A Gift for You

Hi everyone, and happy Monday to you! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I had a lovely and lazy time, and even managed to get my first sunburn of the year. Guess I don’t know what to do with this warm weather called spring anymore, it being so foreign and all.

This ended up being a pretty big weekend for us. We had a bit of a birthday celebration for Nik on Friday night, and then the really big part…..we pulled the trigger and signed college acceptance forms for Mr. Pete. I am now the parent of an official college student. Go Spartans!

Today I have a fun treat bag to share with you that I made for the Authentique blog. Recently, the team was given templates from Kiwi Lane to play with, and I used both their tags and scalloped border templates for my project, along with Authentique’s beautiful Hope collection.

Here you can get a really good view of all those yummy scallops. I simply cut strips of patterned papers, traced either the large or small scallop template, cut, and layered to cover the front of my bag. The Kiwi Lane templates are easy to use and are a great alternative for those without a die cutting system. Way less expensive, too.

Tied my handmade parchment paper goody bag with seam binding and added a quick tag made from the Kiwi Lane templates. A few Hope cardstock stickers and vintage buttons add the final touch.

For more ideas using Kiwi Lane, stop by the Authentique blog. Be sure to leave a comment while you are there for your chance to win this great prize package. Winners will be announced at the end of the month.

Thanks so much for stopping by, my friends! Wishing you all a wonderful day!

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Supplies:
Authentique Hope Collection: 8×8 Bundle, 12×12 Statements Cardstock Stickers
Kiwi Lane: Adorn Card Borders, Tags
Trim: 7Gypsies, Webster’s Pages, American Crafts
Ink: Clearsnap
Parchment Paper, Vintage Buttons

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The 31 Days of October- Day 10

Here I am having another late night, and almost forgetting to post for my 31 days of October!    At this rate, I’m afraid I’m going to slip up soon and blow the whole thing entirely.  Thank goodness I’ve been catching myself at the last minute. 

I have a quick share for you tonight.  A Halloween Tussie Mussie.  In Victorian times, ladies carried these around filled with small bouquets of flowers. Now I think they make adorable treat holders for candies or small gifts, or look cute hanging as ornaments.

I started by drawing a circle onto the back of a sheet of patterned paper.  I traced a dinner plate on mine, as that fit nicely on a 12×12 sheet.  Cut out your circle and then divide the circle into quarters.  Each quarter can make one cone.  Round the paper until the two straight edges meet and secure the cone with strong adhesive.

Add a ribbon handle, and then embellish.  I added a pinked edging around my cone with some cute bat trim from May Arts.  I painted a Melissa Frances chipboard swirl black and added some glitter, and layered that with a couple of tags, a flower from Petaloo, a button, and another bat.

These are fun and easy to make and can be adapted for any holiday or occasion.  And you can easily change the size by playing with different sized circle templates.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I always love to hear from you!

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Random Chaos #34 and News from InspireME

Good morning everyone!  I am SO excited to show you all my page for the Random Chaos challenge blog this week.  Janelle could not have picked a better challenge for me if she tried.  Any of you that have read my blog in the last week or two have seen how much I love all things Halloween.  So you can probably guess how happy I was when this week’s challenge ended up being to make any project (page, card or altered object) relating to Halloween.  You all REALLY should go check out what the other designers did.  There is a little bit of everything, and oh my, is there some great stuff.  I am so in love with Rachel’s altered project! It is so worth going to see. Here is what I did.

I chose to scrap this tiny photo of me when I was 7 wearing the witch costume my mom sewed for me.  I loved this costume more than any other I ever wore, and I managed to wear it for several years.  Mom added a whole new strip of fabric at the bottom so that I could continue to wear it as I grew, because I couldn’t stand to part with it.  She’s kept it all these years and I’ve since passed it down to Nicole, who has also worn it for Halloween.  That makes me pretty darn sentimental.  This costume is, without a doubt, one of my favorite childhood memories.  So even though this photo is really itty bitty, I’m still so glad to have it.

I had fun combining a bunch of different products and manufacturers on here.  I used a mixture of papers from Scenic Route (both black patterns), Webster’s Pages (the beige), and a touch of KI Memories( the orange strip).  Also used an overlay from Hambly in the background.  The chipboard buttons are from Making Memories, the ribbons are Stampin’Up and Making Memories, and the velvet alpha letters are from American Crafts.  I went back to my friend, Shanna’s, blog and downloaded a few more sizes of her awesome “scrolly frame” template to use as my photo mat.  Shanna has all sorts of fun templates that she is generously sharing with us all, so do go take a look!  And last, but not least, I added a few floral and leaf cut-outs from the gorgeous, new Reflections of Nature paper by Webster’s Pages.  I love the “ghostly” look these light flowers add to my little Halloween page!  I sure do love me some Webster’s!

