Make: Party Plates

You'll be seeing this skull image quite a lot in the weeks to come. I had to order replacements because the first pair was lost in the move, so I'm determined to make them earn their keep. (I think I'll add a tag for every entry using the images.) On Sunday, I tried out a theory, stamping the back of some clear plastic plates. It ended up being a little tedious, but I like the effect, so I'm going to do up a bunch for my birthday party. Following are the steps I followed:

First, gather your materials:

Clear plastic plates (available at local grocery & food service stores). These are essential, because there is no food-safe ink that I'm aware of, so we must stamp on the reverse side. (The images will be flipped.)

Rubber stamp(s). Phrase stamps won't work because of the way we're stamping, but most image stamps should work fine. I'm using two skulls from StampFrancisco: Large and Small. I ordered the "cling cushion" version because I already had some acrylic blocks. They also come mounted on wood blocks (and unmounted).

Solvent ink. I used JetBlack StazOn ink from Tsukineko. This is a great ink, but it's a little smelly, so make sure you use it in a well-ventilated area. It's also pretty permanent once it dries, so this is probably not a project for the little ones. (It stamps great on shrink plastic & CDs, too.) Read any warnings on the packaging and follow. Don't work anywhere near light-colored fabrics.

Solvent ink cleaner. I have no idea where I got mine; I've had it for years. The same company that makes the StazOn ink also makes a cleaner: Tsukineko StazOn All-Purpose Cleaner.

Paper towels

Don't bother washing the plates before you start. You're going to be touching the surface with your hands a lot and may have some cleaner on the reverse side, so washing afterward is crucial.

Ink your stamp.

These steps are a little tricky to convey when one is doing one's own photography. Depending on your stamp size and the detailing, you may be able to stamp the plate on a table or counter. This stamp needed some extra attention, so I held the stamp in my hand, inked side up, and placed the back-side of the plate down onto the inked surface.

We are always stamping the BACK of the plates.

Then, I carefully pressed the plate down onto the inked stamp. (Needed one hand to take the picture! The stamp and plate were held in one hand, while I pressed down with the other.)

Work quickly: this ink dries fast!

Take care not to bounce or twist the stamp.

If necessary, flip the plate over and press the stamp down.

Carefully pull the stamp away from the plate. The ink will be completely dry and pretty permanent within a minute or two.

If the image isn't clear, quickly use the solvent cleaner to remove the image and try again. The plates I did took a couple attempts each. (When you're all done, use the cleaner to clean the stamp.)

Finally, gently wash the plates in warm, soapy water and rinse.

Bonus: They're reusable! (Probably hand-wash only.)

Disclaimer: Use of tutorials or other information on this blog is done at your own discretion and risk. Please use common sense and good safety practices. I accept no responsibility for other peoples' application of my entries.

We need a little...Halloween - part 2

Continued from yesterday...

I was pretty surprised that I ended up with so many ideas to share that I needed to split them up. More things you can do now to get your Halloween "fix":

• Get crafty. Make some decorations or props now for October. I plan on making another skull pillow soon (the one I made for myself a few years ago (right) was damaged). Of course, in our house, something like this would be out on the couch all of the time!
• Whenever I'm in the Halloween mood, I grab a stack of books from my Halloween shelf in our home library and flip through them for inspiration. If you don't have a shelf like this, it's probably a great time to check books out of the public library (not a lot of competition) or order a few to start your own collection. (I'm a big fan of Amazon's used book options, but read the descriptions carefully.) I've started cataloging my own library, but it's not completely up-to-date.
  
• Read some spooky classics:
  
  • Edgar Allen Poe
  • Dracula
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party
  • During a recent thrift store haul, we found an illustrated Sherlock Holmes and an Alfred Hitchcock mystery book, which I plan to look through during the next thunderstorm.

