Halloween in August: All that Glitters

What's an ornament without a little glitter to make it sparkle?

Thinking back to the early days of our ornaments and how they were all glitter free, we now can't imagine them without glitter. We think our designs aren't really finished without that glistening finish.


Of course using glitter is extremely messy. The studio gets covered... we are covered and anyone who comes to visit the studio will always leave with a gift. Lately we've noticed that the kids have that extra sparkle!

When it comes to glitter we must have tried every brand out there looking for the one that has the best sparkle (and believe us not every glitter sparkles the same). We prefer the ultrafine transparent glitter because it will cover the ornament without covering the paint colors. We will occasionally use the color glitter like black, for some of the new Halloween designs. The Martha Stewart Craft Glitters come in such visually appealing beautiful colors that we wish we could incorporate more into our ornaments.


And speaking of Martha... we love her glue pens for glittering our ornaments. (It was our #1 pick Martha craft tool that we blogged about in a past post).

We always take in consideration the placement of the glitter and make sure it makes sense. We think about where and how much glitter we'll use on a design and we don't want to drown the ornament in glitter just because we can. Sometimes too much IS too much!


These little pumpkins are drying after getting their dusting of glitter


Don't these eyes just sparkle.... with fear!


Here is a close up of a pumpkin with transparent glitter. It looks like an orange glitter but it's not.


After all the glitter and embellishment work is done and dried and we are able to handle them, we'll thread each ornament with a sheer ribbon making sure the correct color choice works with each design. This task may sound simple but actually choosing the correct color ribbon can make an ornament pop or the choice could be very distracting. So having lots of color options is helpful for those tricky ornaments that the color choice is not obvious. The picture above shows ornaments that are all ready and waiting to be tied and frayed.


Up next will be our final post from this series.... photographing the collection
Our launch of our new Halloween/Fall 2010 collection is schedule for Monday September 13th. Make sure you have signed up for our mailing list so you'll get the email reminder letting you know the collection is online.

You guys have been very supportive of us over the years which makes us want to push our creative limits to make sure we deliver to you a spoooktacklur collection each and every year.

thanks!