Got Mummies?

I do!  I found a little tutorial for making these adorable mummy pops (candy covered oreos) at How Does She and decided to give them a whirl.  I did order the eyes that were used in the tut, but they didn't arrive in time, so I substituted some small candies instead.  I found it takes 2 14-oz bags of candy melts to make 25 mummipops.

And they came out just adorable!  Here is a closeup:

And here's one of them in the spider clothesline basket I made last Halloween:

For Halloween this year, Matthew went as Dan (from Bakugan) and Jeremy as Harry Potter.  Matthew's in that "don't take my picture stage" and it's driving me nuts to try to get a decent picture of him.  But I keep telling myself that it will be good blackmail material in a few years...

We went to trunk-or-treat at the school last night, and the kids had a ball.   This is a picture of one of the witches hosting a trunk - hands down, my favorite adult costume of the night!

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

I've spent little bits of time playing with my craft machines in the last few months: sewing machine, felting machine, die cutting machine, and computer.  Mostly just playing to try different techniques.

I wanted to do a small fall piece with the colors of the turning leaves.  I used wool fleece and wool roving to make a mixed-colors sheet of felt, then cut the leaves out of it using some of Papertrey Ink's leaf dies.  The digital images were layered and printed directly onto the canvas.  For the tree and ground, I needle felted wool fleece and roving directly onto the canvas and burlap, then quilted it to batting and backing fabric.  I attached the leaves last, using a single line of stitching as a vein to anchor the leaves to the surface but allow them to move a bit when there's a bit of a breeze.

Every Leaf.  Digital Supplies: Word art: Fall WordTransfers
No. 1 by Anna Aspnes, Designer Spotlight Sept 2007 by Sue Cummings;
Paper: Autumnal No. 2 Paperie by Anna Aspnes; Dies: Leaf Prints Collection
by Papertrey Ink; Canvas: Sticky-back Canvas by Claudine Helmuth;

Other: wool fleece, wool roving (Living Felt), thread (Valdani, Superior),
sewing and felting machines (both Janome), die cutting machine (Provo Craft).

Potion Making

My guys love all things Harry Potter right now, whether it's the books, the video games, or just make believe play pretending to be Harry and the other characters.  Jeremy will be HP for Halloween.  And the new HP Lego sets are some of the top items on their Christmas lists.

Since they're having such fun with it, I made these potion bottles to add to our Halloween decorations.  The yellow bottle contains Petrification potion (will turn you into a stone statue), the green holds Aconitum (will turn you into a werewolf), and the purple has Time Freezing potion.  The boys love pretending to drink the potions and acting out what would happen.

Supplies: Alcohol Ink (Tim Holtz/Ranger), ColorBox Fluid Chalk,
Silhouette SD Digital Cutter, Labels from Silhouette store,
glass bottles with cork stoppers (Michael's).

Other than getting costumes and preparing for Halloween, we've been getting necessary outdoor chores (like planting pansies, pruning and garage cleaning) done while we have some gorgeous fall weather.  I guess planting pansies in October may sound quite strange to my northern readers - down here in the south, they just can't handle the summer heat.  But they do quite well through the winter, and bring a welcome burst of color on dreary gray winter days.