In My Glory

And why wouldn't I be? This is what is currently sitting at one end of my dining room table!

I pulled these supplies from my stash so that I can complete another Halloween gift that I had intended to do last year. This is truly just a drop in the bucket of the Halloween craft supplies that I have but here is my justification-if I want to start Halloween crafting in July (and I DO!), it is almost impossible to buy supplies. They are starting to come in, but isn't it just so much easier to go to my craft closet and have more than everything I could ever need right there? That's my story and I'm sticking to it...although I will admit to not ever being able to pass up anything orange and black and especially if it has a vintage feel as well. I am hooked.

One side note to going through supplies every now and then. When I bought one of the Halloween paper packs several years ago, I fell in love with 3 sheets of  Halloween patterned toile in three different colors. My goal had been to frame them in three identical black frames and hang them in the guest bath. I just never somehow got around to it so that is definitely on this year's to-do list as well.

So this was the start of my "letter press" craft knock off. I found the cork letters at Michaels and cut a 1X2 into small blocks.

I painted the blocks black and the letters in copper, silver and gold.

I glued the blocks together using wood glue and then glued on the letters.

After the glue was dry, I distressed the letters with a black ink pad and drilled small holes into the middle block and inserted a Tim Holtz picture holder pin.

Then, I downloaded and printed some vintage Halloween greetings, cut them out and matted them with orange and black. I still wasn't happy with them so I found some jack-o-lantern buttons, snipped off the shanks and glued them onto the pins.

Something was still missing so I got out my trusty label maker and printed up some labels. I am getting happier with these with each tweak that I make but still not altogether satisfied. I think since my letters don't have the vintage look that the whole letter press thing is lost in the translation. And then, there really is no reason for the blocks to be small-a simple strip of 1X2 would have been just as good but there was no way to really know that until all was said and done. Sure would have saved a lot of work. In any case, one more thing is off the list. Hope to get the next one done tomorrow. We shall see. Stay tuned.