• Visit some old cemeteries. I don't know if I'll ever actually have a graveyard display, but I do love wandering around old cemeteries and taking pictures for future inspiration. (I've also been meaning to get my gravestone-rubbing kit back together!) When we were in New Hampshire last week, I spotted a strange, old cemetery with an iron gate at the bottom of a hill and some stones visible up on the hill. What a steep climb! I didn't get many pictures because, as old as the place was, there was a graveside-service going on and I didn't want to seem disrespectful. (Pics are on Flickr.)
  
• While you're out shopping, keep an eye out for things that might work for Halloween. At Michaels (a craft store) the other day, I found some monster-themed party favors and grabbed several to add to my cauldron of treats.
• Along the same lines, hit up some thrift stores! My husband and I like browsing in them. He has fabulous luck (our amazing vacuum and crazy-expensive (if we'd bought it new) recumbent exercise bike both came from thrift stores after he declared his intentions while on the road. (Sorry to digress, neither of us believe it was anything other than a coincidence, but still, he has the lucky gene.)) I search for plain white sheets to drape over the furniture come Halloween, and one store actually has a Halloween section all the time. Most of the stuff is lame, but I get lucky, too, every once in a while. Beware, though: some of the prices are just nuts. I can get a set of new white sheets at Wal-mart for less than the one store was charging for a beat-up old set. I mean, they're old sheets, not some classic/vintage stuff!
  
• Be just a little patient. I read that Martha Stewart's Halloween special (magazine) is coming out in mid-August.

We need a little...Halloween - part 1

We've all heard the carol We Need a Little Christmas, which includes the line "I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now." Well, I'm almost always interested in rushing things Halloween-related, but - like I mentioned in my previous post - Halloween is hard to come by in July. Here are some things you can do right now:

• Check out the blogs of year 'round fanatics for inspiration and just fun reading. Some are more year 'round than others (I'm skipping any that look like just excuses to post what are essentially ads):
  
  • PumpkinRot
  • Creepy Cupcake
  • Frog on the Pumpkin
  • Haunt Style
  • Season of Shadows
    
  • The Halloween Tree
  • Witching for Stitching
  • Orange and Black
    
• Watch a favorite Halloween-themed movie, or any fave horror flick. Some of my go-to movies are:
  
  • Hocus Pocus
  • Halloween (1978), Halloween II & Halloween H20
  • Thirteen Ghosts (1960)
  • The Haunting: 1963 or 1999 (I'm not a huge fan of remakes, but this one was okay)
  • The Fog (1980) or The Thing (remake, 1982) (John Carpenter RULES Halloween)
    
• Plan a party. It doesn't have to be a big, elaborate deal. Invite a couple of friends over for a movie night, but why not send invitations and have a couple of themed dishes? Prepare a small trick-or-treat bag for them to take home. You could have it now, or start planning for something in October!
• Pull Halloween boxes/tub(s) out of storage and go through them to see what needs to be fixed or tossed, and remind yourself of things you bought on sale last November that might find their way into your display. (I was reminded that a mad scientist/apothecary display was something I wanted to add.)
• Update your computer's wallpaper:
  
  • My current wallpaper
  • The next is planned
  • Pumpkinrot's Wallpapers are quite spectacular
    
  • Google Image search for "Halloween Wallpaper" (be careful clicking on links)
    

For myself, in addition to much of the above:

• I'm throwing a Halloween party in August this year.
• It may be time soon for our annual trip to Hell, MI, which I will most certainly blog about.

I ended up with so many ideas that it seemed prudent to split this into two entries. So look for more tomorrow!

Had to order it: Pumpkin Scoop

It's a real pain when you're in the Halloween mood, but it's July and there is very little shopping to be had. Last week, when I was updating myhalloweenlinks (the list), I clicked on every single link, including the one for Crate and Barrel. At the moment, their selection is quite small, but they had this Pumpkin Scoop on sale for half off ($3.95). The shipping was a little steep at $4.95 (compared to the item -- it's always seems a little weird to pay more for shipping than for the item I'm buying), but only put the total to just about $1 over the original price. So I decided to go for it.

