For the base I cut a circle of cardboard and covered it with tin foil.

To help support my brain, I used two egg holes from an egg carton.

After I had a brain dome, I rolled out thin snakes of dough and pressed them on in squiggles, making one half at a time to kind of create a real brain shape with the center sulcus? (anatomy was a while ago).

Once the other side was on, my brain was formed and I let it dry for a few days.

I ended up putting it on a drying rack to let the bottom dry too. I was really impressed with the homemade dough once it was dry.  It held up well and didn't really even crack anywhere.  I went with homemade to save money and because I was too lazy to go to the store just for play dough, and I think it worked better.

Once my brain was dry, I actually spray painted it grey with primer.  Mainly because I had the weird green.

Then I used acrylic craft paint and painted the worms a fleshy pink.  I didn't paint down in between the cracks on purpose, so it would kind of have contrast.

It didn't seem real or scary enough, so I watered down some red paint and just sloppily brushed a little on the top of the worms.

The finished brain.

I had looked for a dome cover at the thrift stores, but found nothing close.  I ended up taking this sloped vase instead for $.50.  I wrote the info on cardstock and burned the edges, acidentally burning some writing actually, oops! then just taped it on.

I chose the name of the brain from the movie Young Frankenstein.

If you've seen the movie, you probably recognized that right away.  It's a Halloween classic.

Because the drying time, this little project spanned a few days, but it was fun.  Obviously when I made the play dough, my little boy got his own chunk to play with while I made the brain.

I think it's time to reveal the whole creepy table scape next.

This was super easy.

I just got a package of ping pong balls at Dollar Tree.

Then using permanent markers, drew the pupil and iris on each ball.  I only had blue, I wish I'd had a brown Sharpie to give my jar variety.  Then with red I drew squiggle veins.

Then I just jammed the ping ball eyes in a little mason jar, so they'd seem really pickled.  I poured about half water and half white vinegar to hopefully prevent bacteria, gross growth, and a drop or two of green food coloring.  I just wrapped some twine around the ring.  I also thought maybe yellow food coloring would look gross too, but then I thought of urine since we've had a lot of that lately with potty training and went with green.

Next:

This was another easy one with stuff you already have probably.

I just took a big text book that was black (you could always cover one with black paper or I had planned on using a brown paper bag but found a black cover and got lazy).

If you had  an old family bible that would be really cool to use.

For the pages, I used newsprint (actually the newsprint the thrift store wrapped some glassware in).

It was a big sheet, so I folded it in half and jammed it in the center of the book.

With the book closed, I could trace the size of the page without measuring anything.  Then I just took the paper out and cut out the pages.  So it's just one sheet with the fold in it.

So I found the recipe for Polyjuice Potion, my little ode to HP.

I wrote the potions with a fountain ink pen to look like a quill was used.

Then to further age the pages, I used the shoe polish and stipple brush to add some brown tarnish.  It really showed the wrinkles in the newsprint which I liked.

To attach my pages to the text book, I opened the book to the middle, and jammed the fold in.

The I just used painter's tape on the corners to attach it to the page.

I'm displaying my spell book on my console table.  It sits on a little glob of spanish moss, and I added the centipede bookmark, and the spider. 

I also added these jailer keys I've had for a while. to the base of the book.

Only a few more of these creepy Halloween items and then we'll show  you the whole witch table!

Using a craft knife, I made pretty big holes in one end of each egg, then a pin hole in the other end to blow the yolk and whites out, leaving me empty egg shells.

I soaked my shells in tea for a few hours.  I forgot to add a little vinegar, which probably would have helped them dye darker before I decided they were done.

I only had 6 eggs when I decided to do this, but I'm thinking I may add a few more.  Or I may be lazy and just leave it as it is.

Happy Nasty Halloween!

Next I used brown paint to add skull sutures. Just squiggly lines on the skull where bones fuse.

Then I tried to add brown dimension with watered paint, but it didn't work.

So to shade the skull, I used brown shoe polish and a stipple brush to make the skull look more dimensional.

I thought it looked a lot better than the plain plastic.

After it was finished, my little guy looked it and said: "Mean pirate!" So I guess at least for him, I met the goal to make it creepy, and a pirate.

A bleeding candle and a container of poisoned dragon liver.

Here's the original items I found at the thrift store.

POISONED DRAGON LIVER:

familiar from Bedknobs and Broomsticks?

For the tag, I burned the edges of white cardstock and wrote the text with an ink fountain pen.

I covered the original label with twine, and used it to attach the dragon tag.

BLEEDING CANDLE:

Another easy project.

I spray painted the candle holder black.

Then to make the candle bleed, stuck it in some dirt outside.

Next I melted the red candle and let it drip down the sides.

The red was just the outer coating, so I ended up melting about half way down the candle by the end.

Hope you aren't sick of Halloween...more creepy creations to come.

Basically potato stamp skeletons and wax paper/ crayon pumpkins sewn on fishing line.

SKELETONS:

I got the idea from the Martha Stewart website.  The link for this particular craft is here, there were lots of fun Halloween ideas on there.

There's a template, but I just hacked out my skeleton on my own, very similar to theirs though.

I used acrylic white paint to stamp them onto black construction paper.  I learned less paint on the potato makes a better stamp.  I didn't dip the potato in paint, but just used my finger to add a thin layer each time.  My son had fun stamping his paper, but you couldn't really tell they were skeletons so I made these ones.

PUMPKINS:

These came from Vanessa's idea here.  Basically melting wax paper and crayon shavings into single layers.

The tutorial is for fall leaves, but the same idea, I just used yellow and orange crayon shavings to have a orangish sheet for little pumpkins.  I drew the jack-o-lantern faces on with a black thin permanent marker.