And speaking of, there are a few new things going on over at Webster’s community blog site, inspireME, that I wanted to tell you about.  The first is a challenge that was posted this morning for the month of October.  The challenge for October is being led by design team member Iris and is to scrap photos of a favored or treasured object.  Be sure to check out the forum for all the latest information.

The second thing to note is that we are going to be holding our first ever live chat at the inspireME site tomorrow evening at 10 pm.  The chat is open to all inspireME members, so if you haven’t joined yet, you still have plenty of time to do so.  Here is what design team leader, Terri has to say.

Please join us for our very first LIVE chat, Wednesday, October 1, 10pm EST. It is scheduled for 1 hour.

This will be a chance for you to “meet” one of the owners of Webster’s Pages, chat with our design team members and guest designers, ask any questions you might have about products, share ideas and just have fun chatting about paper crafts.

We will have a few giveaways and Brandin will announce the winner of our quarterly banner drawing too.

The Chat is easy to access. That night a Chat option will appear on the inspireME menu, and when you click it, it will take you to the Chat room. You need to be a registered member of the site to have access to the chat.

Look forward to seeing you there!

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And the Winner is…..

Happy Friday!

Thanks to everyone who left nice comments over the last week for my Bazzill stitching templates giveaway.  These templates were my favorite part of the August kit from Paper-Playground, and I am so excited to have some extras to offer up to a new home.

I’ve had some questions as to how best use these templates, and I thought I would share how I generally use them.  They can shift around on you, and if you poke holes while it’s shifting, it can turn out a bit messy and frustrating. So what I tend to do is hold them firmly in place with one hand and place pencil dots inside each template hole with the other.  Then I remove the template and using a needle or a piercer, poke a hole where each pencil mark is.  You can then draw a faint line in pencil connecting all the dots, or just keep your template nearby to use as a guide while stitching.  I use only 2 to 3 strands of embroidery floss at a time.  If you use all 8 strands that make up the typical floss, you need a fairly large needle with a larger eye, and the floss is a bit harder to pull.  I hope some of these tips help!

And now that I’ve got you all excited about the templates, I can announce the winner of my random drawing.  Congratulations goes to Lisa Dorsey.  Yeah Lisa!  Woo-hoo.  I can’t wait to see what cute projects you do with these templates, girl.  And thanks again to everyone for playing along with me.

Not much else is going on scrappy-wise, but I have to show you all this cute book that Nik and I have fallen in love with lately.  If you guys like Halloween, you are going to love this.

Are you guys familiar with Ed Emberley?  I am just the biggest fan of his.  He has created all sorts of step-by-step drawing books for children.  I’m also in love with his fingerprint art books.  I’ve used the fingerprints in art projects I’ve done at the kids’ school and even in some card classes I’ve taught.  Nik and I have been having a ball with this Halloween book.  Here’s a couple of our latest masterpieces.

Sorry for the lousy scans.  One thing I’ve really come to realize lately is that Nik is ready for a genuine sketch book with real watercolor paper.  We’re going to put that on her Christmas list.  On these, we were stuck using a cheapy doodle book from back in her preschool days, but we sure still had tons of fun.  For both pictures, we did sort of a round robin game where she would start the picture with one image, which I couldn’t see her draw.  Then she would pass the book to me and I would add one thing to the picture that she then couldn’t see.  We kept passing it back and forth until we thought we had added everything that could be added.  I loved seeing the happiness on her face every time she would search for my new addition.  Very fun.

So glad the weekend is almost here.  Hope you all have a good one!

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Sketch This 67

Hi everyone!  Are you all ready for another sketch over at the Sketch This site?  Here is this week’s sketch.

I thought this was a fabulous sketch for a layout, and as a matter of fact, I think I’d like to go back and make a page from this soon.  For my card project, however, I simplified the design just a tad by eliminating a few elements.

I removed just a few strips from the bottom and left side of the design, and used the cut-out leaf branch in place of the vertical strip down the side.  A rub-on sentiment from K&Co. acts as my greeting on the journaling block, and another floral cut-out stands out as my focal point.  The cardstock, patterned paper, journaling block and brads are all from the August Paper-Playground kit.

And speaking of the August kit, I still have a couple of extra Bazzill mini stitching templates that I am giving away.

These little templates were by far my most favorite items from August’s kit.  If you would like to have your name entered into the drawing, just leave me a message in the comments.  I will do a random drawing tomorrow and announce the winner on my blog.  Good luck everyone!

Have a great day!

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