first of several postings for the event.

In this year's event, Laura has created a series of buildings that make up a Haunted Village.  I think there are nine buildings and accessories, as well as a large 3D manor.  She designed collage sheets/digital images for all the buildings so they could have loads of unique features, as well as images for the facades, windows, and roofs..

I new I couldn't make them all (at least not this year!) so I started with the Happy Bat Tavern.

Here is the front of the tavern.  For pretty much everything I  followed Laura's version.  I think one thing I did differently was to make layers of shingles on the roof parts.  Oh and I added acrylic to the windows.

Each building starts out with a flat chipboard house shape and possibly some additional window shapes,which are available from alphastamps.com.

In the video tutorials, Laura explains how to add features to both the front and back of these chipboard shapes to make each building 3 dimensional.


For example, for the tavern she showed how to make the curved entrance and roof pieces on the front, and the bar on the inside.

On the inside I again pretty much followed Laura's version.









A couple of special touches:

The bar patrons are each holding a mug of frosty beer.  I backed the cardstock characters with shipboard so they would be strong enough to hold a mug.  The mugs were colored with alcohol ink and then I cut a little 1/4" dowel plug and painted it white and glued it in the top.  I then took a little dab of light molding paste and made some froth,  These mugs are only about 3/4" tall,

I made the tip box into an actual box by using scarps of medium weight chipboard.  I glued a hand from a 6" skeleton in the box and it is holding a gold coin.

For each of the kegs, I added a second layer with just the tap.  I popped it up and added glossy accents to make it look more like a shiny tap.

Most of the little doodads came from alphastamps.com.


I found the little beer cans on Etsy,

A mixture of the digital images and actual objects really makes each little shop come alive.

There is something special about my version of the building - it can all be taken apart to help with storage.  For example, the bar opens up to store the accessories on top.

I make a lot of projects and I am now trying to incorporate space saving techniques wherever possible.
It's hard to show in photos how this all goes together, but when I'm finished with this year's buildings I'll make a video so you can see how it all works.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my version of the Happy Bat Tavern.  Hop on over to Laura's blog (ArtfullyMusing.blogspot.com) and get the details for this and all the other parts of the Haunted Village and join in the creative fun!  And while you're there, make sure to leave Laura kudos for this fantastic project!

I'll be back in a few days when I finish the next building... the Retching Toad Eatery.

Thanks for visiting, and until then - happy crafting, and of course, Happy Halloween!!