a few ideas for halloween

 This was Stella and Oliver as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera for an actual Frida themed birthday party. Easy!

Hahaha, it's not even October yet. But I just found photos of some fun Halloween-type things we've done in years past so I thought I'd share them. From the collage below:

1. The Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna
These were from Halloween 2000. My friend Mike flew in from Denver, and we did everything from dye long johns purple to sculpt the hair from rubber flip wigs. Do you love the highlights? Just like the comics! Mike even brilliantly wired two squeezable flash light controllers into the bases of two of those giant ring pops so we could just squeeze them and then activate our Wonder Twin powers. Needless to say we were a GIANT HIT!

2. Scary cake pops
I did these for a fundraiser for Stella's school a few years ago. Also a giant hit! I used Bakerella's Halloween post as my guide.

3. Watermelon brain
I saw this on the internet somewhere, wasn't my idea. It was fun to do though, and it was thoroughly disgusting. Stella is so squeamish that it kept her out of the fridge for the MONTH I KEPT IT IN THERE. The grossest part was that the rubber maggots I stuck in the creases would stick to our arms if we brushed against them. Yucky!

4. Baby in a pumpkin
Scoop out a pumpkin and stick your baby in there! I did it to Stella (at the height of newborn acne) and we ended up getting some postage stamps made of it because it was so adorable/ridiculous.

Here's a slightly more sophisticated idea. Make some egg piñatas in halloween or candy corn colors. They are sweet decorations. Just follow the tutorial for the eggs I did at Easter for A Subtle Revelry (click HERE) and adjust your crepe paper colors accordingly.

And here are four donut pan ideas from last October. I was really on point with the season last year!

fire starter rings/brittle rings/sweet loaf donuts with glaze/gumdrop donuts

What else, what else. I'm not sure what I'll be this year. I've been leaning on my Frida burlesque costume for the past few years and it's probably time to move on. I have such a hard time with costumes, believe it or not (here are some of our costumes from past Halloweens). I usually wait for inspiration but it never comes. I'll keep you posted!

descent into madness

In the last two weeks a bunch of opportunities have piled themselves on top of each other and I am a little stressed out and EXTREMELY exhausted right now, to say the least. I said yes to every single offer, and now my to-do list is a mile long and I slept for three hours last night so I could work late and get up early to work some more and I'm feeling pretty crazy. But I also feel like this is really the beginning of something exciting so it's worth it to me. This is more or less the first time I've been paid to do something since my last architectural project ended four years ago. I call it "starting a business", but it's really just me diving in to a ton of work. No website, no business cards, no logo. I'm just Tiffanie Turner of papel SF and I'm rolling with it for now!

A handful of people have asked me to share a D.I.Y. tutorial for the "closed" piñata I shared photos of in my original giant peony piñata post (the hot fuschia one). I have gotten half way through it but I need to get the piece I was using for the tutorial finished and shipped to Maine in the next few days so I had to abandon photographing as I go for now. I will come back to it, because it is a bit easier than the larger peonies and is still a stunner, and it's cool that people are asking me for it.

I do want to write about more than just paper and flowers, and I also don't want to only show up here every time some cool opportunity comes along, but just bear with me a few more weeks, there's so much going on right now. The season has changed and so will my content I am sure. I do want to tell you that I just signed a contract to teach a paper craft LIVE online and with a studio audience in November, which pretty much guarantees I won't lose a pound before then. I'm really excited about that one and I'll keep you posted.

I hope you have a really great weekend, and I'll see you next week. I leave you with a photo of a giant peony stamen cluster I cooked up a few nights ago. Thank you for continuing to come by here, it still means a lot to me!

xoxo

donut pan idea no. 57: brioche à tête

This is another one of my most inspired donut pan ideas, and one that came out better than I imagined it would: brioche à tête, or brioche with a head. I've done another brioche-type donut project before (my challah rings), but this one is different because it's actual brioche, and if you research brioche à tête enough you will see that a lot of people have a hard time keeping their "tête" on straight. But not me! The donut form of the base of the each brioche provides an excellent nest for the top ball of dough, so they all came out perfectly. I'm serious. Stunning, delicious and perfect, the whole dozen.