Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween.  I ended up borrowing a yukata (casual summer kimono) to match my daughters diy sushi Halloween costume.  It worked out pretty well, I tried to do the geisha makeup, but didn't have white face paint so it just looks like I bought the wrong foundation color.  It was fun dressing up matching my daughter, I loved your suggestions about being wasabi, soy sauce, chopsticks.  I'll have to start planning for next year.  Hopefully my daughter will still let me make her costume for her.

Pumpkin Patch! With Spooky Pictures Using Iphone's Panoramic Feature

If you live in Orange County, Tanaka farms has to be your stop during Halloween.  We go every year to check out the pettng zoo, ride the wagons and take pictures.  They have a petting zoo and a whole huge patch where you can pick your own pumpkin (although my kids never get to do that, it's too expensive ... they get to pick any pumpkin they want at Walmart).  The petting zoo is stocked with animals (if you go to early in the season they will not have as many animals).  You can see the animals from the outside of the fence (we brought Avery inside last year and she was too scared to even move.)  I think its only three dollars to get inside the petting zoo (comes with a small cup of food to feed the animals).  Wagon rides are 5 dollars per person and it takes you through a tour of the farm.  My kids really enjoy the wagon ride.

I love taking pictures at Tanaka Farms, the lighting is so good and all the bright orange pumpkins make the perfect backdrop.  My cousin took some awesome panoramic pictures with her Iphone at the beach, so I decided to try to do the same at the pumpkin patch.  She basically used the panoramic feature of her Iphone and ran to each new scene, creating a panoramic where she is in some of the frames.  Seems easy enough right?  See the picture below?  First and last frame look good, but the middle frame I'm just a floating head.  Kinda cool for Halloween I guess.

Bodyless me because I moved too soon when we were panning through the frame.

Two headed and a teleporting Avery.  These were all accidents from trying to do the iphone pan, not photoshopped.

This one turned out.  The trick is that when you are panning you need to have the person in the entire frame. They cannot move until they are out of the frame.  So you want to stop panning have them move and then start panning again.

The more people you have in your panoramic the harder it becomes, especially with kids!  If they keep moving, they can get distorted.

This last picture is a 'who wore it better?'  The left picture was just taken today, and the right picture is of Avery when she was one.  

Here are some steps and tips for how to take a panoramic picture with your Iphone IOS7 where the subject appears in mutiple frames/parts.
1.  Start with the person in frame to your far right
2.  The person/people must stay still for the entire time they are in the frame of your camera.
3.  Once they are out of the frame you hold your camera still and stop panning.  Have them run to the next spot and again stay still.
4.  Pan over to them again and have them stay still. The middle section is the hardest because you can't really tell when they have exited the frame so you will have to approximate.
5.  Repeat steps 3 and 4 for as many frames as you want.
6.  Just keep practicing!

Handwritten Bloody Halloween Font Tutorial

Here is a simple handwritten font that is great for Halloween.  I love to use this font for my Halloween banners because it is easy and you don't need any special drawing ability.  The messier your penmanship is the better.  I sometimes even write the words with my left (I'm a rightly) hand just to get the lines messier. There is a video tutorial below will show you how to create this font.  All you have to do is write the words with a broad marker (Crayola Markers, Highlighters, or even these cheapie Sponge Bob party favor markers work).

Draw out the word with marker.  The messier the better.

Outline the marker with a black ink pen (not ball point).

Video Tutorial:

This also looks pretty cool with yellow highlighter also.

Easy Halloween DIY Sushi Costume

Halloween is just around the corner. I love baby costumes and this year I decided to make my youngest daughter her costume.  I realized that you can really only pick their costume for your kids before the age of two.  After that they will have opinions and refuse to be raw fish for, and instead insist on being Disney Princess.

I had the pleasure of meeting another blogger this weekend, Jennifer from Transformations You Can See.  I love reading new blogs so I was super excited to read hers.  When I find a new blog that I like I read it from beginning to end.  While reading through her blog I saw this post for a sushi costume for a child. I knew I had to make this.  This project took less than an hour and I am so happy with the results.  Jennifer made a Salmon Sushi costume (be sure to check out her tutorial too, it is a bit different from mine). I was also going to go down that route but decided on turning it into shrimp sushi instead, because it looked more like shrimp when I was half way done.  I used all materials I found at my house.  The orange was an old pillow case, the black was old leggings,the white strips were from a while t-shirt and the stuffing was from an old pillow (yes I keep old pillows and use it to stuff projects, so much softer and cheaper than poly-fill).

There is a little sewing involved, you have to sew your orange fabric to be the size of the pillow.  If you make a shrimp instead of a fish you also need to sew the tail.  Other than that I just used glue to attach the strips of white fabric.

Another thing I love about this costume is that my daughter didn't even notice it was on her.  Most other costumes she would feel the bulk and want to pull it off, this one she wore it all day and was fine.

I do not have exact measurements, just eyeball it to the size of your child.  Cut 2 rectangle to the size of your childs back.  If you want to make a shirmp I would make the rectangle a little longer and just cut the tail right onto the first piece.  I made the mistake of attaching it afterwards (because I didn't think I was going to make a shrimp).

Cut white strips of fabric about half and inch wide and 3/4ths the width of your original rectangle.  Glue strips onto fabric.  I used Alene's tacky glue (which is not fabric glue, but works great on fabric).

If you already cut out the tail to be included then you do not need to do this step, if not then cut out the tail.

Sew top, left and right sides of the pillow (right sides facing) together.  Flip the pillow inside out and stuff with poly fill.  This is where it kind of gets tricky.  If you want to attach the, fold in the bottom of the pillow, and then put the tail in.  Gather the materials bottom fabric (kind of like you would to make ruffles) and sew in place.

This is much easier to do by hand sewing than on a sewing machine.

I used black leggings to attach the band onto the onesie.  Stretchy materials for the black "seaweed" works better because it will expand to your child's chest.  I also sewed the top corners of the sushi onto the shoulders for extra support.  

Now my only problem is what I should be for Halloween to match?  Maybe soy sauce?

100 dollar Consumer Crafts Shopping Spree Giveaway

Love crafting?  Hate spending so much money on craft supplies?  The Crafts Unleashed Team
 and Consumer Crafts want help by giving away a $100 shopping spree.   Three winners will receive fabulous prize in our Holiday Shopping Spree contest!   You can shop for gifts, craft supplies, or anything else Consumer Crafts carries.  

1^st prize - $100 shopping spree

2^nd prize - $50 shopping spree

3^rd prize – craft grab bag

 

The wonderful Crafts Team and Consumer Crafts to bring you this giveaway.  We all are designers for Consumer Crafts but were not paid  in anyway for this giveaway.  Just something fun to give our readers.

Crystal with A Pumpkin and A Princess

Vanessa with Tried and True

Kelly with Live Laugh Rowe

Katie with Lemon Jitters

Morena with Morena's Corner

Angie with The Country Chic Cottage

Amy with A Nest for All Seasons

Adrianne with Happy Hour Projects

Enter using the rafflecopter widget below.  Winners will be announced on the widget below after the contest ends.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Reuse Easter Eggs for Halloween Decorations

I don't know how I ended up with so many Easter eggs.  Each year after Easter I buy a bag or two for the following year.  This year I ended up with a couple of boxes of Easter eggs.  I dug out all the green, white and orange ones for Halloween.  They worked out pretty well and now I can use put candy in them for party favors at my daughter's school.  Just a little decoration with a sharpie and viola, Easter in October. Who know's maybe we'll have a Halloween Egg Hunt.

Mixing it up for some fun.  My daughter really got a kick out of this.