Here’s the scoop on the Dabbled Holiday Contest.

The theme for this season is Holiday (whichever holidays you celebrate, or do them all!) decor and gifts, recycled from something else. So your bag from recycled sweaters or your wreath from plastic bags, or whatever! You can enter as many items as you like (but you can only win with one), and we love tutorials…

HOW TO ENTER: This one will be flickr based, so you’ll need a flickr account to participate (it’s free, and I love flickr!). (This will make it easy for everyone to see all the entries, and easy for me to post links to the entries here — ya know at holiday time, we need EASY!) Upload your pictures of your cool holiday craftiness, with a link back to your blog on the picture description if applicable (be sure to tag them “dabbledholiday” and add to the dabbled flickr pool.
I’ll be pulling stuff from there to share with your guys all month..
Questions? Comments? Post them in the comments here, or email me at holiday -at- dabbled.org. You’re also welcome to link here in the comments to show off your stuff :)

Due date is December 12, so you have one month from today! We’ll have buttons you can put on your site, and the winners will receive nifty buttons proclaiming their greatness to the internet, as usual. I’ll add prize details later.

We had great sponsors for the Halloween Contest, but I’m not sure whether we’ll do that this time or not, but if you want to be a sponsor, just email me.

Other Dabbled Holiday Stuff for you to know about:

Best of Crafty “Upcycling” for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or your holiday of choice – Show off your recycling skills by making gifts or decor out of ‘trash’. Submit your tutorials to be featured on Dabbled! (Here’s some previous Dabbled Upcycling Projects if you need some inspiration)

Holiday Art Card Show – Artsy? Create a holiday card for the dabbled contest, and show off your work! Not Artsy? Download a cool holiday card from the cool artsy folks! More to come on this, email me if you think you’ll wanna play!

Shopping Links – Do you sell your art or craft? There will be a special page with links to Dabbled approved cool sellers. And for everyone, a great opportunity to support your fellow indie artists and crafters when you’re buying those holiday gifts! More Info HERE

Row 1: Mozzarella Eyeballs. Instead of last year‘s idea of just using sliced olives with pimentos, I used the technique by the Evil Mad Scientists to create more rounded eyes. The mozzarella balls were marinated ones from Trader Joes.
Row 2: Flayed Skin Cheeseball makes a reappearance. An art store face mold, covered in shreds of proscuito. Cheese ball mixture was 4 or so cups of shredded cheese, 16 oz cream cheese, cajun spices, and some extra finely chopped proscuitto.

Row 3:
1) Final Cheeseball
2) Ingredients for Salmon Brain. 8 oz cream cheese, 1 small piece of fresh salmon, broiled or baked, skinned. 2 heaping tablespoons of sour cream. spices.
3) Hand Shaped Brain, ready for chilling. To form brain, mix all of the ingredients well. Form two balls, one for each half of brain, and press together. Use wet hands to smooth the surface. Use a chopstick to etch out the lines of the brain using a picture for reference. Use wet hands to smooth.

Row 4:
1) Final Brain
2) Completed Creep Fingers and Peanut Butter Truffle Eyeballs.
3) Sushi Samples for this year (directions here). Dried fruits top row: Peach Nigiri, Turkish Apricot Nigiri (split in half so that inside fruit shows), Papaya Nigiri, Papaya/Apricot Maki. Bottom Row: Papaya/Apricot Maki, Sugared Mango Nigiri, Peach (skin side up, split down middle, seam covered by ‘nori’), low sugar Mango Nigiri

Row 5:
1) Sushi Spread
2 & 3) Creepy Bubble Cocktails (instructions here) – Kalhua Grasshopper Shooters*, Orange Fish Eye Shooters**, Extra Pearls for adding to drinks. (Green=Creme de Menthe, Blue=Blue Raspberry drink mixer, Red=Grenadine with added red food coloring).

