When it gets closer to time, I’ll be doing a series on h’ween food and decorations, and the tutorial on this will be one of the items! EDIT: Here it is!

The Monster Wreath!

Homemade Lipbalm is fun & easy, and makes great gifts.. you should try it!

The Materials:

First Batch:
.25 ounces Beeswax
.66 ounces Shea Butter
.40 ounces Sweet Almond Oil
2 Vitamin E pills (just the insides, obviously!)
10 drops Peppermint Oil

Second Batch:
Olive Oil instead of Sweet Almond
No Peppermint Oil
A dab of lipstick for color

Recipe adapted from some found at Majestic Mountain Sage
Also got a lot of great tips from this BlueArts post.
I was thinking i’d order the ingredients online as well, to get the best deal and selection, but after procrastinating, i got most everything a the local Whole Foods (except the beeswax, which i had from a previous project.)

Melted all slowly in a double boiler, and used a dropper to pipe into the tins.
My scale isnt very good, so the amounts were pretty approximate. i think if i did it again i’d increase the oil a tad for a little bit softer mixture.

In other news,
I had an Ikea date yesterday with one of the winners from last month’s Contest, Colleen of Some Art Fabric. Besides being all around cool, she gave me some nifty halloween fabric swatches for prizes in the halloween contest. Nifty! So start thinking of things to do for the halloween contest!!

It took some trail and error to get the pattern like i wanted it, so here’s how I did it. (This is all done in Photoshop, but if you don’t have photoshop, here’s a great tutorial on how you do the same thing on paper!)

-I drew the elements of the design in pen, then scanned it. I used Illustrator’s Live Trace function with the Comic Art preset to get the lines like i wanted them, then moved it back into Photoshop.
-Then I used my new favorite technique to pull the line art to a separate layer.
-I created a new 8″x8″ image in photoshop because that was my desired dimensions. The plan here is to copy/paste the individual design element line art into separate layers, for ease of placement.
-To get the repeat pattern, I took one of the robots and a few of the stars, and laid them out in the center of the new image. I merged those line art layers into a single line art layer when i was satisfied with the placement. Then I used the Offset filter in Photoshop (horizontal & vertical set to 1/2 the width/height of the full image, wraparound checked*). That moves those images to the corners. Then I positioned the rest of the robots and stars in the center.
-I then merged all of the line art layers, leaving me with a background layer, and a line art layer. I created a new layer for the colors, and put that in the middle. Then I colored the image.

While in beta, only I can order the fabric, but if anyone wants some, let me know and I’ll order it for you!
It makes a nifty tiled desktop wallpaper too!

*credit: I used this tutorial to figure out how the offset filter worked.

Ok, So I’m procrastinating.. I really do have to clean up from the weekend!

Here’s a few little linky goodness items that I figured you might want to know about!

I’ve got to try this.. Making Homemade Paneer (Cheese) from Angry Chicken

A few tutorials (via Whip-up)

-A really nice blockprinting tutorial from LizzyHouse

-A neat how-to on making cute leather bracelets from Erleperle

And last but not least, Hatch has a fun weekly roundup including a bacon alarm clock and water bottles kids can build with.

And the lack of creative output can also be blamed on playing online video games all day Sunday.

But I do have several new projects in the planning stages, so watch this space!

Now, the house is a huge mess, and I need to motivate myself to clean it.

Pen, colored in Photoshop

Really nifty writeup on Craftypod, a review of The Pocket Paper Engineer– a book on how to create pop up books! These are so fun and look like some really great projects. (*adds to ever growing list…)

Betz White made this fabulous Etch-A-Sketch Laptop cover! I’m in love… When I get a new laptop, i may have to try this… (via)

Several really cool things from Hostess with the Mostess
– a Wii themed party
– Child’s Candyland themed party
– Denture-like Ice Cubes – too cool and creepy, these might be good for halloween.

No Interview this Week… I’m looking for suggestions of people you guys think would be cool to interview! If you have nominations, let me know!
Previous Dabbled Interviews:

Interview 1: Diane Gilleland, of Craftypod
Interview 2: Diana Evans, Artist
Interview 3: Shannon Riffe, of Make It and Rifferaff
Interview 4: Cory Godbey, Artist and Author of “Ticket”

All Interviews

Ink drawing, colored in photoshop.

Oh another note..
I haven’t done much photography lately, but I really like this one, from the beach trip:

I was browsing through the As Is section at Ikea and came across the parts to a Kritter child’s bed. I wasn’t really planning on getting the 3 yr old a toddler bed (his crib converted to one by taking off the front rail), but I couldn’t resist–it’s too cute! When I got it home I realized that (duh) it takes a longer mattress than a crib mattress. Well, The Boy doesn’t need a longer mattress yet, he still fits fine on the crib sized one–and I really didn’t want to go buy all new sheets and such anyway. So the fabulous husband modified the bed to make it fit the crib mattress, leaving a nifty little compartment perfect for stuffed animals at the end!

All he basically did was add a flat wood bottom to the end section where the mattress wouldn’t reach, and use the guard rail (which we weren’t needing anyway) as a divider between the box and the mattress. Easy Peasy!

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Related:
– Other things from Ikea…

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