Halloween Crafting

As I death march to my new job tomorrow, lets reflect on some of the nice things I’ve done with my two and-a-half weeks off.

K2 and I did our annual Halloween Gingerbread houses! I went with Wednesday Season 2. Basically, I got the crow cupcake toppers on Vine and was like “what can I do with these…” — Then BAM, Wednesday. So I did her and Enids balcony.

Lots of lessons learned on this one. We both hate the day of dough making and baking. It’s a whole damn day. My oven vent hood was on for song long (I run it when the oven runs because sometimes husband can smell gas upstairs from the oven) that it turned itself off. Yeah. Then I made my own sugar instead of using candy because I needed clear. I did colors in cupcake trays and then poured off the rest to a pan as the instructions for edible glass say. But I think it just got too warm because it was the last to get poured and because there was a bigger mass. So it came out yellowish and not clear. The strings that ran between the cupcake molds are clear, so I think that’s what happened. UGH. So we used UV resin. And that didn’t go great because it was overflowing into each other. And even though the window actually looks great with natural light behind it, the lights inside have an extremely blue glow. And it took over an hour of standing at the stove to make that edible glass. Damn.

I also wanted to make railings for the balcony and I did, but the sugar was too wet, perhaps? I did the roof line bird spikes at the same time as the railing and they dried perfectly. The railing was a no go. I was going to do it again, but… fuck it. We were already three days in. Baking takes a whole hard won day. WHOLE DAY with two of us. Then we did a day to ice our sides before assembling. Then a day to assemble after they dry and finish off details. I decided the stone pillars gave the impression enough for the railings. No one cares but me. I cant sculpt gargoyles either, so we got pumpkins. Enid carved a happy face in hers. Wednesday’s is small and knocked over by the one-eyed raven and yes, that bitch has a silver eye.

I had also done two colors of purple for the roof. I was going to do individual shingles. But the icing was too runny, so I just did this and swirled it. Honestly, that was for the best. Win on that. This would be the end of an entire dormitory so I just cut the back off with the entry door to their room. But it looked so bland and weird that I did it up for Dia De Los Muertos. That’s totally on theme for Season 2 as well.

“I’ve never seen cultural appropriation done with such panache.” – The best Gomez Addams

For Christmas I’m going simple. I want to do obnoxious Christmas colors since I was very refined last year. I want gaudy traditional.

I’m back to my cat diamond art painting. Six panels done now! I like that it worked out that I get to do the black cat and pumpkins the end of October. Probably in to November too ’cause this next week for me is insane busy (New job, Christmas Concert, Physical Therapy, Tattoo Day, Plant Expo, and Circus).

Give me a break, this this has 108,185 square diamonds in 55 colors. Most of which are black. Also, I took a break from this one to do Moon Bats for Drills and Chills:

So I guess it’s back to the grind. It was nice having some time off. I wish I’d have pushed it back further, but I did not. Probably better not to get too happy and content not working.