*Kalhua, Cream, poured over Creme de Menthe balls
** Orange liquer over Red (or Blue) balls

Halloween Food Posts
Halloween Costumes

Edit: Thanks to Craftzine for linking!

See All Halloween Posts

I’m A Winner! Buttons

For 1st through 4th Place… Snag this button to show off your accomplishments!

For 1st through 4th Place… Snag this BIG! button to show off your accomplishments!

So Close… Honorable Mention! Buttons

For the Honorable Mentions… Snag this button to show off your fabulousness!!!

For the Honorable Mentions… Snag this BIG button to show off your fabulousness!!

If you’re entering, and you have pictures on flickr, don’t forget to add them to the Dabbled Pool.

A Reminder about our Sponsors and cool Prizes!!

Sponsors for this years Dabbled Halloween have been kind enough to donate an item for a prize in the contest. And they are quite nifty and generous!

Some Art Fabric
Some Art Fabric is a really neat online fabric store. They have a really fun selection of fabric, and it’s way cool to support your fellow crafters than go buy your fabric at one of those big corporate stores. Colleen’s blog – Some Art Fabric Talk shows, like any true “Dabbler”, she’s into all types of crafts. Some great stuff, including tutorials. She’s also one of the winners of the Summer Doldrums contest, with her clever Insect Window treatment, made out of pages from old books.
Some Art Fabric is donating a Chic Or Treat Charm Pack – by Moda. A neat selection of different coordinating halloween themed fabrics, perfect for crafting, sewing or quilting projects! What a neat prize!

Erin K Creations
The lovely and talented Erin has generously offered up this nifty little halloween zip purse. Handmade by Erin herself and perfectly on the halloween theme…
Erin’s blog is full of fun projects she has done(like this cool halloween bat quilt!) and she’s so creative with fabric, I’m impressed. Check our her etsy store too, I’m loving the ‘snarky girl’ doll. Love all the recycled fabrics used in her creations, too. Thanks, Erin!

Chica and Jo
Love these chicks, a newly discovered favorite of mine. Their site is full of fun projects: Everything from How to throw a Bridal Shower to step by step instructions to make your own spooky chandelier for halloween, their site has all kinds of good stuff to make your life easier and more interesting!
For the contest, Chica and Jo are donated a photo cube kit, to make your own magic folding photocube! What a clever idea… I may just have to order a kit myself!

Dabbled
. And lastly, an additional prize from Dabbled. A custom full color graphic for your next party invitation, including personalized text (like your child’s name). Choose from a variety of subjects, like robots, monkeys, monsters, and more. (If you don’t want it for an invitation, and just want the customized graphic, that’s fine too).

Please take a minute to click over to visit our nifty sponsors, and check out their great stuff!

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Here’s lookin’ at you kid, originally uploaded by Creative Kismet.

PS: Another thing I’ve been meaning to link to – Samae at A Milf For All Seasons is one of the funniest mommy-blog true life writers I know… this one on basement renovation is particular fun!

All Halloween Here

More Halloween Features

Don’t forget…
a Dabbled Halloween Contest ends next Wednesday! Just a few more days…
All crafts, art, food Halloween related is eligible… And bloggers, if the winner finds us from your blog, you’ll win a prize too! Enter the contest or see the current entries HERE:

And Thanks to Tip Junkie for featuring some of my Halloween Food (Flayed Skin Cheeseball & Creepy Eyeball Apps and Desserts)

Finally, for you Facebookers out there – Become a Fan of Dabbled!* The blog has it’s own Wall and everything :)

*PS: I only friend people on my personal Facebook that I know, or have at least had conversations with, so this is a way to connect with all of you Facebooking Dabblers.

