Before i levitate off into the night to join the other beautiful ghouls at the Ball in the House on Bloglandia Hill , i want to say Happiest of Halloweens to my dear lovely fiends! May you be joyfully haunted with beautiful fanciful visions forevermore! AS for me….well….I Want To Be Evil Tonight with the Divinely wicked Miss Eartha Kitt!

Click the photos of both the Mad Woman and her magical levitating shoes for special Halloween treats! I hope you all find some wonderful Magical Donuts tonight!!!!
Big Bright Samhain Blessings, my lovies!

xoxox

Be warned, this EXTREMELY insane Lady is at large, after her daring escape from the asylum using rope she wove from several years worth of collected cobwebs. She was declared insane and locked away due to her over-zealous interest in anatomy and is a known collector of skeletons, some of which were very dubiously obtained.

She is considered armed and dangerous, wielding sharp embroidery needles and a penchant for stitching random bodyparts together in hideously grotesque ways in her attempt to create “the perfect dolly”

Should you see this face peeking into your window, lock all doors, call the constable at once, and DO NOT allow her entrance to you home under any circumstances, even if she offers you cookies and candies!

(giggle, giggle!)

Thank you to Christa over at Gypsy Junk Knits for creating this marvelous little creepy chapeau for me!!! It’s absolutely wonderful! Here are more shots of the hat itself, looking much better on Lady Skully-head than on me, i might add!

It’s so very perfectly “amanda”, she really “got” me and my rather…ahem…unique style ….all my favorite things are incorporated…lace and skulls and beads and bells and buttons and a gorgeous peacock feather. i adore it!!! I can’t thank you enough, dear girl!

I hope everyone is have a glorious evening…Tomorrow is the big day! Witches at the ready and happy Haunting!
xoxoxo

We had a marvelous time at Belladonna’s yesterday! I have never seen so many people in that shop…it was so full that you could barely move, which of course, is wonderful! I also go to meet an on-line friend for the first time…meeting the gorgeous and wonderful lady who is the owner of the “Gypsy Belle” apron and her beautful kids were the high point of the day. Thank you Kim, for coming…you don’t even know how much that meant to me, and i am sorry we did not get more time to chat…but we will SOON! I hope you enjoyed Columbia! It’s an amazing thing to meet someone away from the “facelessness” of the internet. I am utterly honored that you came all that way!!! Also, Heather, my heart swelled up like a big happy balloon that you came too…thank you so much for supporting me and for being my friend! We gotta have another craft night ASAP! So sad that we are missing bellydance this week
As usual, Jennifer had the store looking beautiful and packed with every sparkly and magical goodie you could ever want…so on with the 100000000 photos of the day….

Tricks and Treats!

(blurry, just like our vision after sippin’ my Hot Hoodoo Hooch (mulled wine) all the long day!

Pandora’s Button Box table….

There’s an apparition in the mirror…can you see her?

Marie Laveau Altar…. Jen and Matthew just returned from New Orleans, and the store definitely had that voodoo flair going on this year!

beauty on every flat surface

I wanted this mask with ever fiber of my being…damn frugality to hell!

Did you know that the Goddess Kali owns Belladonna’s?

Somehow, i avoided getting any photos of myself, which i can’t lie and say was ACCIDENTAL There were lots of really great costumes and fun people around all day and we had such a great time. Even better was dinner at the Whig after….i swear i could live on the Gouda mac n’ cheese….and the gin and tonic! Thank you Jen, And Matthew, for hosting this fun day, and letting me be a part of the shop. I love you guys so much…

xoxoxo

These are some of the treats that your Kitchen Witch has been cooking up in the Buttonbox kitchen! Hopefully all these treats will tempt folks to come and hang out with us at Belladonna’s Halloween Openhouse tomorrow!

I got the excellent recipe for the “Lady Fingers” from the ever-awesome food blog, BLOGHUNGRY….he’s the cutest most adorable thing ever, and has lots of great recipes too! These are a VERY tasty almond shortbread. Of course, his are prettier than mine, but i am cool with having gnarly witch fingers!

