Talavera Halloween in Nuevo Mexico

Ambling about the Burque these past couple of weeks, and ran across these talavera (wikipedia link) style Halloween ceramics from Mexico, and wanted to share their bright fall colors! Not sure how common these are to the Southwest region but they were new and fun for me... the first official sign of the season I've seen here so far. (The pumpkins for sure were a bit unexpected since Dia de los Muertos is more prominent in arts from south of the border, and loved how each one seemed to have its own individually-styled pattern)...

In the meantime, inspired, Bindlegrim is spending days now in the studio working on the 2013 line of paper candy container / lanterns. The storminess of the skies during monsoon season are great at setting the proper mood in the evenings... and when conditions are just wet enough the nights offer the rare occurrence of post-storm desert toads emerging from the mud...

   

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!