halloween packages

Two dreadful packages will be departing from the honeybee household this week: spooky, spooky mail and Halloween cupcake toppers.

Halloween is such a fun holiday, and we used to throw lots of parties and decorate like mad. We've toned it down a bit in the last few years just because it's been so busy and we have to pull everything out of storage. But this year I'm compensating by having a ball with mailing decorated packages instead.


For the first swap, I put together a parcel of spooky Halloween goodies that included:

-- decorated and embossed straws
-- tea-dyed "destroyed" tags that were stamped + glittered
-- stamped mini Trick or Treat tags
-- a ghastly postcard with scary movie suggestions
-- a recipe
-- a spidery pad
-- stickers
-- a little tin of vintage Halloween images
-- candy
-- and a few other fun items.

I decorated the bubble envelope with tons of stickers, stamped images, and black skull CAUTION tape from the Martha Stewart 2010 Halloween collection.

The second package was also really fun to do. The last cupcake toppers swap got such a great response that I had to hold another one, this time with a Halloween theme.

My partner is actually Rachel, the wonderful founder of Swap-Bot, and I made two sets of Halloween cupcake toppers for her using images from Martha's Halloween stamps. For the candy ones (and for the decorated straws above), I used the MSL heating tool to emboss each topper, which created a cool and shiny raised effect. (By the way, I've tried to use a hair dryer to do this...it doesn't work. The tool is very easy to use and the images set fairly quickly.) I also included a set of 6 Halloween invitations that I stamped and packaged up in a glassine envelope.

I hope both partners enjoy getting their Halloween packages! They were lots of fun to make.