Halloween in the "Time of COVID"

 As the back side of 2020 approaches, Wisconsin is backsliding into "COVID Central" for the whole United States.  I gotta say, it's wearing me down. I can't really put my finger on why, but it feels like attention span fatigue. (Yeah, I just made that up.) No focus, even for the fun stuff.  

So what does a girl do to perk up her spirits for Halloween?  Into the craft cave we go!  It is, after all, her favorite time of year.

As I rummaged around looking for papers and stamps to play with, it became very apparent that I've been hoarding some stuff for a LOT of years.  I decided this was the time to get out the old, and make something new from it.  I found some 8.5 x 11 cardstock that I'm sure I bought at the old Scrapbook store in Cedarburg more than 10 years ago.  Some was printed, some was not, some was green some was purple. I pared it with a fabulous stamp drawn by Daniel Torrente and sold by Stampotique.com, a couple of sentiment stamps, one from Brutus Monroe (Hello Pumpkin), the other from Poppy Stamps (Give 'em Pumpkin to talk about).  Some scraps of black to make the pocket, some punches, ink and hot glue and Boom!  There you go.  Simple starts lead to greater things....

Next up, Alice in Wonderland.  Man, I have been hanging onto the full set of Alice in Wonderland stamps for longer than I can remember.  And have I ever used them?  No. Ugh.  Not even the Mad Hatter, for fuck's sake!  Well, I'm still going to save HIM for something special.  I don't know what, but it'll be something.  This year, its the Red Queen on Halloween.  Off with her head!  Googly eyes and a skelly trinket, fun stuff, that.  

I have a small collection of Ninja stamps, because, why not?  Judikins Boy Ninja made it to the card, but I stamped 'him' in pink, because he is a she.  Period.  Full stop.  I also have one from Inkadinkadoo, Crafty like a Ninja, because, well, of course I am.  What'sabi??

With a minimalist approach to this one, I grabbed usable scraps from my rather large bin.  I throw very little out.  I mean, it's got to be pretty small for me to toss it, and even the tiny scraps get saved and used to mark the path for trick or treat.  Its all acid free paper, so harmless to the environment.  I toss the tiny stuff like confetti.  It's fun, and the kids like to look for the different shapes of this or that, that wind up in the toss.  I don't suppose there will be many trick or treaters this year, given Rona, but I'm still putting out candy.  Maybe only the raccoons will get it, but it's Halloween, damn it.  

Last but not least, All Dressed up and No Where to Go.  Stupid Covid.  Ugh.  I love sequin waste.  You can find it on Etsy in lots of colors.  Amazon has some, but you have to by huge amounts of one color.  It's also called Punchinella, or Punchinello.  Don't ask me why.  It is, in fact. the waste product of producing sequins.  Now, sequins, are bad for the environment.  Micro plastics, don't you know.  Glitter too, (Andrea!)  While I've never been a fan of glitter, I do own an embarrassing amount of sequins.  So, if you ever get a card from me with sequins on it, don't throw it out!  

Happy Halloween to you all.  I've got a couple of pumpkins out, and if I get myself off the couch I'll doll up the front porch like I usually do this time of year.  No promises. I'm just taking it day by day.  Hell, I may not even send the cards.  Its enough that I made them, sending them may take another year.  They can hang out in the shoebox of happiness.  Lord knows the Christmas Cards I've got in there have been there quite a while.  It's a happy place, that shoebox.  I named it well.  

EDIT - a late addition to the cards this year - Its all my fault!  I pulled together three different stamps from three different companies to bring this one together.  Some fussy-cutting to make it interesting and there you have it.  

2020 Lunar New Year- TYOT Rat.

My first ever Lunar New Year Card!  Don't know why it took me so long to want to make one of these, but it did.  I think I've been holding out for a really cool set of Chinese New Year character stamps.  Still yet to be found, BTW.  If you know of one, link me in.  Sure I can find the odd dragon, or rooster, but it would be cool to have a full set.  Like I said, link me in if you find something.  Bigger is of course always better.

Yes, there are images I can buy from various web sites that sell such things, but digital card making sucks.  There I said it.  I like my ACTUAL stamps.   I like wood mounted better than cling, and red rubber better than anything else out there.  I'm a purist.  What can I say.

Since nary a Christmas card did I send this past season, I went all out for the Lunar New Year and combined it with some Valentines I had in the shoebox of happiness.  It looks like those Valentines were already blogged about back in...wow, 2015?  I've been hanging onto them for 5 years?  I don't hang on to sweaters that long.

Since you can see those using the blog archive on the right, I'll not post those photos.   But here are some shots of The Year of the Rat.

2019 Cookie Book - It's A Wonderful Life

Since its well past Groundhog's Day 2020, I figure its time to get the 2019 Christmas Cookie book up on the blog.  Yeah, I know, better late than never.  The 2019 cookie exchange went off without a hitch. Thanks to all the cookie bakers extraordinaire for all the love and willingness to share.  You guys are the best!  

