Halloween Prep 2013!

Are you ready for Halloween? We have a firefighter and a king cobra in the family this year. How about you?

Henry's costume is easy: it's a hand-me-down from the cousins' dress-up box, made by my mom years ago. Henry has been trying it out regularly. He's so excited! He did bring up being a ballerina instead this morning, so I hope he doesn't change his mind at the last minute.

Ben's costume, as usual, is not so easy. He knew he wanted to be an animal again, or maybe something from Star Wars. He went down the list of his favorite animals -- including Secretarybird, Mongoose and Krill, I kid you not -- and finally decided on King Cobra.



Image borrowed from Arkive.org

My 6-year-old knows exactly what he wants and it is very specific. He wants a costume that looks like a real snake, made with fabric that looks like real snake skin. With a hood that creates a flare on either side of the head. And fangs.

Here's his vision of it, with views from the front and from the side:

I went to Joann's the other day, looking for "snake" fabric. I lucked out in the fashion textile departments with snake prints in black/gold and gold/brown. I also grabbed some pleather in gold and black.

I am still hashing out construction. I found this King Cobra Ninja costume online and like how the costume part fits like a poncho/shell over the black clothing. That might work well for our purposes. I shall report back soon...

Ben keeps asking "So, are you ever going to make my costume?". Gotta love the sassy First Grade attitude, oy! But I realized today that, well, he's got a point. How is it already October 17?!!! I'd better get sewing.


What costumes are you guys working on? Any cuckoo requests from your kiddos? Share links if you've got them!

Halloween Costume: Peregrine Falcon

Hi Angel!

I hope you're enjoying the weekend. The Daylight Savings time switch is once again kicking our butts over here, with Henry up at 4 a.m. instead of his usual 5 a.m. Yawn... It is also gross and rainy outside, so we're looking at a Sunday at home, and I need to fish something out of my bag of crafty tricks. Maybe we'll do some collage or painting, or maybe bake some cookies! That actually sounds pretty good! How about you?

I wanted to show you Ben's finished Halloween costume. I got it done on Tuesday evening, and while it was slightly last minute, it came together pretty well. Ben wore it to school on Wednesday morning for the school Halloween party and was so proud of himself!

Here's my Peregrine Falcon and his little bro Dinosaur (an old costume, made by my mom) on Halloween morning:




I changed my plans a bit after my original sketches. I ended up creating more of a poncho for the wings and body of the falcon, rather than a shell and separate wings attached to the arms. We also skipped painting spots on the front of the body.







With the thick layers of felt feathers, the poncho at first made Ben look like a big fluffy chicken. So I sewed the wing layers together with horizontal lines under the feathers, from the tip/edge to where the torso would be. This made the wings flat aside from a "tunnel" for each arm to slide through. That fixed the issue!






For the "helmet", I copied the shape and size of a winter hat, then added a few pin-tucks (is that the correct term?) until the fit was as good as it was going to get. The beak is filled with a little polyfill and painted with grey and white fabric paint. There's elastic under the chin to keep it in place. Next time, I would line the inside with a soft cotton -- Ben was a trooper and kept his helmet on the entire day but complained of itchiness.






The claws were quite tricky to make. I copied some firefighter boots from an old homemade costume, enlarged them and cut out claws that I top-stitched down the middle and at the end to give them a 3-dimensional quality. I painted the "nails" with black fabric paint. From far away, I think they actually looked like claws, but from up close, eek.










Overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out! I have definitely learned some aspects of apparel and costume construction since last year, and am proud of how this costume turned out. It is always such fun to deliver a successful execution of your kid's vision. Ben was thrilled!

* * *
For those of you interested in the construction of this costume (I hear there's a lot of kiddos obsessed with peregrine falcons thanks to Wild Kratts!), you can see my process and progress in these two previous posts:

Part 1 - Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon
Part 2 - Who's Ready for Halloween?

I hope that helps! Don't hesitate to leave me a comment with questions.

Who's Ready For Halloween?

Not me!

I am knee deep in falcon feathers as we speak. Here's a little update on the progress of Ben's costume before I get back to it.

To facilitate a correct sizing and tailoring of the costume, I traced the outline of Ben's body on kraft paper, then drew out my idea of the costume over it. This gave me a great idea of what size each part of the costume should be. It's also a great reference for measurements -- from neck to finger tips, shoulder to waist, etc.






