Greetings!

It is my deep, dark pleasure to announce the annual Online Hallowe'en Artists' Studio Tour! This is my "treat" to you all, a special way to celebrate my favorite season, share some exceptional art by artists I personally admire and raise money for animal charities. With this blog, I hope to keep you up-to-date with proceedings and progress as we approach the yearly "launch" on October 1st!



Thursday, October 21, 2010

Time flies!


Like the old tombstone image, time flies! Only 10 days left for our Trick or Treat, and Martha DeRaimo Burch's "Keeper of the Spiders" is now also gone! So don't delay, if there's something you like, go back to that artist's studio and make them (and the bats!) happy!

Start the presses!

I want to pass on an apology from Celena and Marty of The Filigree: life is unpredictable and a regrettable delay of the autumn issue of their amazing newspaper was unavoidable, but things have now returned to normal and they're getting back on track! Watch for the next issue to "arrive" soon! http://www.thefiligree.com/






In the meantime, you can ponder why this incredible mummy and her partner are still homeless? Perhaps you can offer them a cool, comfortable place to while away eternity? Read more about them here.


Me? I'm looking out the window just now and it's SNOWING!!!! ACK! Such is Canada...

Monday, October 18, 2010

Ghoulish Grin!


I can brag a little, right? I'm very happy to announce that I actually have had a sale! One of my bat-head brooches, the tan Spotted Bat, is going south to CT! Yippy!
So, that makes a total of 9 sales off the tour so far! Let's hope we can keep this going!
By the way, this brooch was $30.00 with $10.00 going to BCI.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Howl with delight!

It is my pleasure to extend The Barkery's invitation to you all!



If you're anywhere near Stratford, Ontario (Canada) on October 30th, dress up your pup (if you're blessed enough to have one) and join in on the Hallowe'en fun! There will be prizes for best costumes, treats (of course) and a parade to City Hall! Woof! Rain or shine!
The Barkery, of course, is on our Trick or Treat Tour as the sole "shop" because of this event (and frankly their decorated, healthy, all natural cookies are works of art!), which extends our love of Hallowe'en to our canine companions! And ps: Werewolves are welcome!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

4 winds!

We're spreading like "The Mist" in Stephen King's gory story! Yippy! Check us out on http://bookrat-misty.blogspot.com in her Helluva Hallowe'en! We're listed on http://www.shadynookcrafts.com/craftshows.htm and read Kathleen's lovely review on http://www.mythinglinks.org/Samhain.html! WOW!


Don't forget that a number of artists made some very special bats for our tour, like April Norton's "Baby Bats". A list of batty artists appears on http://pages.total.net/~weric/trick_or_treat/batty.htm .

Monday, October 11, 2010

Like magic!

As the month glides by like a ghost, you may notice some of the art objects... disappearing! And new ones magically appearing! As works get sold, the artists are all invited to offer new items, so don't delay if you like something!



Adrianne Kinsella is one of our lucky artists to have sold a piece and she's offering a new, stunningly beautiful vase featuring a raven! Come and have a peek! No, I'm not going to tell you exactly where she is, have fun hunting her down... and remember to enter to win the "Creaking Door Prize"!
Have fun! Only 20 days to Hallowe'en!

Rising from the dead!

Or nearly so! Connectivity was restored Sunday afternoon, thank the ghouls at Glidehosting! Although what went wrong? Something about a "problem with mysql", whatever that means! I'm sure our statistics are going to reflect this glitch! Yuck!

Thank you all for your patience!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Really screaming!

My apologies to all: GlideHosting is having some sort of difficulty and you can't access the tour at http://www.halloweenstudiotour.com/ ! AARRRGGHHHH!!!!!

I hope the problem will be resolved soon!
Man, this sucks!

Friday, October 8, 2010

We're out there!

Our tour is in my local paper! In the "What's On" section of the October 8th issue, here's our advertisement! Wow! Looks great and the editor did a great job! Thanks so much!

If you want to help us out, see if your local paper will run a similar ad! We'd really appreciate it! So would the bats!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Flying high!

Check out how great we look on Bat Conservation International's home page, http://www.batcon.org/! Yippy!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

It's alive!

Our tour went live very, very late on September 30th without a rattle or a hitch! Phew! It's always a bit scary... And we certainly have been visited: from October 1st up to today, October 3rd at 9:15 pm, we've had 406 unique visitors! That's pretty amazing! Take a look at the statcounter.com table for more figures. Four items have sold, with April Norton and Robin Andreae being the lucky artists. And this is just the start! So if you've seen something you like, don't delay too long: it may be swooped up by some other witch!

And thank you to all who are taking a stab at the Creaking Door Prize mystery phrase! 8 fiendishly clever trick or treaters got it right and have their emails swimming about in the witch's cauldron, waiting for the November 1st draw!
How spooktacular is that?!

Culture Days Update

Before getting into the excitement of launching the tour last Friday, I wanted to share with you what an amazing event Stratford's Factory 163 hosted for Culture Days! And boy, was I in the right place! Volunteering on Sunday, I got to see the incredible Magic Toy Shop of Dr. Coppelius (based on the ballet Coppelius and a precursor to Frankenstein, about an alchemist trying to create the perfect living doll) created by the students of this summer's Setting the Scene workshop and full of eerie, strange body parts; the amazing students and their works-in-progress for Off the Wall's class "Creating Creature Costumes" and speak with faux-food artist Carolyn Horley as she created the most realistic bacon out of styro-packing sheets!!! WOW!!! Best of all she gave me her used gloves, covered in red "blood"! Oh, they'll be part of my Hallowe'en, for sure!!
I was also able to talk to visitors about bats and hand out quite a few bookmarks for our tour. It was nice to hear everyone comment that bats are our friends, they aren't viewed as negatively as I feared!

Photographically, this scene, also created by a Setting the Scene class, was the most gorgeously spooky!

Culture Days 2011 in Stratford? Be there!