BOO!

Happy Halloween!

Last Bits of Halloween Craftiness

I actually made these a while ago and they've been hanging happily above my kitchen sink for a couple of weeks now.  Felt eyeballs!

With yarn optic nerves!

When I finished them (at night) I hung them with regular scotch tape from the window in the kitchen:

It was so nice to be greeted by them the following morning :)

For other decorations, I tried to find just a classic cardboard skeleton to hang on my door like my mom always did when we were kids, but couldn't find a good one anywhere.  THEN I found a link to this awesome shop online where I found not only a great skeleton, but the exact same one my mom had from years ago and various other haunts...

I've also had success with my first use of those weird window/mirror goos.....this little ghostie has done just the trick:

And I can't get over the tissue boxes I found this year....the monster candy corn makes me laugh every single time I see it!!

Finally, I remembered from last year that a local bakery down the street from my office made these amazing Halloween cupcakes, and sure enough when I checked yesterday, they had them again.  I only really cared about the eyeball ones, but the others are cute too.  No nasty sugar frosting either, just some kind of stiff creamy goodness....mmmm....

Happy Halloween!!!!!

Shout Out

Our friend Jessie is taking a cake decorating class, and I was floored today when I saw this picture of her creation - she should be on Cake Boss! It's a beautiful arrangement of Fall flowers in a lovely basket, all fully edible and magically delicious, I have no doubt (tragically, I live much too far away to experience an actual mouthful of this masterpiece). Good job, Jessie! Let us know if it tastes as good as it looks - if you can ever bear to cut into it!

DIY Halloween Decorations

Oi, more pumpkins!!  This time smaller and only one panel, reminiscent of pincushions past.  I used the same base as the purlbee cushion, but tied off the gather and topped with a stem.  I think winding the thread around the cushion would still look awesome, creating the signature grooves of pumpkins, buuuuut, this looks fine too, and is less work :)

Aside from pumpkins, I spent last night tracing out Martha Stewart shapes and cutting them out of plain black construction paper.  The jack o'lantern is kind of a pain to cut out, but totally worth it.  I still have one cat to cut out but am putting it off because the millions of little spikes to cut out are wicked daunting.   

Anyhoo, back to pumpkins.  They aren't scented like the big ones, and these are stuffed with regular polyfil for guts, but the same tiny silca beads for weighted bottoms.

(Gratuitous shot of p'kins on the counter with my new smiley face mug I never knew I couldn't live without until today)

I'm not sure where to put them yet for the Halloween season.......maybe gathered in front of my boyfriend's cookbooks?  

For now they're in a sort of centerpiece on the kitchen table with some sprigs of berries I walked 40 minutes up the road for yesterday thinking they were going to be bittersweet.  Ah well...........I just ordered a couple packs of retro Halloween pictures that will be here soon, and tonight I'm going to work on felt eyeballs!

I just can't wait!!

Pumpkins!

  

Like a lot of people, it's very rare for me to get excited for upcoming holidays as early in the season as craft stores (and malls) do.  BUT, for whatever reason, this year I am SO in the mood, and am already gearing up for cold weather crafting!!

I had been feeling really crafting lazy for most of the second half of the summer...but the recent change in weather and the fact I can smell camp fires again on a regular basis has made me antsy to get back on the sewing machine. 

So I thought of making my mom some stuffed, scented pumpkins and wanted to get started early enough so she could decorate with them this year.  I knew I wanted Halloween prints, and I've always had good luck with holiday prints at Hancock fabrics.  I love how authentic my spider print turned out to be---check out the little fella who ran down my real pumpkin during the photo shoot:

I'm also not well versed on sewing spheres, so I used this AWEsome tutorial from the Purl Bee for the basic ball, then added my own doodads to the top.

Well it never occurred to me that my resident pumpkin patch was also ready for the Halloween season.  Since I didn't plant the vine, I had no idea what type of pumpkins I had, so I tried picking one up and it came right off in my hands.  Turns out my pumpkins are wee, but I love them.

Unlike the real ones, mine are stuffed with potpourri, tiny silica beads for weight, and bamboo stuffing.  The top is a piece of felt and the whole thing is finished with a pipe cleaner stem and curly-q's. 

Hope my mom likes them!

Girlguiding UK!

The Girlguiding UK Brownie Annual for 2012 came out recently. What in the world does this have to do with me? Well, said annual includes not one but two cute little stories featuring my illustrations! I was very pleased to receive a copy today. It is quite nice - nicer than I realized it would be - and the print quality is very good, very true to the original artwork. At other times in the past I have sometimes felt disappointed when I saw the printed versions of my work - distortions, poor color matching, et cetera - but the annual looks great, and I was very happy with the whole experience.

Blog love

I just discovered my piece "Tea Party" featured on this lovely crafting blog, along with several other adorable tea-themed illustrations and crafts. Run over there and check it out!