Halloween & Pets

Halloween has become one of the biggest holidays in America.

Halloween is an annual fun-filled celebration, but it didn't start out that way. The history of Halloween dates back 2,000 years to the superstitious Celts, who lived in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Their calendar year began on November 1st, so October 31st was their New Year's Eve.

The Celts believed that on this night ghosts, goblins and witches came back to earth and wandered through the villages and countryside trying to return to the homes where they formerly lived. Because the Celts were frightened - even terrified - they tried to "blend in" with the spirits by dressing up in ghoulish costumes so they would be taken for fellow spirits. The frightened villagers also placed gifts of fruit and nuts on their doorsteps to appease the spirits and prevent them from entering their homes.

When the Romans conquered the Celts, some Roman and Celtic traditions were combined. For Romans, November 1st was an important holy day called All Hallows Day (or All Saints Day). Eventually, October 31st became All Hallows E'en (evening), which is known to us as Halloween.

As European cultures meshed in a new America, we developed our own Halloween traditions over the years. Parties for adults and children became the norm, and they focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Between 1920 and 1950, the tradition of trick-or-treating was revived. Over the years, several animals became closely associated with this American holiday season (including the eerie howl of the werewolf). Let's look at some of those animals and their connection to Halloween.



Bats - These creatures of the night have always gotten a bad rap; they are associated with vampires and the walking dead all because of their cousins, the vampire bats. Bats are nocturnal and mysterious. Just the name vampire bat conjures up spooky images of Count Dracula and other eerie blood-sucking creatures of the night. There are 900 bat species and the vampire bat is the only one that likes blood - about two tablespoons a day. Lucky for us, they prefer the blood of birds and cows to that of humans.



Cats - You rarely see a Halloween witch without a black cat. The Halloween black cat is always in a fear-provoking position, with back arched, fur on end and eyes glittering. For thousands of years, black cats have been regarded as mysterious creatures with supernatural powers, associated with witches and death. It was believed that witches could change into cats; in fact, they could make that change nine times. Some people believed that cats were the spirits of the dead. The cat's pupils - narrow slits in the daytime, but luminous globes at night - linked him to the moon and emphasized his ability to see into the future.



Spiders - Who likes spiders? Raise your hand. The spider and its web represent dark, scary places haunted by ghosts and goblins. Spiders were tiny enough to hide in a witch's cloak and whisper instructions in her ear.



Well, we've come a long way since those long-ago days of fright and superstition. We no longer fear black cats and spiders, or worry about witches and ghosts. So if you hear your doorbell ring on Halloween night, have your bowl of treats at hand and open the door with confidence. The little goblins at your door are only there for candy!

Gas! plus some Emerald Ice

So Tuesdays I only work half a day, so I took the car over to Auto Parts after I got off at noon. I'm glad I went in the middle of the day as there was no one there.

It took all of 30 seconds and a large wrench to get the locking gas cap off the car, so now I have a new, non-locking gas cap, plus two new windshield wipers (buy one, get one free, installed), and gas in my car.

It runs much better with gas in it. :)

The girls were playing around on the Sophisti-Scraps list as to when they graduated from High School and I called them all puppies. Well, they are.

This lead to the passing around of the nickname of "granny" so I was sort of playing with it in my head while we were installing the windshield wipers. So of course when Toni went and teased me about it, I was all set for her.

She got quite a kick out my signing my response "Granny Dianny".

Anyway, Scrappin with Lil Ole Me as put out a new taggers kit called "Emerald Ice". I comes with one of KairinaKat Kreations posers, put I decided instead to use the Liela poser from Perfect Posers to put together a set of snags for you.

Cindy said on her blog she'd been taking scrapping lessons from Farrah, and you can see in this kit, where it has influenced her style some. This is a much more mature work than what she's turned out in the past.



I am particularly fond of the "Dream" and "Dance" word art included in the kit. I love the way that was done.



I wasn't sure, so to be on the safe side, I stashed these on Picasa. You can never tell with Photobucket and their policy on "half naked women", as one traditional digi-scrapper called them. Personally, I don't have a problem with the female form, and possibly because I live in Florida and am used to it, a lack of clothing doesn't bother me much.

In fact....she's kind of well dressed - by Florida standards.



Isn't this pretty? This is a really nice kit. I purchased it from Scrappin' Bratz along with some new CU items Cindy had put out.