I've been wanting to put a real pumpkin carving kit together for some time, and this is my first official piece (if you don't count the random little saws leftover from previous poke-'n-carve sets).

Party Planning: Save-the-dates

Here is where I confess to being a complete geek: I actually sent out "save the dates" for my upcoming birthday party. I've also heard them called "pre-invitations." I send them out for two main reasons: 1) I have more than one idea that I want to use, 2) I really do want people to save the date!

Not a of information is required for this kind of thing, so I finally had a use for the little skeleton hands I picked up some time ago. (I've seen them in dollar stores since, although I bought them elsewhere.) I'm not trying to be cheap - I've actually been collecting things with this kind of thing in mind and am thrilled that I finally get to use some of them.

I used a mini template of my own design (I like the kind that open on the short end) to make the small business card-size envelopes out of my "signature" (until it runs out) chartreuse paper. I used some gray ink to make the paper look a little distressed.

I just printed out my info. on ivory cardstock, using a business card template and trimmed the cards to fit the envelopes and rounded the corners using a little tool available in the scrapbooking section of craft stores.

Finally, I used some 2-sided mounting foam to attach the envelope to the hands. I slipped each little missive into a treat envelope and sealed it with a round label. Each of those went into a padded envelope with custom address labels (more chartreuse paper).

For several reasons, we have to keep the guest list for parties pretty small. One tiny benefit is that it's not cost-prohibitive to spend a little extra on postage, etc. since we aren't sending out that many.

Spooky Giftmas Tree

This picture was taken Thanksgiving 2009 and there are no special effects applied to it. What you see here is what a Giftmas tree looks like when you have a fog machine running. The joy of having an industrial fog machine is that you can have a room, basement or house full of fog whenever you want. Instant horror setting! And yes, we do crank it up whenever the mood strikes.

While working on the movie, I found myself shut up in a large barn with another dozen people and a ton of fog (dense, floor-to-ceiling). It can actually be somewhat claustrophobic if you have an issue with that kind of thing. I tried to be a trooper, though, and quietly had my panic attack in the corner, next to the door, before going back to shoot my scene. Last weekend, we shot a scene in our basement, and the fog helped diffuse the light. What an amazing shot! I can't wait to share pictures of that!!

That's my nephew, J., in the picture. J loves Halloween, but he loves Christmas more, and begged me to put up a tree. (We usually don't.) He loves all holidays, and on this day he got four of them: Thanksgiving, Giftmas, Halloween and Independence Day (we also attempted to use sparklers on the front porch).

Make: Brownie Pops

As promised, here's an update about the brownie pops I made yesterday. Obviously, these are not Halloween-y, but it would be very easy to make the simple adorned version Halloween themed, with candy melts & sprinkles in the right colors.

Materials:

• 8-cavity Brownie Pop mold. I used 50%-off coupons at Michaels to get two of them for the price of one (2 visits). The family-size mix makes almost 2 dozen pops, so two molds makes it go a little faster.
  
• Brownie batter (Using a mix, I followed the directions for "cake-like" brownies because I read somewhere that they might be better for the pops. I'm not convinced (more on that later).)
• Non-stick spray. Essential.
• Lollipop sticks. Buy more than you think you need. Including goofs, I used more than 50 for 2 mixes.
• Candy melts. If you want to have the sticks coming out the small end, like most of the online images show, get "chocolate" to help hold the sticks in place. I didn't have great luck with that, but all I had was white and held back. Ignore the frosting. I had this idea that warmed frosting (thins it out) would work. Not so much. It does okay for some other treats, and in other seasons, but you really want the candy melts.
  
• Sprinkles. Your choice,
• A method to melt the candy and keep it liquid for dipping. My "double boiler" is a small pan, with some water in the bottom (keep an eye on that), a stainless steel bowl nestled well inside (above the water), and a small paper bowl inside that (easier clean-up).
  
• Treat bags and something to tie.
  
• Something to stick the pops in while the candy dries. I used a slab of foam, covered with foil.
  

