DIY Glittered Candles

Halloween is here, so grab this opportunity to learn how to make glittered candles with dates on them.

You will need:

• pillar candles (of desired size and color) - these black ones are from Michaels
• Vinyl & electronic cutter to make stencils 
• Mod Podge and paint brush
• Extra fine glitter

You can make a "31" for Halloween, but you could also spell out other words for any holiday or occasion! The possibilities are endless!  Cut out a 3 and 1 to make a vinyl stencil and applied to to the candle. Make sure the edges around the number or letter are sealed.

Next apply a thin layer of Mod Podge to the candle, making sure to cover the entire inner area of the stencil. You can work in small sections to keep it more controlled. Shake a generous amount of glitter over the glue, making sure to get every part covered. You can lightly press the glitter with your fingers to help it stick. 

Then shake, shake, shake and even lightly blow to remove excess glitter. Remove the stencil slowly and blow again to loosen excess glitter. You can fix the details with a Q-tip. 

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#3 Facebook Tips: Improve your Facebook Engagement

Are you looking for fun ways to get your Facebook fans engaged?

Wondering how other pages are developing their posts to increase likes, shares and comments?

1) Share Quotes

Quotes are great for engaging people’s “Me, too!” feelings. On Facebook this is especially powerful as the Like button makes it easy for fans to express that feeling. A quote can associate your brand with good feelings and create a deeper connection with your market on Facebook.

Just like Apple used imagery of iconic 20th-century personalities in its “Think Different” campaign, you can use quotes from icons to reinforce your company’s brand.

Disney uses quotes from their feature films to inspire, relate to and create funny moments with their audience. Each quote is posted with a full image to increase engagement.

Tips for quotes on Facebook:

Tie your brand to quotes that support your campaign goals.

Use visuals and memes with your quotes to increase shareability—a few good sites to create memes are Quickmeme, Imgflip and Memecrunch.

Find quotes on Bartleby.com and The Quotations Page, or use a #quote hashtag search on Facebook or Twitter.

2) Use Hashtags

A relatively new addition to Facebook, hashtags use categorized terms behind a # symbol to increase brand, product and campaign awareness to wider audiences.

Sephora uses the hashtag “#OneQuickQuestion” to open up engagement for a campaign beyond the reach of their current fans.

Tips for #hashtags on Facebook:

Use tags to create awareness and engagement for specific marketing campaigns such as contests or product sales.

Use common terms such as #socialmedia in your hashtags to increase post dialogue and visibility.

Search for hashtags being used by your customers, competitors and partners to find keywords and conversations you can participate in.

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Happy Halloween ~ Fun Facts about Halloween [Infographic]

It’s now time for enjoying the charm and ecstasy of 2013 Halloween. Let’s rock with friends, let’s taste those tasty candies and get dressed in fancy costumes.

Get some great Halloween costume ideas from our list of the most popular Halloween fancy dress outfits and find all sorts of interesting facts, such as the size of the world’s largest pumpkin!

Happy Halloween!

DIY: No-Carve Typography Pumpkins

What you'll need: 

• Chalkboard and gold spray paint
• Painter's masking tape
• Newspaper or cardboard
• Pumpkins
• Chalk
• Pencil
• Black Sharpie
• Typefaces

STEP ONE: Using your masking tape, tape off any part of the pumpkin you don't want painted. It could be the stem, or you can create designs like stripes or polka dots, or paint only half of the pumpkin. Next, place your pumpkins on a piece of cardboard or newspaper outside and begin spraying. Make sure you spray at least 10 inches away so you get a nice, even coat. You’ll only need to do one coat of paint. 

STEP TWO: Choose a beautiful typeface to design what you want to put on your pumpkin and then print it out at 100%. Place the sheet on the pumpkin and, using a pen, trace around each letter. When you lift up the sheet, there should be a clear indent in the pumpkin of where you need to chalk. Note: If you’re drawing with a Sharpie on an orange pumpkin, you can use contact paper behind your design to create a clear transfer.

STEP THREE:  Wait 30 minutes before removing any masking tape, then peel off gently. Next, use your chalk to begin to fill in the outlines. If you make a mistake, just use a wet towel or Q-tip to erase it and start again. 

You can also use a black Sharpie to draw your design. We created this half-painted gold pumpkin and drew a house number.