Speaking of traditional Digi-Scrapers, what gives some of them the right to be so downright rude. Someone by the name of "delitescraps" has been out leaving very rude and annoying messages on tagger sites, telling them that "PROFFESSIONAL DESIGNERS don't do tagger sized!"

I don't know. I design. People pay to purchase my work. Tagger sized or not, as far as I'm concerned, that makes me a Profession Designer (but not a "Proffessional" one, what ever that might be). Incidentally, said individual is not brave enough to link to her blog or provide an e-mail addy, preferring to hide behind the mask of anonymity.

(And then some joker wanted to know why I don't accept anonymous comments.)

Whatever happened to "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"?

Rude Attitude

I've been playing with a head cold...it started with a tickle in my throat on Monday and by Wednesday had developed into an upper respiratory infection. I took Thursday and Friday off - a luxury I can't enjoy until after April 15th, but had to work on Wednesday despite a massive head ache.

All I've wanted to do is sleep...so much for getting in extra PSP time. After finishing off the fishing kit I'm back to working on the Cinco De Mayo kit again. I need to get that done, then I'll see about some of these other ideas I have.

In the meantime, these tags were all done using the "Rude Attitude" taggers kit from Creationz by Jo.

"High Hat" is from Perfect Posers. She reminds me of the so called "Beautiful People" who decorate the clubs on Miami Beach - the ones that are out every night because they are there to be seen. They're part of the attraction.





The whole kit ends up being very "clubby" if you ask me. I was little unhappy though with some of the image sizes. Jo's stuff is usually big since she's scripting down from full size, but in same cases we got little tiny - 200 pxls or less - elements that I felt should be larger like...



The candles, and the iris flowers, and then we got big huge over 1000 pxl elements like the ribbons and the guitar. Very weird.



I do like the color scheme though. Purple and yellow certainly works with the "rude attitude" the kit gives off. I also like the flutters, although they are rather dark and a bit hard to see in the tags.



Jo does some interesting new things with Angie's old Poisoned Princess elements. It's nice to see that they're not all dead and gone.

Anyway, it was a nice way to amuse myself in between sleep sessions. Now I must really go up to the store, as I'm out of cold meds, juice and several other things and no one is going to cater to me, just because I have a little head cold. ::Sigh::

Hot Summer's Night

"On a hot summer's night, would you offer you throat to the wolf with the red roses?"

This is the last of the Sex in the City tags I have done. I've got a lot of things I want to do, and not never enough time to do them in, but hopefully I'll get back to this theme again shortly.

The Hot Summer Night poser is from Perfect Posers. The scraps are from Sox's contribution to the "Syncho-Scrapping"*. I love the look and feel of this kit...and all the colors!





The "bad girl" license plate is from Scraps with Attitude. I used a couple of her plates in these tags, as they just fit in better than Jill's offering did.

All of the silhouettes are included in a much larger size in the kit, so if you don't have a poser handy, you can use them instead.



The full moon is from the CU pack from Yarrow. I noticed all the Fr33bies vanished off the Digital Chaos store, so if you didn't get them when they were available, your S.O.L.

The roses are from an element pack by Sox, they are not a part of the kit. I love the way this tag turned out, BTW.



The horns and the tail are from Outlaw by Design, something she did for Valentine's Day. I had put the "I'm a Devil" plate in there, and well...it just sort of all fell into place.



There were five posers in the Hot Summer Night pack, so five tags. Now I have to find a different girl (which should not be a problem).

The plate is from Scraps with Attitude again. "Diva" is not a word you would ever apply to me, however, my cat, Miss Diamond, is enough of a Diva to make up for any lacking in that department on my part!

* I knew there was an actual term for what they're doing at Exquisite, I just couldn't remember it. So I finally broke down and looked it up. :)

I can has Eastern Bunny?

Way too early for Easter, but the "Little Bo Peep" kit was just such a departure from Kristin's norm, that I felt the need to do something with it, if only just for the diversion. Although I do have some Easter stuff on my system already from last year.

The bunny is part of the Cuddles Pack from Perfect Posers, you can find both at Aussie Scraps. I seem to think I had a Easter Egg type mask but I couldn't find it. Must have been dreaming.

Peacock Fae

"Miss Peacock" is (c) 2008 by Perfect Posers and can be found at Aussie Scraps (six tubes for $7.00). She kind of reminds me of my friend Rowena.

Rowena said "Yeah, the hair and the complexion...but she's got a lot more up top then I do!" Well...I'm sure flying around builds up the muscles in that area.

