El Dia de los Muertos Smock

It's such a busy time of year as a crafter, I almost don't know what to feature on this blog. I've got tons of projects underway at once! One of the cutest, however, is an art smock for my friend from middle schoolTerra's daughter, Bea. Terra requested that I make the smock out of some really fun and funky fabric. The blue and purple (el dia de los muertos) oilcloth is from Mexican Sugar Skull, and the cantina/music fabric is by Alexander Henry.

I am using an existing Montessori art smock (shown below) to create the pattern for this little garment. At Terra's request, rick rack is also featured prominently in the design. I'll post a photo when it's all completed, and perhaps also post a photo of adorable Bea (also shown below, in a photo featured on Terra's blog).

What to Do With Day of the Dead Oilcloth

Tumbling Blocks has a tutorial for how to make an oilcloth lunch bag; this would be great to make from the el dia de los muertos oilcloth I blogged about the other day.

Papel Picado Oilcloth

I'm so excited! One of my favorite websites, Mexican Sugar Skull, has just announced that they are getting El Dia de los Muertos, papel picado-style oilcloth in stock! Oilcloth is great for sewing tablecloths, grocery bags, office organizers and so on. If you're interested in buying some, check their website over the next few days. They say,


"After many years of heckling the oil cloth makers, we finally have a fabulous Day of the Dead oilcloth ! Papel picado banner designs of bicycling skeletons, birds, flowers and skulls, will be a great tablecloth covering for your ofrenda altar, picnic in the cemetery or crafts!

The design will come in 7 color combinations. We will carry all 7 combinations for 8 weeks ONLY and then reduce the offerings to only the most popular colors. We expect this shipment to be available by 9/10/07."

Today is the 11th and it's not yet available for purchase on the website, but keep checking if you're interested too.

Knitted Skeletons

Pictured above is our cat Mochi (Momo for short- she's named after both a rice ball and a dumpling), who has pica. This has caused some problems in the past- "big hole" and "cashmere sweater" really aren't phrases that you want to combine with any regularity. So as much as I love the knitted skeletons we received as a wedding gift from my sisters-in-law, I can't display them prominently in our home for fear of complete destruction. I am showcasing them here, however, so that they get a chance to shine:

How to be a Sock Monkey for Halloween

My sister-in-law Ginny (pictured on the far right, above) was a sock monkey at our Halloween/Day of the Dead wedding. She made her oh-so-cute 'n crafty costume. Here's a link to a sock monkey knitted hat pattern. Everyone should have at least one sock monkey involved in their wedding somehow, no?

(In case you're wondering, I later changed out of my eBay dress [pictured above] into a flowing linen shift with Code Pink sneakers and a cat tail and ears. Much more my style, but my husband and I got a kick out of first dressing in "bride" and "groom" costumes and surprising everyone.)

Wedding Centerpieces and Table Coverings

This post is a 2-for-1 since I won't be able to post tomorrow. I wanted a picture of both the table coverings and the centerpieces we used for the tables at our wedding, and this shows them both.

I got this cool skull fabric for 90% off retail price at a fabric shop that was going out of business. I bought 15 yards of it at a whopping 50 cents per yard-- a total of $7.50 for enough skull fabric to make coverings for 15 tables. I also bought tons of fringe at the same store, which was a bit more expensive because I needed massive amounts, but at 90% off I still only wound up spending about $30 for all of it. I cut the fabric down to size and then simply sewed, and sewed, and sewed on fringe. For $2.50 each, I think they added a bit of spooky flair to the tables. This one looks a bit wrinkled on the table but I think it just got messed up as someone walked by because they generally laid flat.

