Australian Halloween Mandarin Decorations

I am a big proponent of Halloween in Australia.

One reason is that when I was very young we still celebrated guy Fawkes night on November 5 with bonfires and firecrackers (Guy Fawkes night is an English celebration commemorating the interruption of a terrorist plot in London in 1605). Firecrackers were banned in Victoria in 1982 which led to the demise of Guy Fawkes night.

Another reason is my brother - he lives in a suburb wherever half the people on the street celebrate Christmas and the other half celebrate the end of Ramadan, but they all do Halloween. 

I think replacing an English import with something where you get to dress up and meet your neighbours while snacking on delicious treats is great.

And I love seasonal decorations - so here are some particularly Australian Halloween decorations.

The top half are Australian animals etc

Flying Fox (bat)

Funnel web spider

Eucalyptus leaves

Southern stars

Cat (feral?)

Drop Bear

The second half is Australians smiling which seems to look much scarier in black and white on a mandarin than IRL

Kitty Flanagan

Molly Meldrum

Bert Newton

Kasey Chambers

Dave Hughes

Chad Morgan

Kylie Minogue

Rhonda Burchmore

Melissa Leong

Mandarins, printer, scissors, black marker and non toxic glue (I used a stick glue from Bostik).

Print a file from the supplies step, if you have a laser printer the solid ones are good, if you have an inkjet save your (expensive not waterproof) ink and use an outline file, there is a PDF or JPG of both. I used regular 100 gsm paper and I wouldn't go any heavier.

Cut the shapes out of the paper, use the black marker to tidy up the edges (laser printer) or colour in the whole thing (inkjet printer).

Glue the shapes to the mandarins, it isn't actually that straight forward because the mandarin is roundish, but persevere.