Spooky Crafting Begins!

It's already a week and a half into spooky season, and I feel like I'm running out of time for fall activities! I have so many things I want to do, I feel like I need two or three months to get it all in. Luckily for us it's Halloween all year round here at Brightshadow Haven, so eventually the crafts will get crafted, the scary movies will get watched, and the night sky will get mooned. By me. Personally. 

This weekend I entered my first beard competition. People often ask me if I ever enter beard contests, but I really dislike being in competitive events so I've never had a huge desire. I've always thought I should try it out at least once though, so when my friend texted me Saturday morning asking if I wanted to join him that afternoon, I happily agreed. I have a decent amount of fall/Halloween silk flowers I've been stocking up on, so I rushed to scrape something together to decorate my beard. It ended up being a very lowkey and casual event at a local Viking/Celtic shop called Sons of Vikings. There were six categories and about eight men entered the contest, so we agreed that we'd have one win per person so that almost everybody could get a prize. Everyone was very friendly, and it was a great way to spend the afternoon. One guy even brought his pet boa constrictor! Now I can officially cross "enter a beard contest" off the bucket list. (Side note, the glare on my glasses makes it look like my eyes are going in different directions, pay no attention to this unfortunate optical illusion lol.)

After bagging my $25 gift card for the "longest beard" category, I rushed home to make a batch of cookies to take to a social at a friend's house. I was very crunched for time, so I jumped right in to making the candy corn cookie recipe I saw from Let'sCookie. Imagine my horror when I finally made the dough, separated and dyed the different layers, and THEN saw that you have to freeze the dough to make it solid before you cut it into shapes! 😭😭😭 I decided to risk it anyway and gently stacked and sliced the layers. They got slightly disfigured in the heat of the oven, but still turned out fairly well. Imagine my second horror when I bit into one of the finished cookies only to realize it wasn't a sugar cookie, it was FUCKING SHORTBREAD. Very jarring, like taking a sip from a glass of cola only to find it's La Croix. Weirdly the dry-ass crumbly texture that I normally hate has started to grow on me and I've eaten quite a few now. I've also only ever had storebought shortbread, and there was a noticeable difference in texture between prepackaged and homemade. The storebought are dry and crumbly the whole time you eat them, but the homemade almost seemed to melt or moisten as soon as I started chewing. I'll probably tuck the recipe away and try some holiday variations for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

Finally figured out a nice jewelry design for the plastic teeth I bought on sale this year. I've been tinkering around with some designs, and landed on a nice Sweetpea weave variation to hide the wirework above the tooth. I recently started seeing a new dentist who's amazing and helped me get through my phobia of the dentist to catch up on my dental health, so I'm planning on making a few pairs for her and the hygienists who were all super kind and helpful during my visits. Look out for those in the shop when it opens!

I also grabbed some really beautiful plastic beads from a new supplier to test out. Plastic can be really hit or miss as far as quality goes when making jewelry, but these pearly/iridescent teal beads really blew me away with how great they look! Usually I need to come up with a design that distracts from obvious plastic seams or helps the plastic to blend into an overall design, but these beads really stand on their own. Got a whole big box of different styles and colors from the same company, so those will probably be showing up in blog posts soon too.

Lastly I've been teaching myself to make hair clips and fascinator hats. I went back to the craft store for round two of clearance/sale florals and they had some good Halloween flowers and leaves. They won't be ready for Halloween this year, but I'm planning on having spooky stuff in the shop all year round anyway so that's fine. Not looking forward to figuring out all the shipping techniques to prevent them from getting smashed though. Here's the first fascinator hat I finished:

It wasn't difficult, but it took a couple of days as most of the elements were glued in place, so only one piece could be set at a time until the glue hardened on each one. The underside has clips to hold it in place in the hair. The black fern leaves (branches? fronds?) are actually a very soft flexible rubber, they felt so much better than the usual hard plastic. 

I've been making some flower crowns as well, as I'm planning to make that it's own entire section in my shop. These gray leaves were a bit more expensive than I would've preferred, but they had such a nice crisp look and detailed shading that I couldn't pass them up. I wish I would've grabbed a few more since I was so pleased with the final look. Next step is ribbon wrapping the wire base and it'll be finished. 

I had just a couple of gray leaves left over, so I used them to make some glittery bat hairpins. The back is a small felt circle with a snapping hairclip to hold it in place. The aloe leaves are also a flexible rubbery material, although these have a matte finish that suits the gray leaves quite well.

There are about five or six other headpieces in the studio I've been working on today, as well as several jewelry pieces. I've got literal piles of supplies stacked in there just waiting to be turned into magical and spooky accessories. Frustratingly a lot of the paranormal podcasts I listen to are on hiatus or have scaled back on posting, so I've ended up listening to some audibooks to fill my ears while I work. One on Yoruba/Orisha spirituality, one on inner peace and non-attachment, one book of Scottish fairytales and folktales, and The Body Keeps The Score. That last one has really helped me work through a lot of pain from the past and understand a lot of my own anxiety. It's actually one of the main reasons I was able to schedule my dentist appointments and get my teeth taken care of. At the same time, it's been using a considerable amount of my emotional energy to process it all, both the book itself and the feelings/realizations it's bringing up, so I've been listening to that one just a bit at a time. 

Overall it's been a great start to the Halloween season, I can't wait to see what else I get up to lol. The musical instrument practice and songwriting have fallen aside for a bit, but I'll get back into that as soon as October wraps up. For now, I'm off to make some tea, start my haunted house jigsaw puzzle, and watch some original run Scooby Doo from the 70s! Hope you're all up to something fun, creepy, and Halloweenie, see you soon!