The Life of the Party

A week ago, my daughter asked if we could host a Halloween party this year.  We've had many Halloween parties over the years, when the kids were younger, and we really go all out and decorate the entire home and yard.  So much for just one day! But I love Halloween! The last few years, as the kids get into their teens and because we have two inquisitive cats, we've  gone to just decorating the yard...and I mean DECORATING!  It takes my daughter and me about a week to get everything set up, but when the neighbors and people from around town come to see it, it is all worthwhile.  Elvis is live on stage down the street, and when revelers are done getting a treat for their ears, they come to our home for a treat for the eyes.  Each year I dress in my witches costume with hat, gloves and cape.  This year I'm going as...

                                         

There's a particularly fun challenge going on over  at Craft Hoarders Anonymous for all of us flower hoarders. They want us to break them out and use them on our projects. They are offering two prizes for the craftiest hoarders; one a wonderful package from Crafty Secrets and the other a very generous $25 gift certificate compliments of Heartfelt Creations. I encourage you to visit Craft Hoarders Anonymous and see the awesome flowery inspiration from the design team.

The Eclectic Paperie is challenging us to make a project for fall, and they are awarding a lucky winner a generous $25 gift voucher from the Eclectic Paperie store.Debbie has a great step-by-step on how to make some cool embellishments.

Eileen Hull wants to see how we interpret "Fall Back" on our creative pieces. There are some great inspiration pieces on this challenge blog Art With Heart. She has a Sizzix Candy Drawer Scoreboards die for the winner. I hope a Halloween project is acceptable, since Halloween is during the fall season.

Fall is in the air, and the design team at the Inspiration Emporium Challenge blog would like to see what we make that means fall to us.  It can be back to school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, leaves or anything that makes us think of fall.  The have a  very generous $50 gift certificate to  Inspiration Emporium for a lucky winner of this challenge. Be sure to stop in to see a fabulous tutorial on watercoloring vintage dictionary paper.

 Since it's so close to Halloween, and I've got to get my outfit together, I thought I would use a few flowers on my witch's hat. My flowers started out with a quite different life as sweet pink things made into Mother's Day Corsages.  I made over 400 corsages with the help of my wonderful family using Tim Holtz' Tattered Florals die and coffee filters.  That means something like 3000 individual flowers were hand painted using diluted acrylic paint, sprayed with Perfect Pearls mist, dried, rolled, folded, pinched and otherwise coaxed into looking like flowers.  I put "pearls' in the center and attached a pin, and each mother at our church received one on Mother's Day two years ago.  These are what I had left, and I've been hoarding them ever since, knowing one day they would come in handy.  This is their day!

I spritzed them with various ink sprays, scrunched, dried, and dragged them through more "leftover" spray, again pinched, folded, rolled and coaxed them into what I believe might look like moldy cabbage leaves to use on my hat. ( I added something special, which I'll tell you about near the end of my post.) Here's what a few of them look like. I had removed the white pearls and added black ones to the ones on the rim of my hat.

I had a few other very old hoarded flowers.  I wish I had taken their before pictures, because they were quite ugly.  I remember my daughter picking up loose flowers she would find on the floor at AC Moore when she was a toddler, and the clerk would let her take them home.  A few of these are from that time.  That makes some of my hoarded flowers at least 12 years old.  I save everything! Anyway 2 were sickly pink large daisies with the centers ripped out--I  think I used them on a much smaller project at one time.  I transformed them into these lovely deep purple ones here.

The black daisies started out like this.  I used alcohol ink to change the centers to purple and added mirrors. (Thank you for the mirrors, Krystal!)  The one deep pink center was a trial with Distress stain--didn't quite give me the shade I was going for. Even though this is Seedless Preserves, it looks pink.

I transformed these manufactured flowers using  ink sprays and a special "ingredient" I will discuss later. I added a cameo from my stash and gave her a hat from a half-used sticker pack. The flower with the cameo added is about 4 inches in diameter and started out a horrible teal color.

I gathered some black tulle along the base of the hat with sparkly purple ribbon.

I had several "strands" of shabby type flowers in black, and some in lavender.  I added the black ones alongside my Tattered Florals, and they swirl around from top to bottom. I made the banner "The Life of the Party" with wide vintage seam binding I stained with Distress Stains, stiffened with fabric stiffener and added Tim Holtz' Idea-ology  Alpha Parts Ransom letters.  I painted these a lovely vibrant shade of purple over gesso.  The paints are Silks by Lumin Arte. This is called Boysenberry.  I love these paints!

You can see the lavender-turned purple ones here. I used ink sprays to get the nice shade of purple. The strange thing at the top is supposed to be creepy tendrils, which is actually paper toweling stained and crinkled and twirled.  It actually looks pretty cool in person.  Why don't you come visit and see for yourself?  The purple thingy on the top is three glittered balls glued together to hopefully give the top a finished look and to balance the glittered ribbon at the base gathering the tulle. The Tattered Florals home made flowers were wound around the hat from the base to the top, and also glued around the rim of the hat after gluing on eyelash yarn. There are about 30 of these home made flowers on my hat.

Instead of the expected spiders you might find on a Halloween project, I chose to use butterflies, instead, especially since flowers so abundantly adorn my hat. The hat itself already was made of spider webs with spiders sewn in. Just a few days ago I met a new friend who gave me a ton of these  black and white butterflies, and I randomly placed quite a few on the flowers after making them a little more special. Thank you, Krystal, for the butterflies; they are perfect for my hat!

I tucked in a few Halloween tickets I made with Tim's Ticket Strip die, and stamped with his Odds and Ends stamps. I distressed them with Distress Inks and rubbed them with a baby wipe with a little diluted Seedless Preserves stain, since I don't own that color in ink.

I think that explains it all.  What a fun hat to make!  I'm so happy for the challenge to dig into my hoard and pull out those long forgotten flowers.  Here are some pictures of my daughter modeling my hat.  Please keep in mind, she ordinarily does not wear black lipstick and her hair's not stringy--she was just getting into the spirit!

And my two inquisitive kitties had to model, too!

I know we all moaned about how hard it was to photograph our Assemblage Clocks because of the glare on the glass, but I found this to be a very difficult piece to photograph, probably because of it's size and the tiniest details. I've told you I've added something special to the flowers and other embellishments...have you guessed what it is yet?  I bet you have!

This is the side with the cameo witch, but the picture didn't turn out too well. That glowing spot is the cameo.

This was taken from the top.  All the flowers, tendrils, butterflies and the cameo were painted with glow in the dark paint.

This was very hard to photograph in the dark, but I found a black light really helped!

It glows in the dark!  How fun!

I'm so happy you stopped in and persevered through another long post.  I am thrilled to finally get to use those Mother's Day flowers, as well as those few flowers that just didn't belong anywhere.  And if I don't get to wear it, I hope whomever wears my hat will be "The Life of the Party"! 

I'm entering this into the following challenges:  Inspiration Emporium Fall Is In the Air, Art With Heart Challenge September Fall Back, Eclectic Paperie September e-Play Challenge Fall, and Craft Hoarders Anonymous Challenge #15 All the Pretty Flowers.