Halloween at Hallmark

I always tell people that the thing I miss the most about Hallmark is Halloween.  With all those incredible artists concentrated in one place, the annual Hallmark Halloween party was always a jaw-dropper, with amazingly elaborate costumes.  (One year, I saw a guy come as a credible Mount Rushmore, and another fellow appeared as a green plastic army soldier--complete with a plastic stand, which he'd sliced in two so he could separate his feet and move around.  But he had the pose down, and he was green top to toe.  It was staggering.)

But this post about geeky Jack-O-Lanterns reminds me of the other great thing about Hallmark: their artists can use any medium and still blow you away.  Note that most of the geeky pumpkins in the linked article aren't actually all that hard to make.  But this Jack Nicholson one I've reprinted here will make you blink and look four times.  So believe me when I tell you that there were at least twenty people at Hallmark capable of making this pumpkin--and if pressed, they could also do it in gesso, cookie sprinkles, or hammered tin.  It was moments like this that I would rear back and remind myself, "Oh, right--these are some of the best artists in the world."  When you're around them all the time, sometimes you forget.

(Thanks to Jennifer Lee-Olmstead for the link.)