I cut a muslin in the shape of a half moon poncho and will be sewing my feather layers onto it. I cut all the "feathers" from eco-felt yesterday and I'm ready to roll with stitching the layers today. I told Ben at school drop-off this morning I was hoping to have his costume finished by the time I picked him up. Challenge on!








Wish me luck! Ben has a Halloween party at school on Wednesday so the costume needs to be completely finished by end of day tomorrow. I will post about the finished costume later this week. I can't wait to see it myself! How are your kiddos' costumes coming along?

Meanwhile, we've been keeping busy with various Halloween fun and prep -- carving pumpkins, eating jack-o-lantern cookies, decorating the house with fake spiders, etc. Fun stuff.














While the excitement of Halloween is certainly front and center at the moment, my thoughts are with Lee and your family, Angel. I wish we were closer so I could give you guys a big hug in person. My thoughts are with our friends on the East Coast as well. May Hurricane Sandy be gentler than expected and may you all stay safe!

Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon

Halloween is a-comin' and we're getting ready over here!

Henry's costume is easy: he saw the dinosaur costume that my mom had made for Ben 3 years ago and latched on to it like a lifeboat. He's been telling everyone he will be a "dino" and practicing his roar. Works for me!

Ben never fails to surprise me with his ideas and vision. Remember the Rainbow Lizard, last year? This year, he decided he wants to be a falcon for Halloween. Not just any falcon, oh no. A Peregrine Falcon. All right. So we started doing a little research this past weekend, determining colors and structure of the falcon's body and how that would translate to a costume.

Do you know the website Arkive? It is incredible! In their own words: "Explore 15,000 of the world’s endangered species. With over 100,000 photos and videos, discover what these animals, plants and fungi look like, what makes them special and why we should protect them." The peregrine falcon page provided a wealth of information.






Photos borrowed from Arkive.org

Then Ben and I got to work on sketching the costume.

Artful Halloween: Book Review and Giveaway

Hello there!

It's already October 10, how is that even possible? I thought I was getting started early on Halloween costumes this year, but I have a feeling I'll be scrambling once again, ha! I'll be sharing our costume progress so far tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a new Halloween book that Lark Crafts sent me for review.




Artful Halloween: 31 Frightfully Elegant Projects by Susan Wasinger is pretty awesome as far as holiday craft books go. Lark Crafts has proven to do an excellent job in the holiday category, with gems like Fa La La La Felt and Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays. Fresh off the presses, Artful Halloween belongs in the same basket, featuring a beautiful layout and a solid offering of craft projects that are creative, aesthetic and more importantly, not cheesy (which matters a lot to me, when holiday decorating is concerned!).




I already loved Susan Wasinger's work in her books Eco-Craft and Sewn By Hand (also published by Lark). Artful Halloween will surely become my go-to craft resource for October in years to come. Wasinger offers a variety of spooky projects to decorate outside as well as inside the home, along with ten pumpkin-decorating ideas! Some projects are very quick, some are a bit more involved, and most use craft supplies you already have on-hand or can easily find at your local craft store. Love that!

But instead of gushing on and on, let me show you a few examples of why I think this Halloween book kicks butt. And keep scrolling down to see a project I made from the book as well as a giveaway!!

Rainbow Lizard (Happy Halloween!)

Happy Halloween!! I hope you are enjoying the day so far with happy kiddos, fun costumes and too much candy.

Ben's preschool's Halloween Party was last Thursday and (shocker!) I was up until way too late Wednesday night finishing up his Rainbow Lizard costume while swearing at my sewing machine. But, it got done on time and my little dude was SO happy. He was so very proud of his costume and had fun explaining during the show and tell that he drew the "dee-zign" for it.


I am pretty happy with the final result but it's a good thing Halloween only comes once a year. That was a lot of work! You can see my previous posts about this project here and here.

Here's a little recap and comparison between the original drawing by Ben, and sketches by me, and the finished costume (we added the spikes on the tail after the sketches):

Jack O Lantern Garland: Kid Craft!

Friday was a gross rainy day for us. I was busy cleaning the house and doing laundry, getting ready for friends visiting over the weekend. Ben was getting antsy and asking me for an "activity". Inspired by a little jack o lantern foam craft sent by my mom, I pulled out our craft felt, some scissors and some white glue and let him have some fun.


He cut out a bunch of shapes and glued them into ghosts and small pumpkins. I then cut out various pumpkin shapes and a bunch of mouths and triangles, and let him assemble some jack o lanterns.

