Vectors

CSS Creme
11 icons. Available in .ai format. Released under the General Public License.

DaPino (Smashing Magazine)
14 icons. Available in .png, .jpg, .ai and .eps formats. “You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use.”

DaPino
3 icons available in .ai CS3, .eps, .png, and .ico formats. License: Attribution-Non-Commercial 3.0 Netherlands.

DryIcons
Terms of Use.
Halloween frame available in EPS format.

Halloween night background available in EPS format.

Here are some vector skulls.

Mulpo
Various skulls available in AI and EPS formats. Released under the General Public License.

Llen Design (DeviantART)
7 Vector Skulls and a bone in an EPS file. Can be used in Commercial and Personal projects.

Designious

Can be used in Commercial and Personal projects.

1 skull EPS as part of their Vintage Mega Pack Sampler.

Free T-Shirt Design 2. EPS file.

Free T-Shirt Design 4. EPS file.

Free Vector Pack 1. A skull is available as well as some vector textures and other elements. EPS file.

illustrator-labo (Vecteezy)
Some awesome Jack O’Lantern and witch hat designs. AI file. “Use and abuse it to your heart’s content, just don’t resell or redistribute it in any way.”

Gerberpernert (Vecteezy)
Cute little bat-winged character and witch. Zipped AI file. General Public License

Chrisdesign
Halloween party flyers created in Inkscape. Openable in Illustrator but the sunburst effect produced an error in CS3 for me. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Jonny-Doomsday (DeviantART)
Frankenstein vector as an editable PDF file. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Idee Montabili
Pumpkin box template in EPS file. Just the shape; you have to decorate it yourself.

Here is a little vector freebie of my own for you all. Feel free to use it in commercial or personal works. Just don’t forget to show Design Bliss some love.

EPS CS file. Just click to download.

Photoshop Brushes

Here are some free Halloween Photoshop brushes for you.

Infected Loser
Halloween 1
10 Photoshop CS2 brushes.

Halloween 2
10 brushes.

Halloween 3
17 brushes.

Skulls
11 brushes.

deathoflight (DeviantART)
Creepy Trees
12 large brushes. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Spooky Trees
15 large brushes. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Graphics-illustrations
Nice set of brushes but requires signing up for free membership to download. Terms of Use.

MofineDoll-stock (DeviantART)
20 Photoshop Brushes. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Mel’s Photoshop Brushes
9 Jack O’Lantern/pumpkin brushes. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Digital Art Corner
10 Photoshop Brushes. “Redistribution is not permitted.”

Artistic-Ecstasy
8 Halloween Photoshop Brushes. “Please do not redistribute them as your own!”

Photoshop Tutorials

Want to ghoul up your designs for Halloween? Here are some Photoshop tutorials I’ve come across that might be useful.

First up, iMarc teaches us how to create a “Freakish Zombie in 11 Steps!”

Next, my favorite Photoshop tutorial site, PSDTUTS shows us how to create “A Slick Supernatural Text Effect.”

Photoshop Roadmap has gathered together 60 “Horror, Blood and Gore” Photoshop tutorials. Not for the squeemish, though.

Icons

Let’s keep the Halloween resources going with some free Halloween Icons.

Iconfactory
iPhonica Halloween – 10 icons for Vista or Leopard.

Trick or Treat – 4 icons for Vista or Leopard.

Jamie McCandless (Terms of Use)
Stone Ground – 22 OS X icons.

Boo-galoo – 12 OS X icons.

WarP o’Lanterns – 16 OS X icons.

Stock Photos

Perhaps the best find of this Halloween season are these skull reference photos by Jimiyo fro GoMedia.
15 high resolution shots of skulls cut out from the background already.

CreepyHalloweenImages.com offers hundreds of Halloween images under an attribution license. Here are just a few examples:

Bats

Clipart

Ghosts

Lanterns

Other Creepy Things

Fonts

Although I gathered up a lot of good font sources last year, here are some resources for Halloween fonts and dingbats that I have scrounged up for you.

HalloweenJoys.com
Various Halloween fonts.

TypOasis
Various “Creepy Fonts.”

dafont.com
We Inside. Skull and Skeleton dingbats.

About.com
A collection of Halloween fonts.

Dyers.org
Jon Dyers has put together a list of 66 Halloween fonts from various sites.

