the costumes

given the speed that my life is running at currently, i am not going to attempt a thorough halloween post. suffice it to say that there were a lot of festivities over four days! a halloween celebration at my school thursday, one at sienna's on friday, a huge festival at her school saturday, followed by our annual walk in the dog parade (no, we don't own a dog but this is our fifth year walking in a halloween parade with a slew of them dressed in outrageous costumes!). halloween morning we went to a birthday party and a wee bit of trick or treating to our neighbors houses that night.
at home we made an altar for those that have passed back over the rainbow bridge and decorated sugar skulls.
sienna saw a picture of a butterfly costume in an old volume of childcraft (make and do) ages ago and knew that was exactly what she wanted. she did insist her body be black (like a real butterfly's) not blue like the one pictured but wanted the wings the same.
matt and i made these wings together the night before. (yes, i said she picked her costume ages ago and we saved making the key element until the night before. that's just where i'm at right now!) i wish i had done the middle felt piece differently. it was a structural element and i modeled it after the pair of wings we deconstructed to salvage the frame. matt pointed out that we should have made it part of the design by mimicking the lines we painted. good idea.jasper was a crow.i took elements from a couple of different martha stewart costumes and came up with this. the body is a leotard with feather boas safety pinned to it. he is obsessed with black so he was pretty happy. he insisted that none of the ticklish feathers touch his skin though. daddy was his scarecrow when we went out halloween night.
this was my next favorite costume spotting. ;)
how cool are these burlap scarecrows? i love them!!

***a big thank you for all the comments on the giveaway post! wowsers. i had no idea my little fairy would generate such excitement. ;) you can still enter once a day until tomorrow night.***

sweater jack-o-lantern

while working on another autumnal project recently, i pulled out this orange sleeve (consequently, the same sweater i used for this project). felted sweaters are one of my most favorite materials to work with!
i proceeded to cut off the cuff and use the rest of the material for my project. meanwhile this cuff was calling out to me to become a jack-o-lantern. what, don't your sweaters talk to you? ;)
i started by turning the cuff inside out and pulling it over the recycled jar i planned to use. for this lantern, i chose a squat, wide jar that had previously housed almond butter. i drew a face right on the cuff. then, using sharp scissors, i cut the face out.
here he is trying on his new face. this is where i lack in photos, sorry. i decided i wanted a more finished look for the cut-outs and added a blanket stitch around the eyes and mouth using black floss.then i painted the jar yellow. i didn't do this step at first, but i wanted to have a feeling of *glow* and depth even when the candle is not lit.
we put one of those little led fake tea lights in him and he glowed almost the entire day. at dinner, we swapped the led for a real tea light and he warmed our table beautifully.

don't have an orange sweater? how about a frankenstein or a friendly ghost?

i'll keep trying to get a better picture of him lit....just one of the many challenges of owning a crappy camera. ;)