The little skull candies you see are bleeding skull bonbons. The idea for THIS bit of horrible wonderfulness came from cut out + keep. Basically you partially fill skull candy molds with white chocolate ( i used Ghirardelli chips), stick a bead into the chocolate to form a little cavity inside…when it hardens, pop the bead out, fill it with some form of red sweet goo ( i used raspberry syrup), pop it in the freezer til the goo hardens, then fill the mold the rest of the way with melted white chocolate. Once it hardened, you are left with a bloody good oozy bonbon! I am over the top pleased with outcome of my kitchen witchery efforts and cannot wait to share!!!

Also, at this very moment, a lovely witch’s brew is slowly warming on my stove…..a great big pot of Mulled Wine! I used a cheap-o chianti (GET IT??? CHIANTI??? it’s a dumb joke, but i could not resist, i just couldn’t! All my skirts will be hung on WIRE HANGERS too! can i get a rim shot please? Thank you! teehee) Into the chianti went an orange, juices, peels and all, a pomegranate that i seeded and crushed the juices from, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, honey and a little bit of brown sugar. I can’t even TELL you how good the house smells right now!! It’s amazing what remarkable magic can be worked upon a lowly bottle of uber-cheap wine! Anyway, this brew will be served tomorrow from Jen’s wonderful heated kettles, keeping our bellies warm and glow-y with spicy red wine goodness, not to mention a bit of silly-fun tipsy-ness in Miz Amanda, hopefully keeping my shyness down to a tolerable level! Soooo…if you are local to the Columbia area, come and get some gruesome goodies and share in my wino witches brew. I would love to see the shop filled with lovely folks! So, come out come out where ever you are! I plan to be there all day, in costume even….. so come celebrate the Samhain season with me and all the lovely artists that will be in attendance!!!

Here is the info on Belladonna’s….
1224 Pendleton Street
Columbia SC
803-765-0450

Hope everyone is having a glorious day!!!!

xoxoxo

I am frantically working to get everything ready for my Big Day Of Horror at Belladonna’s Halloween Open House this Saturday (local folks, PLEASE do come see us!!!!) I have been very busy stitching and pasting and working my magic so that there will be lots of spookiness and fun new stuff. I still have a LOT to do before i am all done (as hard as i try to get that spell right, those dollies just won’t sew themselves, alas) But, here are a few of the goodies i’ve recently finished…..

A few more Ancestor Dream Pillows….

Hand sewn and beaded “Arsenic & Old Lace cuff…

And of course, more creepy glass icon candles….

i love this image, the skeleton holding the hourglass just appealed to my morbid sense of humor and all i could think was…Time Flies When You are having Fun! I just wish the pics would come out better so you could see the details!

As usual, it is SO hard to photograph these, and they really come to life when the candle is lit…you can’t see it, but the skulls are layed on sheet music…it’s an image i got from antique anatomy book….really really cool!

I recently watched the movie “Spider Baby” for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a riot! Campy and creepy and oh-so wonderful…and has Lon Chaney Jr. to boot! This candle was my homage to this great (awful) film. Here is a link to the trailer….it is seriously insane!
There’s also some Kitchen Witchery afoot…it’s not all done, but i can share a bit of this lovely delicacy while you wait for the other goodies…

Calamity Kim sent me so much awesome creepy kitchen gear, including these amazing gross organ molds! Here we have my lovely Heart attempt. Its a strawberry panna cotta type recipe, but next time i think i will use less gelatin…it does not have that creaminess that i was going for and is much more like a jello jiggler in consistency…but boy does it look COOL! Come on…take another little piece of my heart, now baby!

Doesn’t it just make you feel SOOOOOOOOOOOO hungry????

Hope you are all having a delightfully ookie day!

xoxoxo

A really great treat for the zombie family on the go! Prepackaged for convenience, and so much easier to rip open the cellophane than to gnaw thru all that skull-bone to get to the good stuff!

Big enough for all the hungry little braineaters to share….

