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Happy Halloween!
Hope you have a great holiday.
This guy is made of a weird almost foam/composition material. He is from late 40's and is one of my favorite items of our small collection of Halloween things. I paid under ten for him at an estate sale. He is pretty fragile so I created the coffin shaped board which I covered with marbled endpaper from a decimated antique book and wired him to it. He likes me for that.
Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Lucky for me I am busy in the studio. Couldn't do it without the support of family - husband, dad, stepmom, mom. Thanks guys.
This is C.'s Halloween costume from last year. Well, the hat and an all black ensemble. He was only one and a half then, so the hat stayed on for very short periods of time. He was actually a really great sport about it, only mildly interested in what was on his head. Had he been two, all bets would be off.
The Calder mobile hat came from this book I got at the library - when I saw it I knew it was perfect for him. The instructions for this hat called for styrofoam shapes and glue stiffened string, which didn't look that great. Instead, my husband took a tin can and cut out the forms and filed their edges dull, he pounded them with a hammer to give them some shape and then created the mobile with black annealed wire. The cone hat is card stock covered in black canvas, there is a black ribbon tie for under the chin. There are other great art- inspired costumes as well, including Monet's water lilies and a Jackson Pollock painting.
This is a man with a mission. To create a skull and post it everyday at Skull-a-day. Made from any and all imaginative materials at hand, from bubble wrap to wine corks. Here are a few of my favorites - the bottom is tofu.
Check out the site.
We bought this hearse wagon at a toy store in Prague years ago before we had kids. They are manufactured by a Czech company, I can't imagine they would do too well at Toys R Us. It is among our Halloween display stuff that is packed away the rest of the year, so it doesn't actually get played with. Besides, can you imagine what her neighbors might think if Barbie parked it outside her Dream House Mansion?
One of my all time favorite childrens' book illustrators is Calef Brown. At a book signing way back when he was very personable and drew little snails and moons for M. in the front of his first two books, Polkabats and Octopus Slacks and Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers . His illustrations have also been in many other publications. I love his painting style and environments - I would love to be able to actually step inside them. Except I wouldn't stand under these Polkabats. Bargains to be scored here .
One venerated Christmas tradition among many families is to read holiday books together - among those books might be The Polar Express . The Widow's Broom , also written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, is our Halloween counterpart and, I think, one of his best books both narratively and visually. With lush, textural sepia illustrations it's imagery is fitting although not specifically related to Halloween. Your library is sure to have it or new and used are available here.
After a helping a witch that has fallen into her garden, a lonely widow finds that the witch's abandoned broom still possesses magic and trains it to chop wood and fetch water. The broom is a help to the widow and it comes to be a companion. The neighbors fear what they can't understand and deem it evil, demanding it be destroyed. The ending is perfect. Wits - 1 / Ignorance - 0
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I got that once in my fortune cookie and I have to tell you I felt really ripped off. What, exactly, is that trying to tell me? Does that mean I should have bad intentions?
This is a snuff bottle, do you see the dramatic
juxtaposition of good and evil, the hand-painted devil atop the snuff
spoon and the teensy angel head with wings in the sterling filigree? The Victorians perfected that vice/virtue shtick.
He now lives among my husband's hot sauce collection and a few other devil things in kitchen cabinet purgatory. Serves him right.