WordPress Themes

Interested in doing some blogging about Halloween? Well, here are 6 free themes for WordPress that you use to get you started.
Dining Table

WP-Themes

Savvy Web Design
Halloween Town

Cafe Halloween

Virtual Assistance for Business

Bobek’s WordPress Themes

Well, that’s it for 2008. Come again for more!

First up, iMarc teaches us how to create a “Freakish Zombie in 11 Steps!”

Next, my favorite Photoshop tutorial site, PSDTUTS shows us how to create “A Slick Supernatural Text Effect.”

Photoshop Roadmap has gathered together 60 “Horror, Blood and Gore” Photoshop tutorials. Not for the squeemish, though, so I am going to put the preview after the jump.

VECTORS

Robin Storesund (Adobe Exchange)

minercia (DeviantART)
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Shad Fox (CreativeMYK)
AI file.

jesse atwood (CreativeMYK)

DjRodolfo (Adobe Exchange)

Karen Jordan (Adobe Exchange)

N. Design Studio
I was very excited to find these the other day. They are available in EPS, GIF, PNG, and ICO formats and can be used in commercial as well as personal projects.

The Peirce Clipart Collection
The Peirce Clipart Collection is another recent find of mine. As you can see, there is some beautiful stuff available in PDF, WMF, and Bitmap formats. The artwork is licensed under Creative Commons.

Free Clip Art
Free Clip Art (yes, that is the name of the site) has some nice ones.

Community MX
Here’s an interesting find. This is a large set of stencils transformed into scalable PNG files, easily manipulated and colored in Fireworks. Or in Fireworks, you can save the files as AI files and open and work with them in Illustrator. Community MX used to charge for this set but later made it available for free.

Nicu’s Clipart Collection
Here’s a small but nice set of scalable SVG graphics.

Mana Media (Vecteezy)
AI file released under Attribution-NonCommercial (Creative Commons).

DanielAlbin (Adobe Exchange)
AI file.

dmmuzicfan (DeviantART)
The AI file found at these links is ©2006-2007 *dmmuzicfan and was made available for “all you self holiday card makers” on DeviantART.

Paul Wilson (Adobe Exchange)
AI file. (Appreciates donations.)

Ben Blogged
Here is a vector elf, available in AI or EPS.

YouWorkForThem
YouWorkForThem has released a 20 piece set of Christmas vectors in EPS format.

Spoon Graphics
Spoon Graphics has released a set of 8 snowflakes in EPS format.

]La thénardière – le studio[ (Vecteezy)
A set of Christmas ornaments as an AI file. General license.

jeni-cek (DeviantART)
AI, CDR, and PDF files released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

Vectorportal.com
Vectorportal has a whole section dedicated to Christmas. WMF and EPS formats. Be sure to take a look.

Suzanne Powell (Adobe Exchange)
A nice set of Illustrator Brushes.

Mel’s Photoshop Brushes
Mel branches out with this set of Adobe Illustrator brushes.

PHOTOSHOP

Here are a variety of Photoshop brushes that could be useful for Christmas or holiday designs.

Scully7491 (DeviantART)
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

meldir (DeviantART)

hawksmont Universe

Design by Alana

Keep Waiting (DeviantART)
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Obsidian Dawn offers a set of 39 Holiday Brushes. The brushes are “These brushes and patterns are free for commercial or non-commercial usage, and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.” Be sure to read the full Terms of Use, though.

Obsidian Dawn also offers 26 Snow and Snowflakes brushes. Again, follow the Terms of Use.

Bedazzling offers 17 icon brushes under the title “A Christmas Wish.” These are for personal use only, and a credit is requested.

Skeletor Imaging has 2 sets of Snow brushes available and appreciates PayPal donations.

Looking for more Christmas and holiday-themed brushes? Try the “Freeware” section at Seishido.biz, which offers “non profit sets, completely free and available for everyone.”

Free PSD files are a little harder to come by, but here are some I’ve found with a Christmas theme.

Zefhar (DeviantART)
This one is quite nice. Done with Photoshop shapes, this red ribbon is completely scalable!

CatONineTales (DeviantART)
CatONineTales has made several attempts at Christmas ornaments in Photoshop. Here are a couple of his nicest ones.

Matthew Aaron (CreativeMYK.com)
Nice layered gift design.

Aaron Skinner (CreativeMYK.com)
Aaron Skinner shares this awesome design for his church bulletin.

Fasticon
UPDATE 12/17/08 – No longer offered for free. Now $29.
Fasticon provides this Santa Claus hat PSD with which you can decorate your own logo or icon for Christmas.

