celebrating: spooky entomology

My husband and I have hosted a party every October 31st for 7 years now. I love decorating in general, but I love Halloween decorations so much that, despite our lack of storage, I end up adding new ones every year! I especially love creating mood through lighting. Here’s what I just finished putting together for this year’s party.

Black light is the only source of illumination on these apothecary jars, which I’ve placed in our guest bathroom. They’re filled with spider webbing, glow sticks, plastic centipedes and tarantulas. I also did a third jar that contains bats! This project is a cinch to put together and the effects are positively spooktacular, don’t you think?

Happy Crawl-o-ween!

..... pam .....

celebrating: the smell of pumpkin

OK, so it’s another Halloween, and for the first time ever I got a serious jump on the pumpkin carving. I figured since this is my absolute favorite part about Halloween (this and the Butterfingers I sneak from time to time) I may as well do it twice. So my girls and I eagerly got busy carving, and these are the results. I know these will probably rot before Halloween so we are enjoying lighting them in our living room each evening. Can’t wait for pumpkin carving round two!

….. amy …..  

celebrating: henry's annual halloween costume challenge

It's been quite a while since I've made a Halloween costume for my son Henry (now 16), but back in the day, he set some pretty crazy challenges in front of me. I have a post up at Designing Moms, sharing one of the earlier costumes I devised for him (before he really started giving me art direction.) In the process of writing that post, I pulled out photos of all his costumes over the years, and had fun reliving those insane experiments with spray paint, fake fur and glue guns. It always seemed a little sad to me that our creations only lived for one day, so indulge me while I present a “virtual” Halloween parade of some of my favorites! If you’re interested in tips on recreating any of these yourself, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help.


Bartholomew Collins, prisoner of the Terwilliker Institute.
If you’ve never seen “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T,” go rent it NOW!


A prairie dog... “popping out of his mound.”


Meerkatus Giganticus


African Pygmy Hedgehog
Those are toothpicks. I’m still picking splinters out of my fingers...


I’m not quite sure what to say about this one except that the little guy has a retractable tongue that “ate” candy. Major credit is due to the wonderful artist, David Kirk (author of “Miss Spider’s Tea Party,” among others), who created the coin-collecting sculpture that this costume is (faithfully) based on. And, it must be noted that this was the year that Henry really took control of his own Halloween costumes. I was a mere technical adviser.


Our last hurrah, from 2005, a gigantic WORKING iPod.

And speaking of Halloween costumes, head on over to Cardstore.com’s Silliest Halloween Costume Contest to share photos of your silliest Halloween costume (of you, your pet, or your kids!).

What are you going to be this Halloween??

..... Betsy .....

paging dr. izzie stevens!

Hi there. I’m Pamela Nudel, one of the Three Musketeers here at f13 creative. I’ll share a little more about myself in a future post, but today I’m just excited to jump right into some exciting news: we’re celebrating the arrival of fabric samples from Robert Kaufman Fabrics. These represent the very first licensing deals for me and Amy!

Amy’s butterfly art and Pam’s feather heart art

Just this past May, february 13 creative debuted at SURTEX (the surface and textile show in NYC). We came home from the trade show with a lot of terrific leads, including Robert Kaufman Fabrics. The very nice people at Robert Kaufman didn’t waste any time getting down to business with us—not only did they license several of our Christmas patterns for bolt fabric, but two of our everyday patterns were selected for medical scrub uniform fabric! Yes, medical scrubs! Who knew that scrubs would be in our future?! At any rate, we are so excited and thrilled! The final fabrics turned out beautifully, as you can see above. They used a lovely lightweight seersucker fabric that complements the artwork so nicely.

So now we are waiting to see just how the scrub designers decide to stitch-up these adorable fabrics! I’ll be sure to remind you in a few months when the scrubs will be available to purchase. From what we’ve been told, the finished uniforms will be available to buy in January 2010 at whiteswanscrubs.com. In the meantime Betsy, Amy and I are smiling big, and busily designing more art for the fabric and scrub world!

….. pam …..