Halloween photo's!

Hi ya everyone!! Well another Halloween has gone by and I'm sad to have to start taking down the decorations and put them away until next year. We had a great time here in WI, weather was just perfect for trick or treating.

I just wanted to share some photo's quick.To start I'll show ya all 2 of my favorite Halloween decorations that I put up each year. Nothing to creepy- don't want to give the kid nightmares just yet!

Wreath by the front door- love the birds!                              Simple Prim looking witches on their broom-                                                                                                                           so cute!

Now onto the Grim Reaper and his friends!

 My little guy looked so creepy with his face painted like that. The neighbor girl went as "Crabby Girl" which I thought was pretty inventive......and the neighbor boy was an army soldier!

We came across this BIG scarey fella and just had to snap a picture- EEEK! The person underneath was wearing those stilts that people who do "drywall"  wear when they are taping/sanding up by the cieling!

CREEPY- huh?

I just LOVE this picture I got as my little Grim Reaper was walking away with some goodies! It's so creepy cool and I just love how his eyes look as though they are actually glowing!

Sorry......but I really  like the scarey stuff!

And the last picture to share is me as dressed up as a witch!!

MY mom borrowed me the hat.....and I had to find a wig to go with it! I found this one with long black hair with a few green stripes going through it. I decided to paint my face and neck green as well at the last minute.......gosh what was I thinking? It took me 3 times of scrubbing my skin nearly off to get all the color removed! I love the silly glasses too- aren't they funny! I carried around my cauldron of frogs all the time while trick or treating......it lights up and sings this silly song about a witch! I scared the cr*p out of some young little Trick or Treater.....I could see her cowering behind dad and pointing at me with that look like "Oh no Daddy- that's a scary icky witch.....I"m not going anywhere near her!"

I hope you all had a fun Halloween- we sure did! I ate soooo much chocolate it's not funny.......I think I gained at least 2 pounds over the weekend! I guess I better go start taking down the decorations and get some Thanksgiving decor up for now. I'll be counting down the days until next years Halloween!

See you next time with some actual card creations!

Anne

Christmas gift and treat bag tutorial!

Hi ya everone! Today I'm going to show you how to make a quick and easy box that you can turn into a fun gift or treat bag using the Stampin Up Top note die to decorate the front and back.

I made a bunch of these last year for a craft fair and thought I would make some more this year with a tutorial to go along with it. You just need one sheet of 81/2 X 11 cardstock and a Scorepal or Martha Stewart Scoreboard and some adhesive of your choice (I use doublesided Scotch tape for these).

To start you will need to cut your cardstock down to a 6" x 9" piece. Click on the pictures if you want to see them bigger!

Then you will score in from each outer edge 1 1/2 inches. ( I drew the black lines for you to see). This will be at 1 1/2" and 4 1/2 " if you are using the MS Scoreboard.

Rotate your paper a 1/4 turn and then you will score in from each edge 3 3/4 inches. (Follow the black lines on my paper).

Now you are going to cut your paper along the 4 short lines that I have highlighted pink on the paper. This way your box will be ready to fold up. (Click on the pic for a bigger view)

Now it's time to get out the adhesive and start taping the sides as your box comes together. I start taping down the small square tabs on the  inside of the box as it folds up.

Before I pull the other side up I like to add my ribbon handle here up at the top of the first side that is already standing up. This way it is hidden between the 2 sides and no one see's how you attached it. I just use double sided Scotch tape to get the ribbon to stick. If you are going to add a handle you want to do this now, otherwise you have to tape the ribbon to the inside of the box....and that doesn't look as nice.

I used this ribbon last year and I still have a bunch left over for this years boxes. I found it at Home Depot and it's simply just ribbon already tied to be used for ornament hangers. They are the perfect length to use for a handle on the little boxes.  I just cut one right in the middle and then taped each side onto my box- it's a super quick and easy handle and I don't have to take the time to tie each piece of ribbon.

Bring your other side of the box up and tape it down having the outer flap cover up the inner flap. And that is basically it!  It's pretty quick and easy once you make a few.....they go really quick.

I just use some pretty doublesided patterned paper to dress up the box or you can stamp something on the Top Note die- whatever you feel like doing.  I also cover the sides of the box with the same patterned paper . You can even just use a rectangular piece of paper to dress it up on the front and back- you don't need to use the Top Note die if you don't have one!

Of course this can be adapted for any other holiday or occassion just by changing your paper!

I hope these directions were easy enough to follow......if not someone please shout out and I will update this with more pictures or directions!

Thanks for stopping bye and hope you all have a Frightfully fun Halloween!

Anne

Stamping with paint expiraments!

Hi ya everyone! I sure had fun playing with paint this week- watching the "Thinking Inking" week 4 video really got me going. I've only got the one gold paint dabber but lots of other metallic and acrylic paints to play with.

I made the first card here using my gold paint and the Starburst Lace stamp from Hero Arts. I also used the Old letter Writing stamp from HA in the background. Used antique linen distress ink to warm it up and vintage photo around the edge.

Used a few paper poinsetta's from Hero Arts and even painted some clear gems with the gold paint. The gold paint gives it such a lovely shimmer and I was pleasantly surprised how well the detailed Starburst stamp came out.

