A Little Sneaky Look

I snapped this photo (which is slightly blurry in the corners) of most of the pieces I'll be posting tomorrow morning. I thought it might be nice to see ahead of time what pieces might strike your fancy. I'll of course be posting close up photos and prices tomorrow. I kinda like how they look all laid out. Like a big Halloweeny crowd. :) Enjoy the little peek!

Halloween Update Announcement!

Eeek! It's already September and the fall and spooky Halloween season is almost here! It's my very favorite holiday to create for...there I said it! Sorry Christmas and Easter! To kick off the holiday, I'm having my first Halloween update of the season. Characters will include a party of fancily dressed gals, some paper mache headed critters and creatures from the garden and the graveyard, and many others! I hope you'll stop by to see what I have in store for you!

In the mean time, I'll be posting some "old friends" to Etsy...old favorites, made to order, from past years. Take a peek and see if there's anyone you'd like to get your hands on. Shipping from Etsy can be combined with pieces from the update. :)

Blog readers get first dibs as usual and if you'd like to be notified about upcoming blog updates and special events, just sign up for my mailing list on the right side of my blog, or leave a comment with your email address.

New one-of-a-kind pieces will be available for purchase on:

Friday, September 9th. Here, the blog. 11:00 am EST.

See you here on Friday! :)

At long last I'm teaching a workshop!!

Many of you have asked over the last few years whether I ever teach workshops, and until now the answer has always been, "unfortunately not" (with a frowny face). But I've finally decided to teach a Halloween workshop in the workshop line up at the fabulous and wonderful Tinsel Trading Company in New York! It's one of my very favorite places to go in the city and where better to work than in a space where you're surrounded by ancient and glittery and inspiring materials? I'm very excited about teaching and can't wait to show my students (pupils?) a whole bunch of tips and techniques for making the things I make.

I'm working on the class sample right now and will post about the details very soon. In the mean time, mark your calendar for October 1st, as that's when the spooky Halloween magic is happening! I really hope to see you in the big apple very soon! :)

All of these gorgeous photos of the Tinsel Trading Company store were taken from the Shopikon website.

Halloween!

I feel quite behind with Halloween this year. I usually get out my black and orange glitter long before now...like in July! But alas, I am finally working on some fun and fancy Halloween pieces for an update for (I think) next week...soon to be announced.

Halloween could possibly be my very favorite holiday to create for because the possibilities seem more endless than any other occasion...and if something looks a little off and creepy...hey it's Halloween! It's supposed to be creepy! :)
For my first Halloween update of the year I have a couple of loose categories going, including some garden people with sculpted heads, and having just recently been inspired by the old Bogie Books from Dennison (a crepe paper manufacturer from the early days), I have a collection of Halloween gala girls... With slightly fancier than usual crepe outfits.

I'm really enjoying working on them and I can't wait to show you the final results! :)

Arts & Science

I feel like quite the lucky girl. I have so many amazing and wonderful customers and am just tickled by them (and you) all for so many different reasons. Some of those customers are stores around the country and around the world. A few weeks ago I got a surprise catalog in the mail from a customer in Japan. It was the new Arts & Science catalog and it was gorgeous! Lots of creative and unique clothing and accessories, wonderful baubles and doodads, and as I was flipping through, I discovered my little elephant pictured among the tissue thin pages. He looks so fancy in this context and I was just tickled. Thank you so much for sharing this with me Arts & Science!


Their catalog was so beautiful and detailed....they even had outline illustrations with the description of each item.

This herd of elephants is almost ready to make their venture to Japan! And they have many many friends going along with them. :)

Arts & Science is a wonderfully creative and gorgeous store with locations all over Tokyo. Check out their cool website and all the cool goodies they have! And of course if you ever find yourself in Japan, be sure to check out at least one of their shops!

Desktop

I was just in the middle of painting a polar bear's ears when I stopped and looked at my desktop. I wondered if Santa's workshop was as messy as mine, but regardless, I thought a quick snapshot would be fun. A sparkly mess is way more fun than a boring blank work surface anyway, right?

Ok...back to painting! :)

Tomatoes are coming out of my ears!

I've got lots on my to do list, but I had to take a break from it all yesterday to process all the tomatoes I plucked from my parent's garden the other day. And boy did I process! Two huge tubs and then some, was blanched, peeled and squeezed. It was rather nice to be in the safety of the kitchen while hurricane Irene blew and spit and cried right outside the window. I watched movies on my little kitchen TV while I was elbow deep in a sink full of tomatoes and it was quite cozy.
All of these tomatoes now fit neatly into the fridge and await Ben to work his magic and transform them into his delicious sauce...so yummy I could (and do) eat it with a spoon! Yum!

I hope everyone survived the storm unscathed!
All you easterners were in my thoughts yesterday!