Well, things are rolling right along for the Halloween sales season, as the “stock shed” is now emptying out just as fast as we can fill it. Our assembly of tombstones will be coming to an end here in about two weeks, and the volume of orders have increased week-over-week.
A VERY BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has ordered from us this year AND the two previous years! We can’t express how much we appreciate your support and the constant positive reviews – keep ’em coming. ; )
And…drum roll…we now have a templates section! We recently launched it to compliment the how-to articles for making your own stencils and burning your wood Halloween tombstones. In fact, the only templates we have up there at the moment are for tombstones…LOL. But, we posted quite a few to choose from for all of our current sizes: x-small, small and medium. Take a look and let us know what you think!
We have something really, really cool in the works for stencils as well. Hoping to make that live and update everyone before we all get into the Christmas season. Stay tuned for that.
Now to our favorite topic and time of year…HALLOWEEN. Like every year, we actually don’t start setting up the front yard until a few weeks before Halloween. Yes, it’s a lot of work in a short amount of time, but it really lengthens the life of the decorations we make by limiting their exposure to the elements (plus, we usually don’t have the time to set up until we clear the Halloween sales season anyway). We’ll have a post coming soon highlighting some of the past Halloween setups.
Until then, here are some internet legends for Halloween inspiration: blogs of two absolutely incredible artists that have been a major inspiration for us for well over a decade.
Pumpkinrot
https://pumpkinrot.blogspot.com/
Hands down, Pumpkinrot is our absolute favorite source of Halloween inspiration. If you’ve never seen his work, you’re in for a ridiculous treat. You’ll spend hours of surfing photos for each year of Halloween displays in a stooper of Halloween wonder (or something – sorry that was weird). If you just want a quick sampling of the work, check out his Instagram account.
The gritty, organic, natural style of work, with picture-perfect composition, sets the absolute bar for what Halloween could look like. Fun fact: he was tapped on by director Mike Dougherty to be a concept artist for the movie KRAMPUS. Be sure to check out his post on that, just too cool.
Dave Lowe
https://davelowe.blogspot.com/
Dave is an amazingly talented artist with such a great, quirky style. Whether for TV or his personal Halloween display, he’s got so many good props on his blog. At the very least, be sure to surf through his October posts for each year. One of the props we loved best is the witch crash prop (pictured here).
On top of the Halloween eye candy he’s posted, he’s got so many good quick how-to’s. Some of our favorites are the FedEx box tombstone, a crazy simple yet impressive foam core lantern, and the most influential for us: his ridiculously simple rust painting technique.
Just writing a post about Halloween is giving me the itch to set up the front yard. Hope you enjoy the hours of surfing fun and inspiration at these two artist’s sites.
Until then, back to the shop to make more tombstones and get more orders shipped!
Leave a Reply