Designing, planning and cooking for Halloween parties is one of my deepest creative passions.

I made a bunch of vegan and gf desserts for the first time this year. Some of them were good!

I learned the white chocolate drip glaze technique to make the glazes for my beloved brother and sister in law’s wedding cake; you can see it here!

I started my craft projects in September, and my baking October 1.

I am bugfuck crazy about Halloween.

So even though I’m still reeling with horror about the US election, I’m going to post some pictures of the creative things I did for my favorite holiday.

Seeing other people make beautiful things and follow their passions has been sustaining to me.

I hope seeing my weird stuff feels good to you.

I decorated the house. I can no longer tell what I put up for Halloween and what was already there.

Like this note from my mom from last Halloween, which is basically just part of our kitchen now. And these magnets Daria got me on one of her trips.

I don’t even know where this other eyeball bouquet I made and the creepy hand are in the house now.

So it’s not like I could put them away.

I guess it’s all staying up! Santa hats for all the bats!

I finally found a glass dome big enough for my bridal bouquet of paper and fabric flowers made by amazing artists Anandamayi Arnold and Aimee Baldwin. All I had to do was sand and paint the base, which was some hideous pale oak color, black.

This work of art made by beloved friends displayed in our home was one of the visions I held onto tightly during our whole move and housing search.

Creating a safe space to honor the works made by the cherished creative people I have known and loved is a huge part of who I am and how I am motivated.

Holding onto so many precious, delicate, completely unique things is a lot of work and a lot of stress. I used a lot of acid-free tissue and bubble wrap to get them here.

But without weird object-attachment people like me, there’d be no museums!

 

(I also made these sparkly creature-frames for Daria‘s new postcards, because I love mass production too!)

I made this hideous dolly kind of in my spare time in parallel to my Gothic Burlesque Elsa Lanchester Bride of Frankenstein. Isn’t she lovely? Not so much? Oh come on, you like her right?

Well, she came out exactly as I saw her in my head, and it’s a rare project you can say that about, especially one involving a rubber spider, hair ties, epoxy clay and faux fur.

Fun fact: the boots I used for Elsa were the boots that were on the feet of this Living Dead doll before I, um, cut them off with a hacksaw.

I packed them with epoxy clay to give my Bride more weight and structural stability at her base. And I also used epoxy clay to make a dollar-store zombie hand candleholder more normal.

You know, I just wanted a regular creepy disembodied hand.

I wish it was still the week before Halloween, before the darkness and terror of November 8. I wish I wasn’t so afraid for the US and the world. I wish I could go back in time to when I bought this poster, when it seemed impossible such a creature could win the election.  I hope and pray by next Halloween the world will be less insane. I thank you and love you for all that you do.