While most photoshop tutorials just show you how to make things, I dug around until I came up with 5 that include the original PSD files as well. Enjoy.

Photoshop Digest – Holiday Card with Snowman

Free Photoshop Guides – Christmas Ornament

PhotoshopStar – Cartoon Christmas Tree

TutorialWiz – Christmas Ornaments

Photoshop Tips – Christmas Ornament

I haven’t tried these out yet, but here are a couple of free Photoshop actions that look pretty cool.

Photography BB
Snowglobe Action:

Snowscape Actions:

ICONS

Enhanced Labs

FixIcon

Fasticon

Yellow Icon

Zeus Box Studio

Fasticon
For those of you who loved my post on “Over 35 Different Styles of RSS Icons,” you should love these Christmas Social Bookmark Icons.

Plus here’s a whimsical set from Fasticon.

Iconfactory
Iconfactory always has great free stuff. Only for personal, desktop use.

World of Aqua Christmas Icons

Happy Holidays 2005

wbc images
wbc images has a couple of sets available:

Flameia Design – Xmas Gingerbread
Flameia Design has a couple of sets as well. Free for personal desktop use only.

There are lots of free icon sets out there. Here are some more of the ones I liked the best.

Yumi Hoshino
Windows and Mac Icons. Desktop use only.

sahoicon
Desktop use only. Here are a few of several sets available.

DesignMood
Some Christmas smilies for you. Personal use only.

Ben Schlitter

The Wackypixel Company

Iconica

IconDrawer

TEMPLATES AND WORDPRESS THEMES

Here is a great WordPress Theme, a tutorial for building your own Christmas template in Photoshop, and a few more Christmas templates that are freely available for downloading.

Design Disease: Christmas Days WordPress Theme

PhotoshopStar: Christmas Theme
PhotoshopStar takes you step-by-step through building your own Christmas-themed web layout in this tutorial. They even make the original PSD file available for download.

Looking for more templates? Here are a few others available for download.

Sarkis Design: All Things Christmas

Mango: Merry Christmas

Open Designs: Christmas 1

STOCK PHOTOS

Here are just a few of the great Christmas shots from stock.xchng. Click on the individual images to reach the download pages.

Now, we’ll take a look at a few of the Christmas photos morgueFile has to offer. As always, click on the individual images to be taken to the download pages.

This time I chose to check out the free stock photos offered at Pixel Perfect Digital. They have 41 images in their Christmas category. Be sure to check out the Terms of Use. Below are a few samples. Click on each one to reach the larger copies at Pixel Perfect Digital.

FONTS

typOasis
typOasis has a nice selection of Christmas fonts and dingbats. Here is a small sample:

Specialty Fonts
You can find more Christmas fonts and dingbats at Specialty Fonts. Here are just a few samples:

dafont
As always, dafont.com has a great selection of fonts for the occasion.

Acid Fonts
Here’s a quick look at part of what Acid Fonts has to offer in the Christmas category as well.

Christmas Spot
Here are some more fonts for you from the Christmas Spot.

Home 4 Christmas
And here’s what Home 4 Christmas has to offer.

PNG SCRAPBOOKING FILES

If you are not familiar with the digital scrapbooking world, there’s a whole wealth of material free for personal use out there. You can find some JPG and PSD files sometimes, but the majority of it seems to be saved as transparent PNG files. They are great to use in Fireworks or Photoshop.

Seventy-nine digital scrapbook creators have joined together to create “Christmas Around the World,” a wealth of textures, frames, etc. This material will only be available through December 16th in most cases so pick out what you want while you can (UPDATE: The deadline for most of the downloads has been extended to December 24th). Here are a couple of examples:

Another website devoted to digital scrapbooking, DigiScrapDepot, has 933 Christmas freebies in their database as of the time I am writing this. Here’s a quick peek:

In particular, I love this Santa hat from Sindiego’s Scraps:

Well, that does it. Posting will be light the next couple of weeks but come back soon for more.

Photoshop Digest – Holiday Card with Snowman

Free Photoshop Guides – Christmas Ornament

PhotoshopStar – Cartoon Christmas Tree

TutorialWiz – Christmas Ornaments

Photoshop Tips – Christmas Ornament

Design Disease: Christmas Days WordPress Theme

PhotoshopStar: Christmas Theme
PhotoshopStar takes you step-by-step through building your own Christmas-themed web layout in this tutorial. They even make the original PSD file available for download.

Looking for more templates? Here are a few others available for download.