2. It looks huge– I see you have multiple areas both inside and out… Does it keep getting bigger?
It has grown over the years, but I think I have reached the size limit, I’ve ran out of yard and house. The entire front yard and facade of the house changes from a Florida home to an old abandoned Victorian-style house. The inside of the home gets a face lift as well. The living room becomes old and weathered, the breakfast nook has a creepy meal all prepared for the tasting, the kitchen becomes a witchs’ layer, and the dining room is set as a wake for a loved ones passing. This year’s addition to the side and back of the house has became the Scare Zone for the adults and older kids, complete with a corn field, butcher shop and many other frightening sites. So like I said I have reached my size limit, but my future goal is to reuse or enhance the decor I currently have. I want to always keep the kids surprised.

3. What’s your favorite part? (include pic links on flickr if you have them) My favorite part is what ever is in front of me at the time. When I start to think that something is my favorite, I enter a new area and get excited all over. I have so many very different and distinctive props that I could never say one thing is better than another. Take a look at photos of my props on Flickr! http://flickr.com/photos/gorenmore/sets/72157608125906375/show/

4. Do you have a professional background in building sets, or are you just creative and handy? Do you build it all yourself, or do you have friends/family helping out? I am mostly creative and handy. All the props you see I build myself, and only take on a little help from my family when the props are to big or heavy to put up by myself.

5. Settle a bet I have with my husband, what are the faux facades (like the tower) made out of? All the facades on the house are made of 2X4’s and plywood. I want to make sure that my props withstand the Florida weather conditions since they’re up & outside for the entire month of October.

6. So anyone can come by and check this out halloween night? The house is open to trick-or-treaters of all ages from 6 to 9 pm.

Anything else you want to say? I want to thank all the Halloween home haunters on-line. They provide many resources, tutorials and inspiration that help create my home haunt.

Thanks so much, Dave, for sharing your brilliant achievement in the field of Halloween Decorating! I wish I was in Florida so I could road trip over to see it all in person!

And readers, if you’re in Florida anywhere close to Davenport, you should definitely check it out!

More of a Dabbled Halloween
All of the Dabbled Interview Series

News/reminders:
– Halloween Contest ends next Wednesday – get those entries in! And check out what’s already been entered for your own halloween inspirations (in the comments)
– Two new Dabbled Interviews in the works, one is Halloween related… watch this space :)
– Also, much Halloween love will be packed into the next week.
– Making/putting together a halloween costume this year for you or the kiddos? Post it or put it on flickr and email me with the link!

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So, want more Dabbled but I just don’t update this enough for you? Follow me on twitter, and between the random chatter, I also post interesting links I find that may or may not ever make it to Dabbled… There’s also a link to the last few tweets over in the sidebar –>
Some cool links I twittered today:

So, here’s what I can remember about how I created mine.

You need a suitable jar. Mine has a pretty wide mouth (it’s a SunTea jar from the thrift store), but it looks even more bizarre if there is a small mouth, so it appears that there is no way you could have got the head in there.

Most importantly, you need a picture. This is the key. It needs to be a flattened image of a head. Something like this or this or this or the woman here. (This is from a quick googling. I think I found mine looking at stuff for 3D rendering of face textures, and 3D scanners. You’ll probably want something creepier, so use that google fu.) (edit: good one here.

Then print the picture on the heaviest, slickest paper you have, at a size that will allow it to fill most of the jar. It will work on regular paper i would think, but it may not hold up. Roll the paper up, with the face facing outward, and insert into jar. The paper should be big enough to fill about 3/4 of the circumference of the jar, so as to give you a full 3D view (Note, this depends on the size of your jar).

Fill the jar with colored water so it’s murky. On mine, there is a little space between the picture and the jar sides–I’m not sure it matters–you just want the head to look the right proportions. You may need to stick something inside of it to keep it in place. Just mess with it until the effect looks pleasing.

I then used some hair from a doll wig on top of it to simulate hair. This adds to the 3D effect, as it’s actually 3D.

The night of the party, i threw a few glow sticks in there to add to the ambiance.

And that’s about it! Enjoy!

More Halloween here