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Halloween Countdown: 1 Day ~ 6 Last-Minute DIY Costumes

If Halloween snuck up behind you this year and you still don’t know what to wear you can still go out and haunt the town with one of these last-minute costumes made from supplies you probably already have.

We gathered for you 6 Easy Halloween Costumes that will can totally help your little boos and ghouls fit in with the rest of the trick or treaters.

1. Cheerleader Costume

Hip, hip, hooray! The crowd will go wild for this cheerleader and her very cheer-full ensemble. Read more

2. Graveyard Ghost Costume

If a skeleton is just anatomy, and not really all that frightening, scare up some real fun with this graveyard ghost kids' Halloween costume. Read more

3. Stick Figure Costume

Become a human stick figure with a monochromatic outfit and a contrasting tape color. Make a mask from poster board and string. 

4. Artist Costume

Emulate a renowned artist in pint-size form this Halloween. All it takes is a little artistic license. Read more

5. Mime Costume

 This no-sew Halloween costume using bandana is adorable, easy to make and super inexpensive. Read more

6. Spa Princess Costume

Going door-to-door can be a taxing enterprise, so why not let your 'tweenager combine work and relaxation with this spa costume? Read more

And If you don't feel crafty, you can browse our Halloween Gift Guide

The Best Positions for Your YouTube Annotations

Earlier we talked about YouTube annotations, how to add them to video and about types of YouTube annotations.

Annotations allow you to hold a dialog with your viewers by encouraging them to take an action while they're watching a video. When used correctly, annotations can improve engagement, viewership, and help you grow your audience.

However, incorrect usage of annotations can be distracting, which may ultimately turn viewers away.

Position: If possible, position your annotations on the borders of the video and away from the center of the video. The image below shows the best positioning for your annotations.

The best locations to put your annotations are the top corners of the video area (see positions 1 and 3 in the image above). Annotations can also be placed on the top and side borders of the video (see positions 2, 4 and 6).

The center area of the video (see position 5) is best left without annotations to avoid obscuring the video.

Placing annotations at the bottom of the video (see position 7) is also not recommended as annotations here may be hidden by closed-captioning (subtitles) and ads.

How to Use PicMonkey for Editing your Photos

Great photography is a necessity when you have an online handmade shop.

Unfortunately, handmade crafts are very difficult to photograph. Many  artisans cannot afford to go to a professional and so they want to do it themselves. There are some simple techniques that even amateur photographers can use to obtain better results with minimal effort, that we shared with you on our Blog.

Today I am going to show how to edit your images for Free with an online photo editor - PicMonkey .
In this video you will see some basic tips on how to crop, rotate and adjust the exposure and colors of your images.

I hope you enjoyed this video and If you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything!

Office Halloween Decor

I love decorating for Halloween, but figuring out a way to make my whole apartment look spooky is a little daunting. So I decided to make my desk at work look extra special this year, since I spend plenty of time there and I know my coworkers will appreciate it too. Here's what I did.

This work station is in our craft room so there is plenty of desk to work with. Here are the supplies:

Hanging skeleton
Skeleton silhouettes
Furniture clings
Wall clings
Decorative tape
Bat silhouettes
Happy Halloween garland

I used the adhesive foam dots which are included in the package to stick on the skeleton hands and the garland. The dimensional bats are hanging with a little bit of invisible fishing line and masking tape.

The wall clings create a spooky graveyard scene behind the desk. I love how the moon peeks out from behind the monitor! The furniture clings adhere great to the file cabinet so it looks like a happy jack-o-lantern. I used some double sided tape to put on the decorative "do not enter" tape around the edge of the desk.

The hanging skeleton is the perfect size to take my place in the chair.

He's a natural!

Here are some other fun work stations from around the office.

I hope your work space gets a little Halloween love this year!

Halloween Countdown: 2 Days ~ 5 Ways to Use Dry Ice for Tricks & Pranks [Video]

Creating the perfect Halloween party means having great effects and attractions for your guests to marvel over. Dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) may be utilized to create some really cool traditional Halloween fog displays and other spooky effects and you should consider using it to make your next Halloween event memorable.

 Here are 5 Ways to Use Dry Ice for Tricks & Pranks.