If you recall, I had to cancel the 2018 exchange as I could not get enough bakers to fill out the roster.  I design the cookie books for 15 recipes.  Producing one for a shorter list of recipes means that a lot of time and effort goes to waste.  These things get started in March or April in order to be done by the holiday.  So, 2018 got cancelled and that year's book was put on the shelf for 2019.  

I remember Lauryle Schaffer caught up with me one day at Coscto in the summer of 2018, which is where and when I finally settled on the 'It's a Wonderful Life' theme.  I was toying with it, but once I said it outload to Lauryl and her husband, that somehow made it stick.  Now I just had to figure out how to get Zuzu's petals on the thing.  As I said, 2018 got cancelled so I caught a break.  I now had another whole year to figure that out.  

If you've ever read any of my older blog posts here (September 2012, I think), you'd come across one that talks about the Ring Lord.  An online shop I stumbled across that sells chain maille rings.  Yes, there are people who make chain maille, although it is most often used as the building blocks for jewelry.  There is another post on here about a Halloween bracelet I made using rings from the Ring Lord, or maybe its all the same post.  It was a while ago, feel free to browse the afore mentioned posts using the Blog Archive list on the right hand side of the page.  I'm too lazy to link them in.  

Anyway, the summer of 2019 found me incapacitated with a truly amazing amount of pain whose root cause was in my back.  I had 4 solid months to literally sit on my butt and recuperate as best I could.  Around mid August, things started to calm down, but I was still left with doctor's orders of no lifting, bending or twisting.  I made Gene rummage around in the craft cave to fish out my giant, heavy box of chain maille supplies, which he did, kindly, even though it gives him a rash to set foot across the threshold.  Poor guy.  He was a trooper last summer, that's for sure.  Armed with my box of stuff, a couple of books, access to the internet and some pliers dipped in rubber, I finally figured out the chain maille flower.  I made it in a couple different sizes, but decided to go big.  Thus, Zuzu's petals were finally on the book.  Woot!  I settled on a little jingle bell too, so that every time a bell rings, an angel gets it's wings.  

I struggled with the number of bells to put on these things.  I really did.  I  bought enough damn jingle bells to have one on every strand of the fringe on the back of the book. (32 bells that would have been, don't bother to count the ribbons) They gave me a headache to have them jingling constantly, so many of them at one time.  It was way, way over the top, design-wise.  Less is more.  My demo book went through a number of iterations (which is normal) one of them being the removal of all but one jingle bell.  What I'll do with the massive pile of left over jingle bells has yet to be determined.  

I struggled with the cover itself, too.  I had picked a set of fabric quilting squares, all with coordinating colors and patterns that I loved.  The fabric was glued to the book boards and backs to form the basic structure of the book.  The ribbon binding came next with the pony beads for detail. Which covered all the fabric on the book back.  Then I built this big title; It's A Wonderful Life, with the BIG chain maille flower, which by the time I got it all together was covering the entire front of the book.  You could only see the fabric if you looked at the back of the book.  Boo.  

Plus, I have to admit I was tired.  It had been kind of bummer year for me, the whole of 2018.  The current political situation, the medical issues, getting used to a new normal after them, I don't know, I just struggled with the whole idea of Christmas in 2019.  The book was bugging me.  There were just too many elements to it.  I needed simple but I had created a monster.  The fabic, the fringe, the pony beaded binding, the title, the bells it was all too much.  But I had to get it done.  Bakers were buying bags of flour and pounds of butter by this time.

I went as far as to glue one of the title pages onto the front of one of the books.  But, dammit, I just was not happy with that.  So, one of you does indeed have a book with the title page on the front.  The rest of you don't.  One or two of you have a book without pony beads on the binding, the rest of you have them.  Like I said, it was a struggle.

I woke up one morning about a week before the exchange and had a revelation.  The endpapers on the inside covers of the books were plain.  Just colored card stock coordinated with the fabric covers.  If I put the title page inside, on the endpaper, that solved the problem of hiding the cloth on the front, and solved the problem of the book being JUST TOO MUCH.  You can't see the title until you open it, and once you do, you can't see all the other jazz.  Yeah!  One final edit that happened this year was to omit the index.  Above I told you there are 32 ribbons that make the fringe, two for each page, 15 pages and an index equal 16 pages times 2 ends of the ribbon for each page = 32.  If you look really close at the end of the book you'll find one spare ribbon without a page.  That was where the index was to go.   

Alright, enough history....without further ado, I give you; It's A Woderful Life.  Click on any image to embiggen.  

Love to all, and to all a good night.

Book front, with one little bell. :)

Close up of the ribbon binding.  See the pony beads?

The fringe on the back.

The pages fanned out.

And the book title page with the chain maille  flower.