Halloween kitty desktop wallpaper

Happy Halloween! In honor of the day, I amused myself making cats when I'm supposed to be working. If you want either of these kitties as desktops, grab them here:

Download dark cats (1680x1050 px)
Download light cats (1680x1050 px)

Artwork for personal use only, as always! Have a fun evening, and may you eat lots of chocolate.

Last-minute Halloween paper crafts

It's not too late to make a last-minute Halloween paper toy! Get the fam printing and folding these free DIY projects tonight.
Retro pumpkin treat basket at My Paper Crane
Little desk dracula by Samantha Eynon (scroll down on the page to find him)
Cute Halloween menagerie from Happy Thought

Download high-res images from the Rijksmuseum

The Dutch national museum Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has digitized 125,000 works from its collection. They're available as high-resolution downloads free for personal use. Another 40,000 images will be added every year until the entire collection of one million pieces is available.

You can create a free Rijks Studio account and categorize all your favorite images in folders, sort of like Pinterest. (Browse other users' collections here.) You could download your favorites and decoupage them onto your calculator or print them on tattoo paper and stick them all over yourself. Another option: recolor them and make stationery like these examples by Flow Studio. Have fun!


(Thanks for the tip, Jet!)

Giveaway: iPhone 5/5s battery case

Uncommon, the company that makes customizable cases for your iPhone, iPad, iPod or MacBook, has some of my patterns in their image collection. You can pick your favorite design and apply it to the case of your choice. Then Uncommon will make it for you and mail it to you in a flash.

Now they've added a customizable iPhone 5/5s Power Gallery™ case to their lineup— a case you can switch on to charge your phone while you're carrying it around in your purse. And they're giving away one case with any Jessica Jones artwork! It's a $119.95 value; not too shabby.

Some specs about the case:
- It gives your iPhone 120% extra battery life
- It features an LED power indicator, so you always know how much power you have left in your case
- You can turn the case battery on and off easily
- It has a 2200mAh battery
- The case comes with a micro USB charge & sync cable, headphone jack extender and a full instruction manual

Check out your six pattern choices here.

To win a case, enter the giveaway by Thursday at midnight EST using the Rafflecopter widget below (it might take a second to load below this paragraph— wait for it!) A winner will be selected using random.org, emailed, and announced in this post on Friday. International entries are welcome.

Update: The winner is Hanna, who lives-- get this-- "just outside Oslo." Outside Oslo is the name of my last fabric collection, so clearly it was meant to be!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Brass: love it or hate it?

My new house has a crazy mix of fixtures and hardware. I'll give you a tour. Above is the light fixture inside the front door.


Here's one in the second floor hallway at the top of the stairs. My favorite.


The door hardware is gorgeous. The knobs and backplates are almost all original, and there are a ton of them since every room has three doors in it. (This is no open-concept house, that's for sure.) Look at that plate on the pocket door. So pretty.


Here's a hallway wall sconce as we head back toward the dining room. Hmmm. Yellow.


It coordinates with the bright yellow dining room chandelier.


A theme repeated in the guest bathroom upstairs. (The bathrooms have painted trim; the rest of the woodwork throughout the house is dark.)


A lacquered brass-plated toilet paper holder will make you feel like a king sitting on a throne. Fancy.


Which brings me to this. The downstairs bathroom has matching fixtures, but they're eclipsed by the navy painted-over sheets of plastic faux tile on the walls, lending the room a creepy cave-like feel. The wallpaper adds something, too. I don't know what the something is, but it's not good.


Even the toilet has a bright brass handle for optimal luxury. (Look— there's a claw foot bathtub! I can't get far enough away in this tiny room to take a full picture, but it's wedged in there. It could be special, but the rest of the room is not doing it any favors.)


And then there's this guy in the kitchen. This is not a black and white photo—the fixture is nickel and charcoal gray.

I have to admit that before moving in, I had no interest in brass, copper, or gold of any kind. And now my tastes have done an about-face. (I just pictured my tongue flipping 180 degrees and it was a weird mental picture.) I just can't visualize a lot of shiny chrome, nickel or stainless steel in here. Some silver surfaces are nice mixed in, but the warm wood and age of the house seem to call for darkened, aged brass. The bright yellow 80s stuff is still pretty unappealing to me, but bronze, brass, and copper metallics are making a comeback in accessories and interiors. What do you think about brass?