I don't know exactly how I hit on the idea of candy bowl centerpieces, but I think it worked out really well! This actually wound up being more money than I thought it would, as I didn't really realize just how much candy we would need to fill 15 bowls. But people really liked them, because they were completely edible! Here's how the whole thing worked:

1. I went to garage sales, finding cool see-through glass bowls or big vases. I hit the jackpot at a garage sale of someone who'd recently planned her daughter's wedding, scoring 12 bowls for $2 each. They were basically new, as they'd only been used one night. The remaining bowls were ones I picked up for a dollar or less at various garage sales.
2. My mom and I hot-glued fringe (left over from the table coverings) to each of the bowls/vases.
3. My husband and I tried not to eat too much candy as we amassed amazing amounts (2 boxes full) for the centerpieces.
4. My husband insisted we had too much "filler" candy and not enough "good" candy a few days before the wedding and made a trip to the grocery store for lots of individually wrapped chocolate madness. We spent about $100 on candy, which was definitely more than I was expecting, but a steal compared to how much people usually spend on flowers, I guess.
5. We filled each bowl with candy and placed it in the middle of the table (on top of the skull fabric) on our wedding day.
6. As guests arrived for the wedding, our "greeters" (Mariah, Myagaa and Zoloo) gave each person a small candle holder with tealight inside (for our ceremony-- I got the candle holders from the same garage sale mentioned above) and told them to check the bottom. We put stickers on the bottoms of 15 candle holders, and if you got a candle holder with a sticker on it, you got to take a candy centerpiece home with you. This was a big hit with the guests.

So the centerpieces were about $10 each, in the end. The grand total for the table ornamentation on 15 tables was about $190 (not including the favors, which I've written about elsewhere-- those were 75 cents each including packaging, sucker sticks and the original purchase of the molds because we made them ourselves.) So if you factor in the favors, total per table was less than $20 for all decorative elements. The cheap fabric score really saved the budget, as did all the garage sale hunting.

Note guests in costume in the above photo. My little cousin Pam was a great vampire (on the right). She won a prize (yes, we had a costume contest) for best child's costume.

El Dia de los Muertos Altar

At our wedding, my sisters-in-law Ashlee and Ginny were in charge of constructing the altar (or ofrenda), a staple at any Day of the Dead celebration. In addition to sugar skulls and papel picado, the altar also included photos of our deceased ancestors, candles, marigolds (including some ones that Ginny and her dorm mates knitted), the engagement zombie sock monkeys, our skull pillow, and foods such as bread & fruits and some of our ancestors' favorites (apple pie, See's chocolates and coffee).

For more information on how to construct an altar for el dia de los muertos, check here.

Favorlicious

"Skeletal bride and groom" is a phrase that may conjure up negative images of women and men starving themselves in order to look great on their wedding day. As I've previously discussed, I've got no patience for a wedding industry that promotes such foolishness. But I'm all about a really tasty skeleton bride/groom white chocolate sucker, which is what we gave as favors at our wedding.

Once again, Mexican Sugar Skull was an awesome resource for the chocolate molds. I got the chocolate from Sanarak Paper & Popcorn Supply, a little wholesale shop in Buffalo that doesn't have a website. My mom and I made 150 of these suckers- it took several days, since we only had 3 molds and could therefore make a total of 6 suckers at a time. My mom was working on the fondant-decorated skulls simultaneously.

And though the title of this post invokes a song I detest ("Fergalicious"), I thought you might enjoy this Alanis Morissette parody of Fergie & The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps." The song was just screaming for a good satirical kick in the pants, anyway:

Why My Mother Hates Fondant

My #1 goal for our wedding cake was that it was the most delicious thing imaginable. For me, that meant three layers of chocolatey goodness: triple chocolate, German chocolate, and toffee chocolate. Delish Bakery took care of making that a reality.

My #2 goal for our wedding cake was that it have skulls all over it. My mom Judy took care of making that a reality.



As you can see, I met my goals. But I really can't take credit for anything but the vision. I bought the mold for these chocolate skulls from Mexican Sugar Skull, which I've talked about elsewhere. Then my mom took over, creating 60 little chocolate skull masterpieces (crafting obviously runs in the family.) She used tiny bits of fondant to uniquely decorate each one. This was truly a labor of love, because my mom HATED working with the fondant from the very beginning. Her dislike of the medium sure isn't evident in the final product, though.

The flowers on each layer of the cake are meant to be marigolds, a flower associated with El Dia de los Muertos. The first picture also shows some additional sugar skulls. The one on the far right was made by my husband's Uncle Charlie. He worked on it diligently for several hours one day! My sisters-in-law Ashlee and Ginny made the one that's second from the right, and I made the other two.

