Halloween Bash Gift Card/Treat Holder

This treat may be a little too involved to make for all your Trick-or-Treaters but it may be just the thing for a special someone.  There was a great video tutorial on YouTube demonstrated by Josee Smuck for a Christmas and a Birthday version.  If you don't do Halloween you could make them in a harvest type theme.  I plan to make several more and put small Hershey's bars in them.  The base of this is an envelope folded in half.

Here is the inside:

The fun skeleton face is from the Halloween Hello set.  Stay tuned tomorrow for another cute project using the same stamp set.  Thanks for stopping by!

Paper Pumpkin Delivery

This week I found a special delivery in my mailbox--my very first Paper Pumpkin Kit.  I really didn't want to make the card example from the kit so I did a little surfing and found some great ideas.  Thank you to all the demonstrators who put together such fun cards for me to CASE. One of my cards is based on a swap card layout from the talented Alicia Craig, a Cyberstamper team member. 

 

 

 

There is less than one week left to take advantage of the Paper Pumpkin Promotion.  Here are all the details. 

 

Offer Dates: July 18, 2013 -August 31, 2013 Offer Details: Use the promotion code PUMPKINDEAL to join Paper Pumpkin before August 31, 2013, and pay only $10 a month* for the first two months. *plus tax, where applicable. Shipping included! The Fine Print: For new subscribers only. Promotion applies only to the first two months of a new subscription. After receiving two month's worth, the price for each month's kit will go to the regular price: $19.95. You need to visit mypaperpumpkin.com to join. You must click "Add Promo Code" and then enter the promo code PUMPKINDEAL in the "Promo Code" field when you sign up on the mypaperpumpkin.com website to take advantage of this promotion. You must join by Saturday, August 31, 2013; 11:50 PM (MT).

 

If you decide to sign up for Paper Pumpkin, don't forget to select me as your demonstrator.   Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

 

Chalk Talk

 

Here is the card and layout I CASEd when I put together my Paper Pumpkin Kit.  Special thanks to Alicia for her great layout.  She is a very talented stamper. I love getting her swaps at our meetings.

 

 

I thought I'd make a card for my son this week to send off to him in the dorms. (Last weekend we helped him move in at Texas Tech). Here are the two I put together with scraps from the Soho Subway DSP. The buttons are made with the clay and colored with markers. I don't know if he will appreciate a card from his mom or not.  He may not be missing me much yet!  It's been quiet here at home without him.

 

Birthdays and Broken Metatarsals

Say what?!  Last Friday I found out exactly what a metatarsal was when I accidently rolled my foot off the edge of the garage floor.  When I heard the crunching noise I knew it wasn't a good thing.  I took myself off to the emergency clinic for a few x-rays and found out that I had fractured the 5th metatarsal bone in my foot.  The doctor promptly supplied me with some fashionable footwear until I could get to a podiatrist.  I knew I grew up in the 80's for a reason--I'm sporting a moon boot!  On Tuesday my new podiatrist told me that I will be wearing it for the next three months and I need to stay off my foot so that it can heal.  At least it was a clean break and won't require surgery. So now I have a legitimate excuse to sit and make cards.

On to the birthday part.  Here is the birthday card I made last week.  One was for a special request and another for my mom. Black and yellow always look dramatic together.  I still had some vellum butterflies leftover from my convention swap-making and they just flew onto the card!

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Halloween Hello and Herringbone Technique

Last week I ran across a great tutorial for a herringbone technique on Julie's Stamping Spot. I decided to give it a whirl using the Witches' Brew DSP.  On my first attempt I followed the instructions exactly to make a very orderly herringbone pattern.  You can notice how the DSP creates a V-shape.  Then I combined my background piece with a challenge Freshly Made Sketches to create the following card. I used Halloween Hello and Gorgeous Grunge stamp sets. The skeleton face is covered with the new fine black glitter which makes it stand out more.  The poor little bat should have been glittered too.