Thank you so much, wonderful Halloween Queen Kim, for bestowing so much spooktacular fun upon the Buttonbox! We are all hopped up on sugar and having so much fun playing with the massive pile of amazing Halloween schwag! This is only a tip of the blood-covered iceberg…..

I can’t get over all the fantabulous creepy kitchen gear! We plan to put it to good use with some gruesome goodies that i will share as Halloween grows ever nearer! Meanwhile, we shall nibble on brains and try out this awesome Pie Hole inspired yumminess. Drooooooooooooooolin’ like a ghoul!

xoxoxox and big bright Samhain blessings to all!

Quoth the Raven….NEVERMOOOOOOOOOOOOORE

(This song makes my eldest cringe with horror, but my wee beastie loves and dances to it every single time i play it!)

Still having fun letting the spookiness creep menacingly around the buttonbox! I still need to get outside done, but i am not even remotely ready to tackle all those lights and cords! I am working my way up to it tho’….maybe Raven will help me this weekend while he’s here.

The framed Ghosts of Charleston poster stay up year-’round. When my Mister and i spent our Honeymoon in Charleston, we did the “Ghosts Of Charleston Haunted Walking Tour” which was wonderful, and the incredibly nice guys were awesome enough to walk with hub and i to their office after the tour to give a copy of the poster for souvenir (which OF COURSE we had professionally framed and is our first “heirloom”)…WAY above and beyond the call of duty! The tour was really fun and the guys were so kind and accommodating…if you ever go to Charleston you should check this out! It’s great spooky historical goodness all the way! They have two more new tours now that i am DYING to check out!

So that’s been my day so far… now i think i am gonna go bake an apple cinnamon upside cake from the new issue of Everyday Food. Hope everyone is having a spooktacular day!

xoxox

I’m back into a monochrome and gray scale mode….

The cuffs are evolving…i thought they’d look extra pretty with little “pearly dewdrops drops” sewn onto the webs!

Miss Scarlet is alittle mopey that she can’t model this skirt for us…but this skirt is for the NARROW girls, and way too small to wrap around Scarlet’s hips! This is another second-hand skirt “upgrade” project…i added lace ruffle to the hem and i embroidered a little skully onto a scrap of plaid corduroy from a pair of my beastie’s out-grown pants and sewed on little button-eyes and some lace to “girl” it up a little.

I have also had tags on my mind…a dear friend of mine (who i miss very very very much, you know who you are!) once made an *amazing* voodoo-doll pin cushion out of various tags from her old clothing, and it really caused me to be more mindful of the tags inside our garments! One day i plan to get some “pandora’s” tags made, but until then, i had an idea to use some pieces of fabric that perpetually float around my studio space…

Hmmmm…i see wool, cotton and acrylic, but i *really* wonder what that “5% OTHER” is! A byproduct of Soylent Green perhaps…

It’s been a lovely week so far….i am still immersed in the “busy season” and i am enjoying it immensely! Lots of projects still in the works and time is ticking…. Why can’t October last all year??? Love and Boos to you all!
xoxox

The closets are so full o’ bones, they seem to be spilling out all over the place! I have become a one-woman skelly factory….

Happy Calavera Lady!

Underneath your face is a skull…

Making these candles is just too fun!

I’ve finally gotten my Dia de los Muertos soap all packaged and tagged…it smells so good, i could not be happier with the outcome of this project.

Yet another banner down, two more to go! Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

…and slowly getting my Halloween/Day of the Dead decorations out, a little bit at a time…isn’t this little skelly lady beautiful??? Lisa-Gabrielle, you have stolen my heart! She is perfect on my Muertos altar!
I also finally got the towering pile of mail out to the post office, sending spooky treats flying out into he world on the wings of little bats…beware! The Skeleton Factory is operating at 100%! I even took some time to add some treats to my Etsy shop….please do stop by to visit the bones should you feel inclined to shop for ookiespookies!

It’s finally starting to feel like Autumn….i crave a piece of my darling Erics’s pumpkin cake and a big mug of mulled wine to wash it down. Is it wrong to drink mulled wine before cocktail hour? Cheers to you all, my lovies!

I hope everyone is having a lovely friday….xoxoxo