In this video you watched How to:

1. Make it impossible to relight a candle in a glass or bowl
2. Create "self inflating" party balloons
3. Make a "Ziploc popper" that goes bang
4. See how to make metal coins scream and shake
5. Levitate bubbles in mid air

WARNING: Dry ice is -78C and is very cold and poses risk for instant frost-bite on bare skin. To avoid frost-bite on bare skin, handling of dry-ice should be approached with caution and attempted with gloves or other protection. There are risks associated with these projects that require adult supervision.

How to Link Tumblr to Twitter

Do you have both Tumblr and Twitter accounts? Why not try syncing your Tumblr to Twitter, so that all of your Tumblr posts are automatically tweeted? Read on to find out how to link Tumblr to Twitter!

Steps

1. 
   
   1
   
   Create an account if you don't already have one. Go to http://tumblr.com and log in, or create an account.
2. 
   
   2
   
   Go to your tumblelog. Once you have logged in, the link to this should be displayed at the top of the page to the right of the page, under the title of your Tumblr.
3. 
   
   3
   
   Select "Settings" from the menu on the right of the page.
4. 
   
   4
   
   Once you get to "Settings," click on your Tumblr page on the left tab. This will open a page where you can customise your posts, language, time zone, URL and RSS and social networking feeds, including Twitter.
5. 
   
   5
   
   Select "Sign in with Twitter" from this menu. This will open a new webpage where you can put in the details of your Twitter account.
6. 
   
   6
   
   Put in your Twitter account details on this page. Then click "Allow" to allow the Tumblr application to connect to your Twitter account.
7. 
   
   7
   
   Set your preferences (optional). After clicking "Allow" the webpage should close and your Twitter user name should show up on the "Services" menu. If you want every post you make to automatically go to Twitter, make sure to check the box labelled "Share posts on your Twitter".

Listing Tips ~ When Should You Start Listing Holiday & Seasonal Items?

We’re always either finishing up one holiday season or getting ready for the next. What do you do with your out of season designs and when should you start marketing them again?

When you sell on an online marketplace, the price of your items, popularity off season, and cost to keep them listed should be considered. Off season sales for holiday items can be few and far between so tally up the fees and make sure that you can still turn a profit on those listings if you keep them active.

If you decide to take them down make it as easy as possible to put the listings back up next year by copying and pasting the text into a Word document and keeping all your photos in a file. You may even want to print out your listing just for reference. Your venue may also allow you to download your listings in CSV format. You can open those files in Microsoft Excel.

However you back up your listings before removing them until the next season, the idea is to make it as easy and quick as possible to put them up next year.

Use keywords – When your items tie in with certain holidays, use the keywords Christmas, Valentine’s day, Easter, etc in your item titles, page titles, descriptions, image alternate text, and item URL’s if you can. It is these keywords along with descriptive keywords for the items themselves, ex: cards, socks, scarf, etc, that will allow people to find them on your site even when you are not focusing on marketing them.

Do as the big guys do – If the next holiday is a ways away and you are not sure when you should start marketing those items, just look at the big retailers. When do you see your local stores setting up their displays? They usually do it prematurely but it does get people thinking about the next holiday so you may want to start advertising around the same time.

What dates do the holidays fall on this year and how many days away is that? – You can use this free website to find out: Calendar-365

source: howtosellhandmadecrafts.com

Halloween Countdown: 3 Days ~ DIY Party Invitations

If you are planning a Halloween party, the best idea to mesmerize your guests is by inviting them with the  best way so everyone will just be dying to come to this year's party.

That's why we gathered for you these 5 spooky Halloween party invitations (for adults and children) that are quick to make from crafts supplies.

1. Pop Up Ghost

These fun Halloween invitations are so easy to make that you'll be able to create several at once. Plus you can make them with your kids. Read more

2. "Groan-Ups" Party Invitation

This simple invitation can be made in no time. Just beware -- you'll need extra postage for the spider! Read more

3. Dinner Party Invitation

There is something special and exciting about getting an invitation in the mail, especially if it is a unique invitation for the Halloween dinner party. Read more

4. Masquerade Invitation

Invite your friends to your Halloween masquerade party using a printable template. Make a one-of-a-kind Halloween card or invitation. Read more

5. "Blood Stained" Invitations

Get your party guests and vampire enthusiasts in the mood for a spooky Halloween gathering by sending out easy-to-make "blood-stained" invitations. Read more

And if you don't feel crafty, you can check out lovely Party Invitations