Day of the Wed 2006, part 2

Elsewhere I've posted about some of the crafty projects we undertook for our wedding. We alerted guests to the fact that our wedding was a bit out of the ordinary from the very beginning with our invitations. The front of each invitation was adorned with art made especially for us by our amazingly talented graphic designer/comic book artist friend Kagan McLeod. That's the picture you see up above. I designed the invitations so they could be printed double-sided onto an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper, and then folded in half. I got all the paper for free from a company who was discontinuing extra card stock-- that meant that our invitations printed onto 4 or 5 different types of paper, but I figured that just made them more unique. I mean, each person just gets one invitation anyway, right? Does it really matter if your Uncle Joe's invitation looks exactly the same as the invitation sent to your high school friend?

I designed the layout myself in Publisher, and then took them to an office supply store when they were having a special on color copies. I did have to purchase the envelopes, but in the end each invitation cost me 50 cents to create. (40 cents for the copying, 10 cents for the envelope.) And they were light enough that we didn't have to worry about paying extra postage. Rather than a reply card, I asked people to call or e-mail their RSVP. FYI (because I looked it up just to make sure), this is proper wedding etiquette.

I figured that the skeletons on the invitation might really freak out some of our elderly and more conservative relatives, and perhaps just confuse others. So I included an explanation of the "theme" of the wedding:

El Dia de los Muertos
(or Why are there skeletons on the invitation?)


Our wedding is loosely themed around the holidays surrounding it: Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos. While most of you are familiar with the costumes and other traditions surrounding Halloween, we imagine that El Dia de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead, is new to some of you. It is a Mexican holiday celebrated the first week of November throughout Mexico and the Southwestern United States. During The Day of the Dead, families remember those they have lost and celebrate the continuity of life. Great feasts are prepared and altars built and decorated to honor dead friends and relatives. The altars are decorated with marigolds, a special type of bread, and sugar skulls.

Images of a skeletal bride and groom are common during The Day of the Dead celebrations; this happy couple continues to rejoice in their bond even after they have left the physical world behind. As we proclaim our commitment to love and honor each other on our wedding day, we hope that you can enjoy our slightly macabre decorations in the spirit in which they are intended, as festive and fun for everyone, and standing against the idea that death and loss can undo the bonds that keep us together.
*****
People seemed to really enjoy the invitations-- one person misplaced hers and actually asked me for another copy because she liked it so much! And the coolest thing was that Kagan gave us the original drawing as a wedding present.

Day of the Wed 2006

My husband and I decided to bow to tradition (kind of) and get married in October 2006. Before doing so, we'd each moved across the country for the other, had maintained a relationship across continents, and had, in fact, actually met as Peace Corps Volunteers in Mongolia. We'd also bought a house, supported each other through some pretty tough experiences, and acquired two cats together. So six-plus years into the relationship, it didn't really feel necessary to stand on ceremony when it came to getting married. Actually, I guess we wouldn't have done the traditional thing even if we got married six days after meeting... it's just not our style. And I have strong opinions about the wedding industry, and the implications of being inundated with marketing about being a princess for a day. It frustrates me to no end that rampant capitalist forces have convinced many women that love is synonymous with spending $50,000 for a party.

So our wedding was, in part, a commentary on that, while also being a really fun party where we got to make a formal commitment to each other in front of family and friends. Because my husband: (1) loves Halloween and horror movies; and (2) is of Mexican heritage; and because I: (1) love crafting; and (2) also love the spirit of both Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos; we decided to throw a wedding in October that would draw upon the color and spirit of El Dia de los Muertos (honoring the spirit of the dead) and the fun of Halloween (Costumes! Everyone in costumes!) One of the many craft items I/we (we being my family, including my mother, sister, sisters-in-law, and anyone else we could rope into participating) made for the event were sugar skulls. At the end of the night, people who wanted them could take a skull home. The photo above is one of about a dozen that we had scattered around the venue. I got the sugar skull mold from Mexican Sugar Skull, an online vendor with tons of great supplies. We decorated the skulls with fondant and I think they added a lot to the day.

I'll post more about other wedding/muertos crafts in the future.