All three of these tags use kits by Scrappy Redhead that I bought on sale at Scrap Happiness. Redhead's designs are also on Sale at Digital Chaos, but I went with Scrap Happiness so I could snag the November freebie as well.



This is the "Beyond Time" taggers kit. It's a blue/green kit and I kind of pushed it toward the green end.

I added some scraps in from Redhead's contribution to the September Scrap Happiness freebie - the peacock pin, butterfly and white flowers came from that kit.



The shadows on the Fae in this one seem a bit heavy, but maybe that's just me. I guess if the lighting was from the bottom...

The scraps for the tag are from the "Blue Hydrangea" kit, but I didn't use any of the Hydrangea that came with it. They just weren't fitting in.

The diamond studed daisies worked out pretty good though.



Scraps are from the "Nothing but a Dreamer" taggers kit and I LOVE the Blue Jay feathers. (My mind was working on endless possibilities for those until I remembered the Blue Jays aren't in our Division anymore. Oh well.)

I haven't been able to work this Fae into any of the kitty cat tags...she seems a little more stuck up than her counterparts. I dunno. Maybe something with Miss Diamond...

I did sort of buy her though with the intention of using her in combination with Redhead's kits as the blues sort of compliment each other.

Saffron Daze

I keep telling myself I'm not buying ANY MORE posers from Perfect Posers, but then I find a reason to purchase more. ::sigh::

All these tags involve her Saffron fairy, who is definatly not dressed for winter weather!

Green & Gold




I decided to take advantage of the sale that Scrappy Redhead is having and pick up SOME of the kits she's released of late that I wanted. "Forces of Nature" was one of them. All the lush greens!

The Fireflies are from her limited edition "Dancing in the Dark" freebie. I needed something in the the middle of the piece and didn't really have anything else that fit.

Saffron Nights




I love Redhead's "Autumn Nights" kit so I couldn't resist using it, despite it not being one of my "new" ones. I also added leaves from Queen Brat's "Autumn Leaves Pack I".

One of the reason's I keep saying I'm not buying anything else from Perfect is that found out where Redhead an the rest of these designers are getting the posers they include in their kits. Like this black cat which isn't as weird looking as the one's Charly did.

They are from a Commercial Use freebie cache by from Outlaw by Design. Click on the free PSP Tubes banner to go to the cache. I need to spend some time downloading...these tubes are just beautiful in many cases.

This is, for example, the source of the beautiful Ice Princess in Baby Cakes Scraps' Ice Princess kit.

Saffron Summer




Monday's are dollar days at Taggers Scraps but when I checked the story, while they had the kits from Candy's Treats that I wanted listed under the dollar days sales catagory, they still have them at full price.

However, Designs by Helly was joined Taggers Scraps and quite a few of her kits were marked down to a buck, including the relatively recently released "Down Came the Rains". This is from her Summer Daze taggers kit, which has a very beachy feel to it.

I figured I can use this for quite a few tags, but then, I like Helly's designs and tend to use them quite a bit.

Forest Friend




Heavenly Taggerz is also having a sale, when when I went back to get the template for the Santa Hat to do Tristan's Trismas card with, I picked up three of Scrappy Lover's other kits for a buck or under. This is from the "In the Forest" kit which I think will be useful for kitty cat tags. I used Tristan to try it out!

Aside from the cute little froggie, it also comes with an adorable little kitty cat.

Heavenly is quickly replacing Taggers are a prefered scrap boutique. I just wish they had a blinkie!

Harvest Home

I was on Urban Mermaid's blog at work, showing Rowena one of the animated tags, and she noted the Fairy Dreams in the Fall slide show the side. UM's blog is a little heavy on the slide show side.

"That's a beautiful fall kit," she pointed out. It is but her kits are nearly twice the price of everyone elses. However, given that Sweet and Sassy had everything on sale, including the "Fairy Dreams" kits, they were only 24 cents more than everyone elses so I got them. (Of course, all the rest of the tagger kits were marked down to between $1.49 and $1.80, but let's not go there.)

Once Upon A Time



This uses the Fairy Dreams in the Woods kit, along with UM's Fairy Add-on pack which was a freebie as part of the SNS Fall Blog Train. There is a blog train or two that launched today, but I didn't feel like following them, especially as 4 Shared was being slow.

