Halloween Gives Me the Creeps!

There has been a big sigh of relief here in the Bindlegrim labs - as the Creeps have walked off the production slab, and nestled snug in sealed packages ready for new homes. As of tonight there are 3 listings at 3-day auctions on ebay for your consideration, just in time to arrive before Halloween week! Oh, but what shall it be? There are Creeps (Shadow Edition), Creeps (1st Color Run), and Creeps (12-sided lantern). Well obviously the main idea here appears to be giving you the Creeps! Links are listed below in order of first to the last listed.

1: Creeps (Shadow Edition) Full set JOL, Witch, Bogle, Cat, Devil, Clown, as stark soot-faced minimalistic design versions. Silhouettes lend to their mystery and fit a classic to modern Halloween decor style... with translucent facial features that glow in the dark. The diecut characters are made of 2-play acid-free museum board (same as Bindlegrim 12-sided lanterns): Vintage-Style Halloween CREEPS SOOT FACE Candy Box Lantern WITCH CAT DEVIL CLOWN

2: Creeps (Color Run) is a first edition 5/5 print run of this artist-designed diecut series .This is for the complete set of six characters, on vintage-style slot-and-tab candy container/lanterns offering printed imagery on front, sides, and back, and of course those translucent eyes for that after dark glow:  Vintage-Style Halloween CREEPS Candy Container Lantern Set WITCH CAT DEVIL CLOWN

 

3: Creeps: (12-Side Lantern) - A very special limited edition return of the Bindlegrim 12-sided vintage style Halloween lantern with Creeps imagery! If your counting this very special 5/5 limited run is the eighth Bindlegrim 12-side lantern and was unplanned but the idea spilled over from the candy container/lantern project seen above - here re-introduced on full-color translucent vellum scenes: Vintage-Style Halloween CREEPS 12-Side Lantern WITCH CAT DEVIL CLOWN SCARECROW

So that's all for now all you autumn-minded folks! Please accept the deepest of apologies for squeezing these in so close to Halloween... but auctions will end Wednesday, October 23rd, and I can be sure to ship on Thursday in time for next week's celebrations.

Happy Halloween from Bindlegrim...!!!

Endings and Beginnings....

Time is up! And our contest has drawn to a close here at Bindlegrim's cottage casita, with lots of goodies since sent, and new ones ready to go out the door. Thank you to all for your great comments and devoted visits to this blog during the past six weeks, and hopefully there were some enjoyable tidbits, if not by me, by those who commented on the author-note series for Tall Tales Shorter Days. Given the great turnout, Bindlegrim has decided to give away two lanterns (including this week's book winner) - and this will be announced just a tad later (below the next image). Who will it be?

*** GIVEAWAY WINNERS ***

1) These week's book winner is: Keya

2) Lantern #1 winner is: Keya

3) Lantern #2 winner is: wickKED
(3-18 update: a 9-sided geek die awards the prize...!)

P.S. If you like what you've read during the past weeks - the author heartily appreciates your Like or Review on Amazon for the book: (in print on Amazon or Etsy) or by e-book via Kindle/iPad.

And please, if we have yet connected to get you your book from past entries, please contact bumble (at) bindlegrim (dot) com. You can check either the end of the blog entry or in closing comments for entries linked below. (Note - for a review of contest details see previous author-note entries).

The Herbivorous Witch - Author Notes

Jitter - Author Notes

The Pumpkin Dream - author notes

Watrous & Valmora - author notes

Ballad of Papi Huesos - author notes

Let Rains Bring Toads - author notes

*** THANK-YOU! ***

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So ol' Bindle has had a great time on this book, and the contest, but he's a fidgety sort, and has been in the lab these past few weeks preparing for the coming Halloween holiday, unearthing some old designs for something stitched up and new to materialize around the corner...

Maybe you can help with a problem? The goal is to have at least 6 characters for a full set, but the skull just isn't working out, at least as of yet. Hmmmm. Maybe that's not the best character? What would you add to this set: 1) Pumpkin 2) Witch 3) Bogle 4) Cat 5) Devil and 6) ???

Free Printable Halloween Party Set

Continuing the last post of fun holiday content I was fortunate to create during  my contract job at office.microsoft.com. I also wanted to share this seasonal design set of stationery items for Halloween that you can download for free and customize in both color and content.  (Note - these were items created while working with the Microsoft Office extensive library of free clip-art... to create content for the free download template library).

The Halloween Stationery Set (with a sinister witch host, questionable apples, sneaky black cats, and innocent children turning into toads for a costume party) contains for Word 2007 (or later) the following - 1) Gift Certificate, 2) Party Flyer, 3) Stationery, 4) Party Menu, 5) Party Invitation, 6) Thank-you Cards, 7) Name Tags / Placeholders, 8) Address Labels, and 9) Envelope.

For this project the goal was to highlight Word 2007's ability to create themes that allows you change color palettes at the touch of a button. And was constructed from items available in their free MS Clip Art Library particularly: MS Clip Art - Style 1450. 

If you are interest in using using clip art in this manner, you might study the previous post that offers an instructional blog entry. And for more holiday-themed downloads (for both Halloween and Christmas) that are free from Microsoft, by designer Robert Aaron Wiley, please check out the Bindlegrim website for Free Stuff! 

The Pumpkin Dream - New Borders and Dingbats

After spending some time with "The Pumpkin Dream" (Industry Version) that I had devised for CreateSpace (via Amazon), I started to feel it was missing something. While the book felt fine in its original 7"x7" format for Blurb, the new 7"x10" page felt a little too open to me... and it wasn't long before I was pulling out InkScape (during this past week) and testing some spooky border flourishes for the pages. One such result (below) is this new internal page border, of which a slightly updated version, will soon makes its appearance in the final CreateSpace/Amazon version:

I thought this was great fun to create! And from this border started to go a little crazy putting dingbats in a variety of place - now on the credits, dedication, and biography pages...

From there it was time to attack the cover which was actually the first thing that started to bother me, after I had initially termed the book complete. I felt the cover was not only too plain, but the cover illustration (which at full size has alot of detail) instead looked like a swirl of mush in a reduced size in both real life and as a thumbnail on a web screen. Taking a cue from the border work and dingbats of previous pages, the result came out in this manner:

I have just uploaded these changes to CreateSpace and am awaiting the 48 hour file preview whereby the system makes sure they are printable files. I believe they have just rolled out a new system that lets you publish a book thru now, without having to wait for the proof to arrive at your door, (although I have to say they were always VERY speedy about getting proofs sent). When the files are approved, I plan to go ahead and have that process for sale on the Amazon website. (I'm not sure how long it will take images to update on the Amazon website, so I will submit some images to the book's gallery to make sure the new version is visible with all these new borders and dingbats.