Free font: Fantaisie

Fantaisie is a typeface designed by Lev Berry, based on lettering from 1882. It comes in six varieties you can layer and color to create depth and gorgeous titles. Best of all, it's free for commercial use. Wowzers! Get it here. Along with the fonts, the .zip file contains interesting examples of Fantaisie in action, plus tips for working with it.

DIY idea: bookshelf wall at The Wit

This past weekend I spent a night at The Wit hotel in Chicago and noticed the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in this lounge. See those faces? Let's look closer.


All of those black and white portraits are formed from the spines of books.


Each book wears a jacket of plain black paper over its regular cover, and then a slice of a face is glued to the spine. (No books were harmed in the making of this project.)


If you need a statement wall in your house, copy this idea! Print and slice up a mix of celebrities, artists, and world leaders, or immortalize your family and friends. You're not reading that set of encyclopedias anymore, are you? Repurpose them as artwork.

Excellent pumpkin carving tools

When asked recently if I wanted to test a set of Grampa Bardeen's pumpkin carving tools, I declined. Then I read more about the product and was charmed by the quality and the story.

The family of grandpa Paul Bardeen has created a fabulous set of tools modeled after the ones he used to use. Blades and scoops come in various sizes for speedy cutting and finer details. The handles are some sort of very hard plastic, and all saw teeth are treated with Teflon to protect them and make them slide more easily. Every tool in the box is WAY safer than using knives. Which I have done in the past and will never go back.

Included in the carving kit are cutting patterns and poking tools to trace designs onto pumpkins. My favorite part was the newspaper insert with instructions and a family history with photos from the 1940s.




Last night I tried out the tool set. Instead of cutting around the stem of the pumpkin, I followed the suggestion in the instructions to cut a 5-6 inch hole in the bottom of the pumpkin. This way it's easy to set the pumpkin over a light source resting on a flat surface. And the top stays intact and looks nice.


I cut the bottom circle in half so I could push it in and then pull it out. Then the tedious, slimey part: scraping out the guts. The scooping/scraping tool worked great for that, though it does get a little slippery.


Try to refrain from eating the raw innards, though they do look delicious.


I wanted to make a design in which I could try the drilling tools. These come in three sizes and allow you to cut perfectly round holes by twisting the tool. So I sketched a very How About Orange design with retro-looking flowers, and drilled all the holes first. Piece of cake. My favorite part!

(Note— a fine-tip dry erase marker works great for drawing designs directly onto pumpkins, and it wipes off easily.)

After drilling holes, I cut the straight lines and larger shapes with the various saw tools. It works well to move the saws up and down like a sewing needle; they cut easily through the pumpkin rind.


I carved as the sun set, and when I finished, I set the pumpkin over a couple of LED flickering tea lights. Behold the cuteness!

And then I moved the pumpkin to an uneven part of the bench and turned my back for an instant. In that instant, the pumpkin tipped over, rolled off the bench, and smashed on the sidewalk.

I stared in horror, and then started giggling uncontrollably because there's something very satisfying about smashing a pumpkin, even accidentally.

It's okay. I'll make more and recruit the neighbors to help.

If you want to start a carving tradition with your family or friends, get Grampa Bardeen's carving kit here at Amazon. Find more info and carving tips at GrandpaBardeen.com. The set is high quality and will last for years and years, I'm guessing. You could use it all autumn long to make pretty lanterns for your porch steps or decorations for Thanksgiving. Carve simple leaf shapes or abstract designs, and your pumpkins don't have to be just for Halloween.

Update: A request has been made for a photo of the deceased pumpkin. Here it is. May it rest in peace.

Floral fall wallpaper freebie

Need new fall wallpaper for your phone or desktop? Check out the lovely work of illustrator Lisa Rupp. She's posted an autumn design right here, and you can find her full set of wallpaper freebies here. They're in pretty color palettes with great textures– download your favorite!

Make a paper desk zombie

Speaking of zombies, designer Tiffany Radowick recently sent me a link to a little zombie paper toy you can make. Push down on his head to change his expression. Funny! Get the free printable file right here on the Creativello blog. (And grab the Thanksgiving turkey template while you're there, too.)

Zombie lorem ipsum!

Lorem ipsum, the fake text designers use as placeholder copy on layouts, has been around for ages. Maybe you've seen Bacon Ipsum, Cupcake Ipsum, Hipster Ipsum, and many other ipsums. (Ipsa?) But nothing is more festive this time of year than Zombie Ipsum. Generate paragraphs in regular, lite, or with 50% more brains, right here.

