Happy Halloween!

Today was the annual Hallmark Creative Halloween Party. There was a costume contest of course, and my Art & Editorial Directors as well as fellow designer's decided to enter in the group competition, and guess what? WE WON! Best Group Prize. Totally handmade costumes too (we used yellow ponchos stuffed with balloons and made beaks out of foam visors), We were dressed up as yellow duckie Peeps, since we do candy cards in my department. Oh and we also had the black Peep of the family, Yay!

We’re getting blogged!

If you’re doing some on-line research on pumpkin carving you’ll most likely run into the Hallmark Magazine carriage pumpkin.

Seems like everyone loves it as much as we do and are blogging about it.
• How about orange...
• poppytalk
• arts & dafts
• Pat Slogan's Corner
• Sketching Life
• ThreadBanger
• nwi.com

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

KU Tour No.2

We had another group of University of Kansas Design and Illustration students in to visit Hallmark last Friday. I'd like to welcome another group of talented KU creatives to cre.a.tiv.i.ty! My apologies for the delay in getting your invitations sent -- I spent all of Friday after your group left on our team's "special project" -- a fancy word for "cleaning out our offices and conference rooms from top to bottom! I left work pretty late, but felt good about getting everything in order in our studio conference rooms. Now, on to my office!

I had mentioned to one of the KU tour groups that I was going as a female action-hero for Halloween. For your viewing pleasure (or perhaps to your viewing dismay) and to show a creative attempt at making a cheap costume, here is my best Lara Croft look:


I made the belt and gun holster myself out of recycled black nylon straps and elastic bands that I found at a HUGE military surplus store in Kansas City, KS. I got the green backpack and the combat boots at the same store. I found the shorts and tank top in my roommate's closet, and to complete the look, I bought the guns at the Halloween store (the only part of my costume that cost more than $15).

Some of the other created-from-scratch costumes I saw at our party were Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss, a Rodeo Queen, a life-sized lego man (complete with removable black plastic hair-I have no idea how my friend Steve made that!), Joker, The Buger King and his arch-rival Wendy, and best of all, a Angelina Jolie-Brad-Jennifer Aniston trio (the called themselves Brajengelina).

Anyone else have or see a unique or created-from-scratch costume??