TRICK or Treat

Ted over at Happily Ever Crafter is having a super fun challenge this month. His trick or treat challenge is, well, challenging. Basically you must ring his doorbell (email him) and he will respond with either "trick" or "treat." If you get a treat your challenge is to make a Halloween card with traditional images and colors. However, if you get a trick you must use nontraditional images with pastel colors for a Halloween card. I guess the TRICK is on me. Yep, I got trick. Now what to do?
I was flipping through my index of stamps and there it was screaming at me. A Halloween card for the hubs. I had found the image and the idea. A little help from PaperPlay Challenges with a sketch and in my head it was done. It was time to get to work. And here is what I did.

But what's going to make the hubs like it? Well...

Take it as you will.

Thanks for looking!

Happy Halloween

Today's offering is the Halloween card I made for my older son. He is going to be a hedgehog for halloween this year so when I sat down to make his card it seemed fitting to pull the halloween hedgehogs from Stampin Up out. Luckily I still had them as I nearly sold them a few months back. What was I thinking??
Here is his card:

This image seemed most appropriate for him. And then I had to add the felt pumpkins he likes so much and a card for him would not be complete without buttons. He LOVES buttons on cards. I love orange and brown this time of year. They make everything seem a little cozier.

Challenges:
Sweet Sketch Wednesday - sketch
Charisma Cardz Challenges - Autumn Colors
Stampin' for the Weekend - Autumn Inspiration
Paper Sundaes - A change of season
Cupcake Craft Challenges - Scary Creatures
Tuesday Taggers - More than two legs
Papertake Weekly Challenges - 3 of a kind

Thanks for looking!

Boo to you!

We're still gearing up for Halloween here. I love Halloween. There are so many things one can do, but there is no pressure to do anything. I think that fact alone makes it a wonderful holiday and reason to celebrate.

This year we're adding a few things to our Halloween traditions. The first one is Boo boxes for two of our neighbors. As we can barely communicate with most of our neighbors we will be wishing them a Happy Halloween without attempting to explain what "Booing" really is. It'll be fun all the same.

The first set to be taken care of is for the old lady across the street. This particular project uses a lot of goodies that had been forgotten about. Thanks to For Fun Challenges for encouraging me to pull them out and give them their chance to shine.

I know the box looks kind of blue, but it's black, really. I used a netting/lace piece of material that had the spiderweb pattern to make the spiderwebs on the sides using a combination of embossing powder and glitter. I really loved this material and had wonderful ideas for it, yet here we are years later and I'm just now getting around to playing with it. And while I had a really hard time taking a decent picture, there are black spiders with red eyes in the webs popped up on dimensionals on all four sides. The spiders are from a stamp cube from Northwoods Rubberstamps. I bought it for the bats but have never used the spiders.
Here's another view of the box.

This is one of those really big gable boxes. I bought them forever and day ago and then they got lost. I found it during a recent reorganization of the art room. Since I had two I decided to use them for the "Boo" boxes this season. This way they can't be lost or forgotten again. See how that works?! And thanks to One Stop Craft Challenge Blog for giving me a kick in the pants to get this done with their Alter It Challenge.
And here's the card/tag we'll be putting inside with all the goodies.

This image is also from Northwoods Rubberstamps. The sentiment is made from an alphabet set from Purple Onion Stamps. I think the googly eyes give it just the right amount of fun.

Thanks for taking a peek.

Have a drink

Today's card was inspired by two challenges. The first, Happy Hour over at Cupcake Craft Challenges led me to the second, Congratulations at One Stop Craft Challenges.

When I first saw Happy Hour I almost passed. I wasn't working on nor did I need to work on any kind of project even close to Happy Hour. Then I looked at my general To-do list. A friend of mine has a birthday later this month so her name was on my list to get the card mailed out. Her husband is currently out of the country for an entire year doing the military thing so I thought if anyone needed a drink it would be her. I didn't want to encourage her to drink alone just because he was gone, though I know there are days when doing just that might be the thing to do. That's where Congratulations came in. What about a card to congratulate her on making it this far into the year. Trust me, she's about a third of the way through so she deserves some congratulations.

Here's what will be popping in her mailbox.

It's a pretty simple card - just her style. The image is from Stamping Bella, the sentiment from PTI.

Thanks for taking a peek.

Fall is in the air

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. No big or exciting adventure this time, just a little reassessing. I have let my desire to participate in challenges trump my creativity and so I've stopped to take a look at my approach. I think I'm finding a better one. Plus, I've been going crazy with Halloween stuff. It seems the costume ideas this year were much easier on the drawing board than in real life. Luckily I still have a few weeks - I'm going to need them!

But none of this is why you are here. You are here because fall is in the air, at least in theory. We went from summer to winter, back to summer, and now the weather seems to be thinking about at least trying to be fall.

JUGS has a super simple, super sweet sketch going on this week. My take:


This little flower was one of the very first stamps I ever bought way back when. It's from Hero Stamps.

Paper Sundaes has a challenge this week to use something from your stash which made me think of this little charm which has been in my art room so long I can't remember buying it.

There you have it. My little bit of fall.

Thanks for taking a peek.

Try, try again

My Time Made Easy is (or rather was) having a call for some new designers. I love their products. Getting them and having to play with them sounds so wonderful! Hubby certainly can't argue with that. I just love seeing the 3-D boxes and bags come to life. For the call, I put together a little set to wrap up a scarf my son and I recently picked up on one of our travels for her. Nothing fancy just a little something. I used the tote it all template, which goes together even easier than I could have imagined.


The scarf is pink and so the color theme revolved around pink.

Here is the bag.

I wanted the bag to look a little purse like because this particular friend LOVES purses. I used paper from their fresh fabrics collection 2 (these are my favorite papers!). I also wanted a simple yet unique focal point so I made a medallian of sorts. I used the argyle set from MTME to stamp a pattern on shrinky dinks, cut out a circle, and shrunk it all down.

And now the back.

I wanted to use the same pattern on the pocket, but I wanted the colors to be a bit softer so I chose to go with a shimmery ink in the same colors. The pocket is empty at the moment because that is where the kids picture for her will go.

And here is the card.

I used the same contrasting paper from the bag to make the background on the card using the same curves from the top of the bag. I then repeated the pattern though put it on it's side. The sentiment is from a stamp that was given to me years ago. The white are will be filled in with hearts from the kids, but that takes more patience than I had this weekend.

Thanks for looking and wish me luck!

Testing

Once again I've been a bad blogger because we were off on an adventure. This time it was the Czech Republic. Fun, fun, fun!

Anyway, I'm back and we'll be home for a bit so I should be able to get the mojo going again. I really hope it comes back fast.

Anyway, today I have a little something to offer. It's a simple little card I made to submit to My Time Made Easy. It was a failed attempt, but here's the card none the less.



Though I've been meaning to try it, this is the first card I have ever sewed on. I did both machine and hand stitching. The patterned paper was inked and distressed around the edges prior to sewing. I like the simplicity of the card and plan on sending it to a friend for Thanksgiving.

Challenges:
Charisma Cardz Challenge - Something new
Stamptacular Sunday Challenges - Distress it
Paperplay Challenges - Autumn is a comin'
Raise the Bar - Orange, brown, green

Thanks for looking!