The jury is still out for me. The cutest pops (seen online) require that you bake the brownies and let them cool, then insert the stick with some candy melted on the end to keep it in place. I didn't have great luck with that, and only had the white candy, so it looked odd. Maybe I didn't use enough because of that? For me, the best way was to follow the package direction: bake for about 15 minutes, insert the sticks and bake for another 10 minutes or so. (I also realized I might never have enough patience to make the little ghosts and people were just going to eat them anyway!)

Ignore that little rim inside the mold cavity, if you think it's a fill line. It's really, really not. You want to stop adding batter when there's about as much space below the line as there is above it. Unless the fact that I added an extra egg for "cake-like brownies" made it puff up that much. It seemed impossible to keep the brownies from puffing up a lot near the end and shifting in the pan (way-crooked sticks!). Next time, I'll skip the extra egg and see if that helps. Note: if you want to use a stick in the small end, you CANNOT trim the wider end so it looks more even. You need that crust to stop the stick from poking through.

Let the pops cool completely before you start to decorate, especially if you're going to use a foam block to have the pops stand up while they set. (Lesson learned: let the pops cool while lying flat. Gravity will pull the brownie down the stick if it's still warm and extra moist inside.)

Someday, I'm going to get one of those special candy melt pots and will be able to dip the entire pop. But my current method, mentioned above, really only let me get a bit of the pop coated, which still looks pretty fun. I left a few undecorated, and about as many with just the candy and no sprinkles, and dipped the rest in colorful or chocolate sprinkles.

Once the candy is set (may require some refrigeration), you can wrap each with a treat bag (lollipop size) and tie it shut. The event these are for isn't for a couple of days, but I took the rejects to work today (the ones with the frosting) and they were a pretty big hit.

I'm baaack

It's been a long time since I've blogged - anywhere - and I'm really sorry. Life has been busy! I think I shared earlier that I'm involved in a movie project. I also started a new job late in 2009 and that has sucked up so much of my time (extended each work day by an hour...amazing how that can drain you). I'm going to try to post here a little more regularly now (crossing fingers).
I'm working on a Halloween-themed birthday party for myself. It's my 45th and I'm really just wanting a party. And why not have my favorite theme? I'm only sorry that I had to keep the guest list small.

News for today: We picked up a couple of the Wilton Brownie Pop molds today and I'm going to give them a go tomorrow for an event we're attending next week. They won't be Halloween-themed, but will be a good trial run for later. I found a handful of fun, seasonal decorating ideas:

• Black Cats
  
• Eyeballs
  
• Ghosts
• Pumpkins

I definitely want to make the ghost pop pictured here (pic snagged from the Wilton site), but would probably try to use the food-safe markers rather than piping on black icing.

Tomorrow, they'll just be brownies, some plain, some dipped in a bit of melted icing and sprinkles, something like the ones on this page. I promise to come back with pics. (I have so many ideas swimming that I'm afraid I'll get overwhelmed instead of sharing them!)

Books

Yikes! Where does the time go? I fully intended on making regular entries here, but life has been chaotic. And then there was that movie shoot that took me away for 9 days. I'm only just now starting to feel normal and rested again. Time to jump back in!

The Halloween Spectacle
I received this first book as a complimentary preview. I'm glad I liked it, because I'm new at this and it would feel really strange to have to offer a negative review of something I got for free. But hey, I liked it! (Whew!) The Halloween Spectacle, by Lesley Hershman, is geared for elementary school ages (the young hero is in the 4th grade) and it's really sweet.

Jake desperately wants a very pricey store-bought costume, but money is tight. An older neighbor lady offers him some seeds with some very complicated directions, promising a Halloween spectacle. One thing I liked about the book is that it does not have a predictable ending. When I read that Jake's parents were having money trouble, I figured I knew exactly how the story would end. I was wrong. That's all I'll say, except that it was a pleasant change from the usual.