Pumpkin Burlap Art

I don't know about where you are, but here in Seattle, autumn has firmly landed. Rain is back, there's a chill in the air, leaves everywhere and the light has changed. As much as this weather doesn't thrill me (especially after a much too short summer), I love the wealth of activities this season brings with it (Leaf collecting! Acorn gathering! Pumpkin picking! Pie baking! Cider drinking!) and the anticipation of the nearby holidays.

As I was creating items for my new Etsy shop, I decided to try out a few seasonal things. I love the shape and color of pumpkins. I always get a kick out of seeing them at the stores and markets, and on all our neighbors' stoops this time of year. They pop up here and there randomly as if growing overnight out of steps and porches. Ben gets so excited about seeing the latest jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin collections around our neighborhood. So, I got out my sketchbook and a few days later...


I am so happy about these pumpkin pieces!! I think the style is really different depending on the background -- boldly stamped coffee bag or plain burlap. I love both for different reasons. (They are for sale in my shop now, click on the photos above to go to the listing).

I thought I would share a little bit about my process for creating these, in case you want to make a similar project. I'm also assembling a few kits for my shop with the template, instructions, burlap and fabric to make these. I'll update here when they're ready and listed (probably tomorrow at some point). Kits are in the shop now! Here's one. Update: I've also listed the PDF pattern for this pumpkin art in my shop here.

Progress on the Rainbow Lizard!

Hello! Quick post in the midst of Etsy shop launch madness to update you on our progress on the Rainbow Lizard costume. The last time I wrote about this, we had a "dee-zign" by Ben, some sketches by me and a whole stack of eco-felt ready to roll.

The first part we tackled was the largest: the back with all the scales. I used one of Ben's shirts to get a rough idea of the size and traced the outline on the blue felt. Ben helped me trace scales on all the different colors of eco-felt. I cut them and sewed them on, in the order he chose, on the back felt.

Link Love: Halloween!

Halloween is fast approaching. Are you ready? We've been working on our Rainbow Lizard costume and, slowly but surely, it's starting to come together. Can't wait to show you the progress! I still need to figure out what Henry is going to be. I'm thinking caterpillar or spider, we'll see.

Aside from costumes, I want to have some fun with Halloween decorating this year. I have been pinning lots of fun stuff on my Halloween board on Pinterest. Here are some of my favorites.

(Oh, speaking of Pinterest, my mom is on there and getting on a roll with pinning some cool stuff. She used to have her own decor and mural business. I can't wait to see what she puts on her boards! Follow her if you'd like. (She's probably going to strangle me for putting this on here, ha ha.))

All right, moving on with the Halloween links! I'll let the pictures do the talkin'.

Source: google.nl via Jenny on Pinterest

Halloween Prep: Rainbow Lizard!

Well, I've got my work cut out for me! A few days ago, I told Ben we should start thinking about his Halloween costume, and he told me he wanted to be a lizard. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: Do you know what kind of lizard you want to be? What color?
Ben: I want to be a rainbow lizard, it's got all kinds of colors. And it eats salmon berries, not bugs. And it can see in the dark. And it has claws that look like metal so that bugs don't eat him.
Me: Oookay. Sounds good. Do you know what you want it to look like?
Ben: Yeah. I'll draw you my dee-zign.

(In Ben-talk, "design" is 2 words.)

So this past weekend, we sat down together and Ben drew me his dee-zign from which I then drew some sketches. While I was sketching, he asked his dad for a printout of a lizard he could color to show me the order of the colors in the tail. What can I say, the kid has vision. (He's a little bossy too. I wonder where he gets that, ahem.)

Link Love: Last Minute Halloween

Boo! Halloween is only two days away! Check out these cool crafts and links:


- Little Monsters Tutorial by Alisa Burke

- Awesome wall of bats by Dana at Made

- Super cute superhero capes by Lindsay at Hawthorne Threads, from a tutorial by The Long Thread

- Fun bat dolls by Heather Bailey, and she offers free patterns for making them

- Adorable skeleton costume (is there such a thing as an adorable skeleton??) by Jill at Homemade by Jill

- Pumpkin lace vase by Maya*Made, very goth!

- Tentacle pot pie by Megan at Not Martha, creepy!

We've been doing Halloween arts and crafts with friends and getting ready for the big day on Sunday. Ben has two great homemade costumes, courtesy of his Yaya (firefighter and leopard), but he is stubbornly asserting that he will be a ghost on Halloween... So it seems like I might have to dig up some old white sheets and go to town with the scissors... Any ghost costume tutorials you can send my way?

Happy Halloween!!