 

The next card I made the herringbone pattern more random and preferred the result.  This is the swap card I took to the Cyberstampers monthly business meeting.  It took a few hours to make 10 cards  but I have a good reason for sitting around stamping and not doing any housework.  This is a story for another day! 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Strawberry Slush Flower Shop

Strawberry Slush is my favorite color for this summer.  The name just sounds so refreshing--makes me want to run out to Sonic to pick-up an actual strawberry slush.  Prior to convention I received a swap in the mail from my upline (top of the heap), Jill Olsen.  She is one of the very first demonstrators to sign under Shelli Gardner twenty-five years ago.   Her card inspired me to make a cute little card with the Flower Shop stamp set. 

For the background I used the In-Color Core-dination cardstock, embossed it with the Alphabet Press embossing folder, then lightly sanded it.  The flower centers are punched from glimmer paper.

Thanks for stopping by!

Elements of Style Leftovers

Last week I received an unusual request to make a surprise birthday card.  On Friday evening I decided to get busy and dug out the Modern Medley paper remnants on my crafting table.  I'm sure I've said it before but my crafting area is always stacked sky high.  I end up creating on a six square inch space--without grid paper underneath!  Anyway, I was pleased with the results but I will refrain from posting it until after the 18th.  The card today was made with some extra bits and pieces that were cast-offs from the design process.  The composition is a little too square for my preference. The base card may look like it is white in the photo but it really is Very Vanilla.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Mosaic Christmas and a Dead Computer

On Saturday my laptop computer died.  It wasn't even very old.  I am so sad.  So, my choices for computer use is our old desktop (although it was just upgraded) and my son's Macbook Pro.  Now you have to understand that with my husband and I being engineers and sons who are working toward being engineers, we are a PC family.  Do you recall the commercials on TV with the two men, one says he is a Mac and the other says he is a PC--well, we fit the PC profile perfectly!  When the Mac came into the house it was almost sacrilege.  I asked my son how could he do this to us?  We all had a good laugh.  What do you think I am using?  The Mac!  I'm not sold on it though.  I fit the adage, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  My son wants to sell the laptop to me but it may be too much of investment for my limited computer usage.

Last week I CASEd a couple of cards from Patsy Waggoner.  Today's first card was an exact replica of a shadow box card made with Kind & Cozy.  Too cute!  Then I decided to mix it up a bit and use Mosaic Madness along with Season of Style DSP to make a few Christmas cards.  Yikes!  Not Christmas already.  It must be the weather that drove me to it.  It has been so hot here that I had to make the cards to feel cooler.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gorgeous Grunge (CCMC262-Color Challenge)

Today my son was going to a good friend's birthday party and asked if I had a card that he could take.  Of course I didn't have a card that I thought would work for a 17 year old boy so I had to make one.  In my blog surfing I happened upon a card by Patsy Waggoner that inspired me.  I dragged out a couple of retired sets to use but ended up mainly relying on Six-Sided Sampler and Gorgeous Grunge.  You will see a fleur-de-lis from Extreme Elements behind the die cut numbers and the birthday greeting is from my old Grunge Rock set.  Bermuda Bay, Basic Black and Smoky Slate are very striking colors together.

Do you think he will mind the hexagon shaped bling?  I die cut the numbers out of the silver glimmer paper but they just didn't pop out of the card so I tried again with the black.  Wish Stampin' Up had a black glimmer paper.  Wouldn't that be great for Halloween?  

Thanks for stopping by!

Simply Sketched (TSSC 274)

This week I found another great sketch at Techno Stamper's blog.  Last night I was stamping and had a pack of the new In-Colors on my messy table and some remnants of a DSP share.  Pistachio Pudding was there staring at me and I was asking myself what I was going to do with all that mint green cardstock!  Now I love, love, love greens but this one just reminds me of babies and butter mints.  As a challenge to myself I decided to use Pistachio Pudding cardstock with the Venetian Romance DSP (another of my not-so-favorite papers).  I must say I am pleased with the results.  The Simply Sketched stamp set has some really pretty images and seemed to coordinate with the softness of this combo.  Do you find yourself struggling to use certain colors?  Which is your least favorite color at the moment?  I challenge you to create a project with it and drop me a note to tell me how it went.

 

Thanks for stopping by!