Note that both Fairy Dreams in the Woods and Fairy Dreams in the Fall have add-on packs (aside from the Fairy one), which were used as part of the whole in making these tags.

Songs from the Woods



Same kit, different Fae, this is one of the Painted Lady Fae from Perfect Posers. I'm rather happy with the piece and was thrilled with the way the Copyright turned out on the journaling leaf.

The Hallow Alpha is from AllieKat Creations.

Gorgeous



I do have to say that's the way this piece turned out. The Fae is (c) 2008 by Perfect Posers and the kit is Urban Mermaid's Fairy Dreams in the Fall.

It will make Rowena happy, I'm sure.

Miss Diamond's Awesome Autumn



I reworked Diamond's blog using Bluedream Design's Fall freebie (with additional leaves from Queenbrat's Autumn Leaves 1 pack). It's the first time I've tried this on a three column layout and turned out okay...some of the side bar items are hard to read but that's okay. No one pays that much attention to them anyway.

I didn't have a tag though that I liked that worked with the Autumn theme, so I did one up...this uses UM's Fairy Dreams in the Fall kit as well. The wings are from the Fairy Add-on pack referenced above.

Miss Diamond is really a good little girl, but I think Dragon's wings fit her better. I tossed some extra leaves into this layout as well, from Queenbrat's pack.

Let it Snow



This whimsical little piece uses the Let it Snow freebie from Magic World. The Fall Fae, is of course, (c) 2008 by Perfect Poser.

This is a nice little freebie that comes with it's own alpha except they named everything Element***Magic, which the *** being some special symbol. This is worse than UM's who names a number of her things "element##" and you just kind of have to browse through until you find what you want.

So I spent some time renaming everything as I was working with the kit. I know, I know...they always put in the TOU not to rename the files, but darn it all...name it something useful and I won't have to!

(okay, sorry, that's my gripe for the day.)

Fallen Star



One of my new posers, part of a freebie pack (c) 2008 by Bits'N'Bobs. The Scraps are from the Lullaby Lambs kit by Random Inspirations.

Speaking of sheep -- I tried to build a Puddy Cat today, but screwed up it when I flattened the layers. So...I have to start again I think. I don't know how to salvage it.

However, I did find the "easy" way to do it, and can probably do seasonal sheep tags pretty soon. LOL.

I also bought the Build a Bird and Commercial Hoot kits so...watch out! I be a building fool soon!

Toxic Poison

AhhhScrap is having their first $1.00 sale. It's Wacky Wednesday with selected Freebies at Taggers Scraps and Terminally Unique Designs is finishing of their 40% off sale today.

None of these has me in alt. Maybe I'm shopped out. I dunno.

What I really want is for Scrap Happiness for Digital Chaos to have a big sale, so can grab some Redhead's kits at a reduced price. She's got a bunch out that I want, but I'm somewhat adverse to shelling out $4 or $5 bucks per kit.

Diane at Candy's Treats has finished a new mega winter kit. Stop by her blog to get the freebie add on.

I fixed the Stagelight tag and I redid the Goth Girrrl tag to something I'm happier with.

Twisted Mind

I have a hard time figuring out what to do with head shots. I know some taggers really like them. Anyway, I saw a really interesting layout somewhere and I didn't recreate it, but it do sort of influence this layout.



The Poser is from the GI Babe collection from Perfect Posers. Soxsational Scraps Toxic taggers kit provided the tags.

That is not the little doll I wanted in there, but couldn't find the one I wanted. but overall, I'm rather pleased with it.

Kristy, over at Berry Bliss, has a bunch of those little dolls you can purchase for $1.50 each. I rather like the little Morticia doll.

I can always add my name and use it as a tag - I think I might do that. I'm getting a little tired of the Halloween one.

Eternally Alone

Very similar layout using different elements. The poser is from LK Designs from her freebie Attitude kit that you can find on the Sophisticated Imaging blog.



I used the Poison kit from Soxsational Scraps on this one. This is kind of a duality kit because on one hand it's all the Emo stuff, and on the other hand, it's Girl's rock.

Poisoned Rocker

So, this is the flip side of the Poisoned kit. The Rocker chicks are from the Hard Rock pack which is also a freebie from LK Designs and available on the Sophisticated Imaging blog.



I had to crop the head shot myself as none came with the kit, but this is a fairly common practice with Graphic Hobbiests. Why does it bother me to behead a cat, but not a human?

No fairies today. I did a couple but dont' like them, so I'm still looking for reworks on them.