I identified with Jake, who was awkward and out of step. That was me all through school! I cringed for him when his crafty mom wanted to make his costumes every year, and they were kind of lame and sad because they were made from what was near at hand (and did not take his preferences or interests into account). That, at least, I didn't have to deal with. But I still felt for him. I'm a crafter, and learned long ago that not everything needs to be knitted, for example.

Black Plants
If you're a gardener who loves Halloween, check out the book Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices for the Garden by Paul Bonine. I have a copy and it's just gorgeous. (Also, some of the "black" plants are very deep purple or red, so they're quite striking without being actually black, if the thought of a black garden doesn't float your boat.)

Free books?
It's the time to start reading scary books! I have a collection of favorites that I return to when the mood strikes but, for the last year, I've also been trying to read some classics that I've not read before. Last year, just before Halloween, I read Dracula (for the first time!), among others. Earlier this year, when the mood found me, I enjoyed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. For the current spooky season, I'm continuing that plan: I recently read Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and am currently reading The Turn of the Screw.

A great way to get your hands - quickly and cheaply - on new-to-you scary books is to download PDFs of books in the public domain (as many of the classics are).

I've recommended Google Books in the past, but really... I've had such spotty results (every book I've downloaded has been missing at least one set of pages), so I'd suggest moving them down your list. Instead, check out FeedBooks (link is to horror selection, naturally). If you have a Kindle, many of the books are available in a compatible format. The PDFs that I've downloaded so far are clear and easy to flip through. I linked to them here, regardless of my source.

Another way is to find free books is to use a site like Good Reads (which I use & love), and search for a book that interests you. If a preview or - even better - free download is available, a button is there for you to click. The bonus is that you can, at the same time, add the book to one of your "shelves."

Collecting: Trick or Treat

This photo was taken in February of this year. Our collection of David Frykman Trick-or-Treaters (TOT) is on display, somewhere in the house, at all times. We're missing a couple of items (black cat on pumpkin, ghost costume candle holder and walking witch), but only one falls under the ToT category, so I'm not hyperventilating. Not shown is the flat Jack-o-lantern Votive Holder. That's in the master bath, next to the tub.

We bought our first piece (the boy in the devil costume) about 5 or 6 years ago at the gift store in Hell, MI. That's how collections get started! Finding the others has been a trip. The bunny boy showed up with broken ears, but he was so hard to find that I just glued them on and chalked it up to experience. They're the closest to "cute" that my Halloween decorations get.

I've heard from a few folks in the Ravelry Halloween Geeks group that they have some Halloween decorations up year 'round. Do you?

Fun: Para Abnormal Comics

I love Dave Lowe's work. He is a real Halloween fan, and I'll probably be pointing you to some of his other online antics. Today, though, check out his Para Abnormal web comic. This is a slightly older one (April), but I'm on a zombie kick, for reasons which will be made clear to you soon enough.

Shop: The Sunshine Shed

I would be shocked to find a Halloween buff that didn't find something they liked at The Sunshine Shed.

Personally, since I collect acorns, I have my eye on the rusted acorn (page 2), but there are so many other things!

PS: I'm working on a zombie-themed post -- lots and lots of zombie items -- and am going to do a small giveaway after I get a couple more "followers" on Google. Have you been dying to try something from Dark Candles? I'm going to share one of my votives so you can see for yourself.

Knit: Spider Scarf - Amazing

I promise, not all the content will be about knitting. But I do knit, and dye yarn, so it's natural that I'd get started with some posts that have many interests colliding. Really, whether or not you knit, you need to see this scarf:

(image used with permission from idyllicchick)

Details
Pattern: October is for Spinners
Download free pattern (PDF)
Ravelry Link
by Sharon Emery, co-owner of Hanks Yarn and Fiber in Gainesville, FL

I'm telling you: I don't even like spiders. And this is in my queue. I think it's brilliant.

In case you're wondering: you start knitting with several strands of laceweight yarn, on smaller needles. Then, as you go, you a) drop a strand of yarn, and b) go up a needle size, until you're working on the largest needles with a single strand.