The next expirament I used my favorite pearl white paint from Lumiere. I've got a whole set of these wonderful metallic paints- got them here at Dick Blick. They dry nice and quickly and I use these watered down in a mini mister instead of Perfect Pearls......and they work great!

I used my favorite big snowflake stamp from Stampin Up (the set Winter Post) all over some white cardstock. Let it dry and went direct to the paper using my Adirondack Stonewashed ink pad. I wanted a dark navy blue border but didn't have any paper that color so I used my Night of Navy ink pad to make the border. I added some pearls onto the center of each snowflake and did the border of the Nestie die cut to make it look a bit frosted too. 

Her are the ink colors and the paint I used. I simply shook up the jar of paint and used a round make up sponge to dab some paint right out of the cover.....then loaded it onto my stamp. Super easy and you don't have to have a paint dabber to stamp this way.

Now onto to more "somewhat" exciting news in my house.  My little guy lost his first tooth today......actually just about 2 hours ago! It's been loose and wiggly for the last few days and it was really bothering him when he got home from school. So being the former dental assistant and knowing all the "teeth" things I inspected the situation (the adult tooth was already poking up through the gums)  and with a bit of a tug and twist popped that tooth right out like nothing! I'm sterilizing the tooth in a Dixie cup with bleach and water.....this disinfects it and that's how they do it at the dentist office too- just FYI.

He's happy it didn't hurt and now I get to play the "Tooth Fairy" tonight- wohooo- can't wait!

Thanks everybody for stopping by and I hope you get to try stamping with paint- it's really pretty fun! Messy.......but fun!

I'm getting rather excited for Halloween night to come- it's so fun to go out with the kids and take them "Trick or Treating". I'm dressing up as a nice witch! I hope our weather is better Halloween night than it is today- 50 mph winds and icky cold rain.....yuck!

 

Inky Hugs, Anne

Thinking Inking cards!

Hi ya everyone! Been ages since I posted.....life has been uber busy lately. I did finally sit down and watch a bunch of Jennifer McGuire's thinking Inking classes at 2Peas in a Bucket recently and just became enthralled with the block background technique!

So I started playing a bit Friday evening with different inks and found some colors I really liked together and made a couple of quick attempts at a cool background. For this card I made on Saturday morning for the 90 minute challenge over at Hero Arts I used vintage photo, spiced marmalade, and shabby shutters.




I overstamped the background using my new Old letter writing stamp from Hero Arts. I then got out my favorite embossing folder and used that on some orange cardstock. I just sponged on a bit of the vintage photo on to some kraft cardstock for the base. The tag was cut out of some scrap test runs from the night before and the metal embellie is actually just a flat washer dyed with alcohol ink.

Then today I played  bit more with this block technique trying out some different colors.....was going for a soft wintery look here. I used dusty concord and tumbled glass and hit the acrylic block with a whopping dose of Perfect Pearls.





My acrylic block was literally  dripping wet as I stamped it....even stamped it off a few times on some more paper. The background panel turned out realy cool........it has so much shimmer and shine and I love the whole smeared look to it. Pulled out a barely used Hero Arts snowman stamp and used the dusty concord on him too. I'm not really thrilled with the way this whole card turned out.......but that's what you get when your 6 year old won't leave you alone for 5 minutes and you can't concentrate- (that's how it's been around my house lately.....not much ME time at all- waaaah!)

Hope you are all having a wonderful relaxing Sunday and hope your week ahead will be great!

Inky Hugs, Anne

Hero Arts goodies and a Christmas card

Hi ya everyone!

I got my big box of Hero Arts goodies in the mail on Monday and wow- all I can say is new rubber and ink is so FUN! This is some of what I picked out with my $100 shopping spree. I had to pick up a few stamps I have been unable to locate locally......and there are a few items I did not photograph- as they will be given away on some soon to be offered blog candy. Gotta share the love with all my fellow stampers!
Thank you to Hero Arts for the very generous prize!!







My mojo has kind of been on vacation for the last week or so but I really wanted to use the snowflake stamp set right away so I printed off this awesome digi poinsetta I got last year as a freebie off of Splitcoast Stampers. I printed it 3 times- twice on pink paper and once on a light green paper. I used my distress inks to color the flower red (was going for a pinkish-red but that didn't quite work out). I  used peeled paint the leaves. I also grabbed my red & green Spica glitter pens to jazz up the edges of the petals and leaves as well. I layered the flower for a bit of dimension using very thin foam tape.











Here is a better close up view so you can see the shine and sparkle. I added some teeny red microbeads to the center using Glossy Accents. I also came back and kind of rubbed on a wee bit of redish-pink Pearl Ex powder with a tiny paintbrush as well for even more shine.

The snowflakes were stamped using Brilliance Platinum Planet- love this lighter silver color. I pulled out some of my favorite silver shimmer paper and used that as the base to try to highlight the silvery shimmer of the delicate snowflakes.

I hope to find more time and mojo to get some more Christmas cards done soon! I still need to get all those Halloween cards ready to be mailed out as well.......oh where does the time go!

One last thing....... go check out Deirdre's beautiful blog- she has some yummy blog candy up for grabs!

Thanks for stopping bye and hope you all have a lovely day!

Inky Hugs, Anne