Sarkis Design: All Things Christmas

Mango: Merry Christmas

Open Designs: Christmas 1

VECTORS

BenBlogged
Vector zombies available in AI and EPS formats.

MagicPeople
Three of several AI and EPS files available.

Open Clip Art Library
SVG format.

Wikimedia Commons
SVG format.

Public-domain-photos.com
SVG format.

Halloween Pumpkin Vector and Tutorial from N.Design Studio
N.Design Studio shows you how to make it and provides the original Illustrator file as well.

BenBlogged
Available in AI and EPS formats.

Free Clip Art
One of 9 pieces available. In WMF format.

Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft has tons of holiday art available in WMF format.

Open Clip Art Library
SVG format.

furaworld (DeviantART)
A set of vectors including these skulls. AI format.

anticubicle
Available in AI CS2 format.

BenBlogged
Here’s some cool ones for you.
Available in AI and EPS formats.

zwischenzeit (DeviantART)
Highly disturbing stuff but it’s Halloween so there you go.
Available in EPS format.


Go Media
Lots of good stuff in their Vector Pack Sample.
Available in EPS format.

Thomas Christoph Mediendesign (Vecteezy)
Check out the cool skull design on the shirt.
Available in EPS format.

Digital-Clipart
2 sample files available in AI and EPS formats.

Clip-Art.ru
WMF format.

Our first exclusive freebie! These are vectorized bats taken from copyright-expired art on Wikimedia Commons, done in 2 different styles. Feel free to to use them however you choose. Just don’t forget to show Design Bliss some love!

The file is an Illustrator CS2 file.

PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES

anodyne-stock

creakystairs (DeviantART)
22 brushes.

wyckedBrush (DeviantART)
13 brushes.

Scully7491
Spiders and spider webs.

seleneheart (DeviantART)
25 brushes. Personal use only.

BRUSH SET REMOVED BY REQUEST

Bats Photoshop Brushes by wyckedBrush (DeviantART)

Bats Photoshop Brushes by Microbion Graphics

PHOTOSHOP LAYER STYLES
Here is another Design Bliss exclusive! Five free Halloween Photoshop Layer Styles whipped up just for you guys. Hope you like them. Use them on your projects however you want; just don’t redistribute them without permission.

Click on the graphic to download the ASL file.

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS
Here are some great Halloween-themed Photoshop tutorials.

Tutorial Quest – Carving a Virtual Jack-O-Lantern

Mopacity – Creating and Animating a Bat

Fiery Darts – Drawing a Halloween Cartoon – The Witch

TutorialWiz – Halloween Pumpkin
Plus you can download the original PSD file.

Photoshop Facelift – Create a Gothic Style Look

ICONS

Zeus Box
Desktop icons set. The set are contain 11 pumpkin smilies and 7 “graphical halloweeb.”

(Note: You can also purchase a vector set of these icons for $14.50.)

kearone (DeviantART)
PNGs included. For use with Windows XP/Vista.

TurboMilk
PNGs available.

Fasticon

Iconfactory offers lots of sets of icons, in PC and Macintosh formats, that are free for personal desktop use. Year after year, they offer some great sets of free Halloween icons. Here are my favorites:

World of Aqua: After Dark

Haunted Hard Drives

Halloween 2004

Vintage Halloween

Litho Halloween Icons from Iconfactory

And their latest offering…Spooky Stickers.

deleket (DeviantART)

With so much of the early success of this blog being attributed to my massive RSS icons post, I couldn’t resist playing around with some Halloween rss icons for you. I think the jack o’ lanterns could work well, and I’ve done 2 different versions of a bat as well as just for fun. These are completely vector, done in Illustrator CS2. Again, use them as you want but don’t distribute them as your own. Include them in website designs, templates, whatever. A link back or blog entry would be nice. Anyway, here they are:

WEBSITE TEMPLATES
Finding good, free Halloween templates for websites proved harder than I thought. If you know of any good ones, please add them in the comments.

Mango

A Free Web Template – Halloween Pumpkin
Several other designs are available.

Free Site Templates – Halloween 1

Free CSS Templates – The Gathering
A decidedly dark template.

Rock-Kitty – WordPress Halloween Theme
2-column, Adsense ready Halloween theme.

Free CSS Templates
While not strictly a Halloween design, I thought the Web 2.0 style with the Halloween color scheme was worth mentioning.

STOCK PHOTOS
Here’s a few stock photos that could be used to great effect in Halloween-related projects. The last one is even a layered PSD with the crows already cut out for you.

