Seasonal Related Beadmaking

This time of year, the pumpkins, ghosts and goblins are out in full force. Perhaps the kids aren't dressing up, but the beadmakers are selling their work to jewelry makers and private individuals.

I'm always interested in seeing what's being done. How does an individual take a basic theme and make it their own?

I like to use children's books as a resource for ideas. Usually there is a lot of imagination already there in front of your eyes and then re-interpret it to suit my taste and quite honestly, my abilities. Some stuff is just too hard for me to do.

This is a photo of my three little trick or treating bobbleheads that I made last year. (the dog bead doesn't bobble) I wanted to take the seasonal topic and skip the ghosts for a change, but still let the viewer know what holiday it is by the orange pumpkin candy buckets. I just imagined some of the cute little kids coming to my door and it always seems like the bigger sister is the the back row- watching over them. I entered it in FlameTree Glass's Halloween Contest last year.

So are you making Halloween related beads or crafts? What are you doing this year? Changing anything up, or sticking with the ones you know always work? Tell us about it.

Pumpkin Cupcake ~ Bead on a Bead

Sometimes I make beads just because I want a challenge or the concept amuses me. This one encompasses both.

I was discussing pumpkin bread with someone and wondered if there are pumpkin flavored cupcakes. I thought it would be fun to make a Halloween cupcake that showed that.

For a long time, I've been messing around with stacking objects on top of each other in my beadmaking, so it was natural to add a pumpkin on top of the cupcake. I needed to watch my heat control to keep it nice and distinct between the two and yet make sure that it is totally fused on, so that it doesn't crack off. That sometimes happens if they aren't heated enough together. But I didn't want the pumpkin to look like it was melting into the frosting.

I solved this problem by melting a smaller first wrap into the frosting pretty well, before adding the rest of the pumpkin. This is just one of a couple of methods that I use when attaching a section that needs to look separate.

This delicious pumpkin cupcake is available in my Etsy shop - here. And I've also recently added some other food items to make sure my specialty food shop has plenty of delicacies.
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