Happy Halloween and costume design

It's been awhile since our last entry. Things are crazy here at the studio. We are getting ready to launch our new 2008 Holiday collection. Which is unfortunately running behind schedule. We hope to get is up very soon so bear with us. Make sure you are on the mailing list so you will be informed as soon as we have the collection up. This year it's going to be very limited so make sure you order early.

Our first craft show of the season is coming up really fast-Nov 7-9. Next week our magazine ads will be hitting stores from Mary Engelbriet's Home Companion and Romantic Homes.

This time of year is really tiresome for us to juggle both business and personal stuff. Being that we need to push and create our holiday ornaments, but also make sure our son has a fun holiday experience. Here are a few photos of his Halloween costume. Gryffin decided that he wanted to be a tree this year. So we gathered some leaves and made a felt owl and squirrel and glued them to a yellow shirt.







We here at Swirly Designs want to wish everyone Spooktaluar Halloween.
Have fun and eat lots of candy!!

Thanks for Swirlyling on by

Thanks for stopping on by and visiting our spooky Halloween Blog Party today and thanks to Vanessa at Fanciful Twist for letting us take part and for coming up with such a clever idea. Hopefully you all enjoyed it too and got some frightful inspiration and chilling ideas to make your Halloween the ghouliest of them all. Take some pictures of your favorite Halloween decor and email them to us, we would love to see them. Have a safe and happy Halloween and eat lots of candy.

Lianne & Paul

Swirly Ghost How-to

This project is for personal, non-commercial use.


This fun little project takes just a few minutes and the result is a happy little ghost ornament that can be displayed on a tree or make a string of garland or even made into earrings.

Materials
• White Polymer clay (or you could use translucent clay or even air dry clay)
• Craft glue
• Black linen string or twine
• 1" eye pins
• Black craft paint
• Extra fine crystal glitter

Tools
• 2 1/4 round cookie cutter scalloped
• oven
• toothpick or stylus
• clay rolling pin
• ceramic tile





Step 1.
Condition the white clay and using the rolling pin, roll it out to approximately 1/8 thickness.



Step 2.
Use a cookie cutter to cut out a circle (we used a scalloped cutter, but any one will do)


Step 3.
Take some clay and form a 1/4"-1/2" ball to make the ghost head




Step 4.
Drape the round circle of clay over the small ball of clay, gently pressing it around the head. Crimp the bottom of it with your fingers to make the folds.

Step 5.
Take the eye pin and gently insert into the top of head so that just the loop holder is showing.
You can cut the eye pin to size, so it doesn't stick out the bottom.

Step 6.
Use a toothpick or a stylus to make the eyes.
Then place your ghost on the ceramic tile and bake in the oven according to the packaging.
(if you don't want to use baking clay, you can also try air-dry clay which could work too)


Step 7.
Once it is baked, let it cool for about 20 minutes or so. They you can add the glitter!
Paint the whole ghost with craft glue and pour the glitter over it, shaking off the extra.
You can then use the black craft paint to paint on the ghosts eyes.

Step 8.
Take your black string or linen and insert into the eye hole and tie a knot.

That's it - that is how you make your very own Swirly Ghost!
How Boo~ti~ful!!
Let us know how you did!

Make your own Swirly Ghost

Later on today at this party blog we will show you how you can make your very own mini swirly ghost ornament. Now let's have another Bloody Mary!

Martha Stewart Halloween Snowglobe

We purchased this double sided Halloween snow globe in 2001 from the Martha by Mail catalog. We were hoping they were going to be a series for every holiday, but I think they only made a few others. We do have a Christmas Mouse one, but that's it. If you know if they produced others let us know.


one side BOO!

.... the other side EVIL!

A look at some of Swirly's favorite collectibles

Here at Swirly we live for the holidays... unfortunately when a holiday is here we are on to the next. So now that Halloween is coming in the next few weeks we are busy working and designing our Christmas collection. So when it comes to decorating, if we had more time we would go all out. This year we settled for a smaller display above. It's an old black amorie we picked up a few years ago at the historical Brimfield Antique show in Brimfield, MA. It makes for a perfect display case for us were we can display our items and still be able to keep them away from little hands.
Here are a few of our favorite pieces













This charming little guy reminded us of our son.
This is a reproduction piece from Lori Mitchell.


This pumpkin boy is from the Jennifer Murphy licensed designs from Midwest of Cannon Falls.



This little witch pail is from the Johanna Parker designs reproduction folk art collection.

more Halloween paper crafts...

Martha Stewart's crafts are also a favorite of ours. The stickers, candy holders, ribbons and glitters and puppets. She has it all.



Hallmark also had some really cool treat gift bags at Walmart of all places.




Here are some more stickers and letterpress cards. What interesting paper crafts did you find this season? Leave a comment and let us know.