Halloween Projects

I've always been a fan of Halloween, between the creativity and imagination of costumes to the fun of setting up a scary scene with good decorations.

I already have a section specifically dedicated to my costuming work, although I'm putting the pet costumes in this section, along with all of my decoration projects.

Dog Costumes

Beth and I decided to dress all of the dogs up this year for Halloween. Although we knew the dingoes would go as hot dogs all along, I'd been struggling to come up with a good costume for Didi. Though she looked adorable (and rather ironically apropos) in a French maid costume at a local pet store, a weird Christmas ornament I saw while on Didi's beach trip to Florida--a mermaid with fairy wings--got me to thinking that Didi might make an adorable mermaid.

The fabric I found was just about perfect: a shimmery green foil print that looked a bit like scales, and best of all, it was offered at a really good sale price. I quickly sewed the tail together, stuffed it with fiber fill, and added details to the fins. Originally, I had cut a hole for her own tail to go up through it--Papillon tails, after all, fold up over their backs naturally--but didn't like the way it looked, so I hot glued on a seashel and starfish to cover the hole and added some little pink straps to help hold the tail on properly.

Didi's mermaid bra was originally going to be a string bikini from the same fabric as her tail, but I got a better idea (read: didn't feel like any more sewing) and took two seashells and attached them to a green cord to make the straps.

The bikini isn't all that visible in this picture as the shells do tend to blend into her fur (although you can make out the starfish that top each shell), but I'll post some pictures of the individual costume pieces later.

Decorations for Halloween '05

Beth and I worked together to create some awesome Halloween decorations this past year, including my Grave Man that drew admiration from many a trick-or-treater (and many a parent, too)

View the decorations we made for Halloween '05