Halloween is soon upon us!

In celebration of my favorite day of the year, i am going to share with the interwebz my favorite spooky shops! I would also like to invite you all to check out the Etsy Owls Street Team's October challenge. You can vote for your favorite haunted hand made craft! There are some lovely items and spooky inspirations to get you in the Halloween spirit.

Speaking of which, i will top off all of this ghoulish goodness with a picture of a possible ghost taken by yours truly on Halloween 4 years ago. I have never shared this online before. MUAHAHAHAHA! The photo is completely unretouched and i am scanning it right from the photograph without any editing except resizing the perimeter.

As some of you may know, Etsy has groups of people who connect due to their shared beloved craft. I wanted to find just the right group but that proved difficult because i have no one dedicated craft. I sew, paint, knit, make art dolls etc. Then i discovered the Owls. It stands for Off the Wall Ladies. Well, those who know me at all know that's where i fit. Each month we encourage each other to new levels of craftiness and hold a challenge. This month, our challenge is in the celebration of Halloween. Please click through here to check out the awesome stuff and place your vote!

I am constantly in awe of the mad art skillz i see on Etsy. It is inspiring and makes me smile each day. Today i share with you some of my favorite Halloweeny items i have found.

First up... be warm and terrify!

Rubella is a hungry hat monster from a fantastic shop called FairlyEnchanted. Cozy, functional, monstrous!

Next up are two horrors for the price of one!

I particularly love these guys because they combine three of my favorite things... Sock monkeys, Circus Sideshow and Halloween! You can find these guys and other great treasures in the Etsy shop Trigo.

Feel like bringing a touch of Halloween into your wardrobe? You can with this rad dress from JamesAnthony.

I love Calavera. I also love this store so much i ordered a custom made skull mask from this store just for me!


PrayingforFall has lots of fun spooky stuff and takes custom orders too!

Now one thing i love almost as much as Halloween is Geeks. Both the Circus Sideshow kind and of the nerdy variety. Therefore it is natural that i should love this shirt.



Nontrendy has lots of other cool stuff too... or is it not cool. Don't ask me, i'm Square.

Now Halloween would not be complete without a touch of Zombified charm. This choker from Tianarutledge can make you appear to have a severed and reattached head... how cool is that?


And now as promised, the "ghost picture". This photo was taken at the Denman Mall in the West End of Vancouver BC Canada. I have no idea on the haunted status of the mall. My daughter and i were there on the afternoon of October 31st 2005 when i snapped this picture on film (not digital). Imagine our surprize when we got our pictures back! Denny the Denman Place Mall mascott was totally still when i took the picture so it's not a tracer from movement from his glove. Ironically enough, the two of them are standing in front of a liquor store with a large sign that reads "Spirits" right behind them. This photo is not retouched in any way other than to scan it into the computer and resize it smaller so that it doesn't take up the whole page. Tell me what you think!

Happy Haunting!

[ j ]

Great sewing machine company and more Halloween costume madness

I love to sew. I have been sewing since i was 7 when i got a battery powered sewing machine. My mother bought it for me hoping that i would take to it and keep busy while she was sewing. Little did she know, it only made me long for the power locked within her now 60 year old pale green metal monster Elna. That thing can sew through anything!

I would wait until i had the house to myself at 10 or so and thread up that Elna and off i would go. My crappy hot pink and purple toy machine taught me how to thread a machine so it fed the beast inside... and creativity was hatched from the deep recesses in my brain.

As an adult, i still have a penchant for old super heavy metal sewing machines and love my Old Faithful which is a 50 year old yellow Singer in a blue and white box. Old Faithful lived in a friend of mine's garage for some 30 years in the damp climate of Vancouver BC Canada where it rains more than it shines. That pup got plugged in and off it ran -- no sweat at all! All i really needed to do was Febreeze the box which smelled like mold. (worked like a charm on the wood too).

Sometimes i have found over the years that i hanker for a new machine. They have all these fancy features like one touch button hole makers and a multitude of stitches. This past January i caved to this covetous leaning and picked up a Brother CS 5000H. I couldn't believe the lightness of the machine. No back breaking labor to pick this sweetie up, i could tote it in one hand. I threaded her up and off we went on a journey of leaf and vine stitches, single touch button holing and a great interlock stitch that is virtually like a serger without the cutting blade. FUN!!

Alas, all this good sewing came to an abrupt end this weekend. The needle arm seized on me like a crocodile on a fried chicken. No efforts to free the arm would rectify the situation. I chalked it up to the affordability of the machine and the paces i put the poor thing through with my home based business. I figured i would go back to Old Faithful or need to buy a new machine for all those fancy stitches. It came to me that i should perhaps call the 1-877 number on the Brother website.

I gave them a call yesterday and was told that they are shipping me a brand new upgraded machine to my doorstep this week and all i have to do is ship the old broken machine back. In this day of "ain't my fault" companies that shirk any kind of responsibility for faulty products or low quality manufacturing, it is SO refreshing to find a company that backs up it's products with excellent customer service and reliability. I highly recommend a Brother sewing machine and know i will be dealing with them for any additional sewing machine needs.

Now for some new costumes recently made:

6 costume from Shane Ackers' Movie 9 above. Below, a toddler cobra costume requested in green and blue.




Here is a toddler Hedwig costume. Hedwig is the owl from Harry Potter. Requested with horns.



Here is a dinosaur costume based on the dino from the movie Toy Story.