Solitairemiles (DeviantART)

Stock.xchng

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

mjranum-stock (DeviantART)

CatONineTales (DeviantART)
Layered PSD. Personal Non-Commercial use only.

Here’s some more great free stock photos for Halloween from Stock.xchng:

Here’s even more great free Halloween stock photos for you, this time from Stockvault.

Halloween Color Palettes from Color Hunter
With Color Hunter, you can look at existing color schemes made from photos tagged Halloween or upload your own.

FONTS
Here are sources of Halloween fonts for your projects.

Sinister Fonts
A bunch of very cool, original fonts created by Chad Savage.

The Halloween Chamber of Horrors
This is a very old Geocities site but appears to have a good collection available.

Acid Fonts
A nice collection of fonts.

Fontenstein
Another collection dedicated to Halloween fonts.

Fonts & Things

Blambot
Blambot specializes in comic book fonts and offers a bunch of free fonts that would be great for Halloween.

Dafont.com
Dafont. com has a large selection of Halloween fonts. Here is just a sample.

Dafont also has a selection of scary fonts that could work well.

UrbanFonts
Here is a selection of their Halloween dingbats.

Halloween.it
And here’s a large selection of Halloween fonts and dingbats from an Italian site.

Skull-A-Day – Skullphabet

Plus here’s some more Skull fonts from dafont.com.
Calaveras

Skull TS 2
Free for personal use.

TotenKopf

Old Skull Hellron

Horror Fonts from Abstract Fonts
They have over 90 available. Here is a small sample.

Halloween Pumpkin Vector and Tutorial from N.Design Studio
N.Design Studio shows you how to make it and provides the original Illustrator file as well.

Bats Photoshop Brushes by wyckedBrush (DeviantART)

Litho Halloween Icons from Iconfactory

Halloween Color Palettes from Color Hunter
With Color Hunter, you can look at existing color schemes made from photos tagged Halloween or upload your own.

Horror Fonts from Abstract Fonts
They have over 90 available. Here is a small sample.

Tutorial Quest – Carving a Virtual Jack-O-Lantern

Mopacity – Creating and Animating a Bat

Fiery Darts – Drawing a Halloween Cartoon – The Witch

TutorialWiz – Halloween Pumpkin
Plus you can download the original PSD file.

Photoshop Facelift – Create a Gothic Style Look

BittBox
8 different colors – various sizes and formats. Illustrator, EPS, SVG, PNG, and JPG formats.

UtomBox
Available in PNG format. Part of a larger set.

snap2objects
30 free icons in PDF vector format.

Vikiworks
Part of a Social Bookmark Iconset.

Fasticon

Part of a set of Social Bookmark Icons.

zeus box
A whole set using PNG format.

WebFruits
From (max)Icone Blog – Set 1

From (max)Icone Blog – Set 2

GoSquared
Available in Illustrator or JPEG versions.

Vector icons available in 5 different colors and in Illustrator, SVG, and JPEG formats.

PhotoshopCandy
Layered PSD available.

Perishable Press
In PNG format.

Bartelme Design
Available in PNG and Illustrator formats.

Kapowaz
Available in PNG format as well as the original PSD.

FreeIconsWeb
16 icons set in PNG, ICO, and ICNS formats.

Play Like A Girl
My personal favorite. Available in PNG format and the original PSD.

Arzo Icons
Available in PNG format.

Randa Clay Design
Available in PNG and EPS formats.

Ps graphiX
Available in PNG format as well as the original PSD.

Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq
Available as an animated gif.

Spheres Graphics
Available in PNG format.

Subtraction
Available in PNG format an in original PSD.

Dr. Web
Original PSD available and samples of lots of variations as gifs.

DevilCry
Available in PNG format.

SimDes
Available in PNG format.

Valentina Olini
Available in PNG format.


From deviantArt:

~nam0

carlnewton

leoparn
Available in PNG format.

jb55

petemh

Feeling inspired now? Want to make your own?

Feed Icons
Featuring a devlopers kit with AI, EPS, SVG, PSD, PDF, PNG, JPG, and GIF formats included.

Want to start from scratch? Check out these tutorials:

Photoshoplovr.com
The original PSD is available as well as a tutorial on how to make them.

Pixel Hive Design
A Photoshop tutorial.

PhotoshopCandy
The PSD is available upon request.

Spoon Graphics
Illustrator Tutorial.

CMXtraneous
A Fireworks tutorial plus a PNG file.