I used it in a layout the other day and sent it off to the client. No comment so far.

Free printables for Halloween packaging

Some of my favorite Halloween freebies this year are in the packaging category:
Download an iron-on graphic for treat bags at Used Everywhere
Get a set of four awesome, retro wine bottle labels from Elegance & Enchantment
Print out adorable ghost gift wrap by Design is Yay

Origami skeleton hand

I got a huge kick out of making this creepy origami skeleton hand! It's actually pretty easy, just lots of layers of paper to fold at once. Learn how in this video by Jo Nakashima; design by Jeremy Shafer. I will leave it on Alex's keyboard.

Origami jack-o-lantern

Heh. I made a pumpkin. Follow along with this origami tutorial by TCGames to learn how. It has turned into Halloween origami week at How About Orange.

Intermediate origami bat for Halloween

Here's another paper bat decoration, a little more difficult than in the previous post. This origami design is by Protogenius, demonstrated here on YouTube. My attempt at it has a big head, small wings, and something is funky with his feet! But he's a bat, all right. The cool thing is this model is a glorified paper airplane and (sort of) flies, plus it'll hang upside down from a string stretched across a doorway because the feet fold over and function like hooks.

This origami bat is made from a letter-sized sheet of paper. Follow along with the video tutorial, Part 1 and Part 2.

Easy origami bat for Halloween

Bats lend themselves to paper folding since their bodies can be easily reduced to flat planes. Here's a very simple version by Nick Robinson that you can fold in a minute or two. I followed this good video tutorial.

Picture this: you make a couple bats along with the video to memorize the steps. Then put on your favorite Halloweenish movie and fold an entire colony of bats. You could crank out dozens, hundreds! (Depending on how engrossed you get in the movie. Beetlejuice yields 65 bats. Batman Begins yields 2 bats.) Then tape strings of bats to fishing line or invisible thread and hang garlands from the ceiling. Or stick them to the wall in a huge group with a little ball of poster putty or loop of painter's tape at the bottom point of each bat.

Tips: If you end up with a little edge of white showing around the bat's head, color it black with a marker. Find packs of black origami paper for a few bucks at Amazon.

Ten free Halloween fonts

If you're planning to make any Halloween invitations or banners this month, a round-up of ten free Halloween fonts from Creative Pro might be just what you're looking for. I tried out Tango Macabre and Needleteeth above. (Thanks for the tip, Elizabeth!)

Parlor progress (or lack of)

Ugh, it's taking me forever to get anything done in our house! So unfortunate how work gets in the way. And eating. And sleeping. And watching past seasons of Scandal on Netflix. Wait, one of these things could be avoided.

I could quit my job.

All the rooms are in various stages of haven't-started to halfway-there. I'm focusing on the parlor right now since it was totally empty and also the room you see when you open the front door. We would like it to look like people actually live here.

The light fixture I ordered arrived recently. It's so pretty! But it has a small problem, as you can see above. A new shade is on the way, thanks to the excellent customer service at Joss and Main.


The fabric I ordered for the chairs came. It's Malta Tourmaline by Iman Home. It's soft and a little bit velvety. I'm waiting for the chairs to upholster themselves.

And the rug I ordered? I just cancelled it. I don't want to wait 12 weeks, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I just didn't LOVE it. I kept thinking circus tent, and it's not very plush. If option #1 was cheaper, I'd try it. Maybe I can find it in a store and they'll let me bring it home and then bring it back if it looks insane.

At least we've got drapes up. Progress!

Free Vera Bradley wallpapers

A Google search for new desktops led me to a mother lode. Vera Bradley, the patterned handbag and accessories company, has gazillions of floral designs to choose from. Sized for desktops, iPads, and phones, you can download recent files or raid the downloads archive from seasons past. Vera Bradley products are usually way too quilted and flowery for my taste, but when those florals are paired with a nice solid color field, I kinda dig some of them.

Say it in llama font

It's so silly. Go to this website, type a phrase, and your text will be displayed in a typeface made from llamas. "Need to send a harsh message to a loved one? Helvetica is cold. Say it in llama." Why? Because llamas make everything better. (Thank you, Patty.)

Update: Clicking "save" for your text results in offers to download a file that I didn't understand--if you want to save your llama words, my suggestion is to take a screen shot of your text and then share that image however you like.