BBTB Halloween Tag challenge/Sat Challenge

I made this little decorated paint can for my granddaughter, Payton's, Halloween present. Since she is only 3 years old I didn't want it to look too scary. The Bitten By The Bug challenge this week called for using the tag cut from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge. I turned the tag into a little black and orange house with a picket fence around it. Instead of making the usual white picket fence I made it black to be a little more Halloweenish. Is that a word? I cut the fence from the My Community cartridge. After I cut the tag on blackout, I placed it on top of the rust paper that I border punched with a Fiskars scallop and traced around the roof line. I cut two squares and a rectangle from the Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge for the windows and door. I added a couple bats on the roof that I cut from Paper Doll Dress-up. You can't see them very well in the picture, but on each side of the house there are black trees.

For the backside of the can I cut a couple more bats and added a couple gravestones. I outlined the picket fence and the gravestones with a white marker to make them a little easier to see. I took a piece of orange cardstock and cut it into 1/2" strips then folded them accordian style to put inside the can. Then I added lots of ribbons to the handle of the can. The trick or treat sentiment on the top of the can came from a stamp that my aunt had. Since it isn't mine I can't really say who it's made by. I added a little spider cut from the Paper Doll Dress-up cartridge because there was a little bare spot that needed a little something.

I will fill the can with Payton's favorite treat. Sour Gummy Worms. Why a 3 year old would like such sour things I'll never know. This looks like it took awhile to make but it was really a pretty quick project. I think it took me about an hour to put it all together. It took longer to cut all the little pieces of ribbon and tie them on than to do everything else on the can. I just love these little paint cans. I bought a dozen of them about a year ago from a place called Tallmouse. They sell craft supplies online. I think I paid somewhere around $30 for the dozen including shipping. I will also use this project for the Saturday Challenge of Halloween and Stamp, scrap and Doodle's anything but a card challenge.

2 Sketches 4 U DT call Laura's sketch

This is my second card I made for the chance to be a part of the 2 Sketches 4 U design team. How much fun that would be!!! I've been making Christmas cards this year and trying to use untraditional colors. I did this card in mauves following Laura's sketch. My intrepretation of the sketch has this card with a top flap to open.

The poinsettia on this card was made with my Cricut Joys of the Season cartridge. I layered it three times for dimension adding Martha Stewart's Crystal fine glitter.

The sentiment on this card is from Hampton Arts. I used Colorbox Chalk Ink in Maroon to stamp the sentiment. You can see in the picture below how the top flap opens up.

I love how the poinsettia turned out with the layering and the glitter. I used mauve cardstock. It just looks likes it's covered in sugar to me. I used a crimson pearl from Queen and Co. for the center.

Squigglefly SNR color challenge

I made this card a few days ago but didn't get it posted until today due to a bit of a family crisis we had. My new baby granddaughter had to be hospitalized due to a urinary tract/kidney problem. That meant we had to drive to Ohio to pick up her sister, 3 year old Payton. We brought her back up to Michigan with us so her mom could stay at the hospital with the baby. Her husband was out of town so we were happy to help out. I adore Payton, but OMG, she totally wears me out and I can't get anything done when she's here. She loves to be in my craft room and play with my IKEA containers on the magnetic board that I store all my embellishments in. She likes to dump them all out into a pile then sort them out. I usually let her choose something to craft with. This time she chose plastic letters to make her family's names with. Then we made bedroom door signs with them. Darn it! I forgot to take pics. Anyway, this card is for the Squigglefly SNR color challenge of red, orange and gold. Squigglefly (www.squigglefly.com) has some great new images. This adorable turkey is called Thy Cart Overfloweth. My base card is brown cardstock and my sentiment and image are backed with a rust colored cardstock. The leaf print is from the Recollections Autumn stack I picked up last week on clearance at Micheal's.

The Bountiful Blessings sentiment is from The Cutting Cafe. I cut the apple in the center with my Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge. I cut it three times in red, brown and green so I could piece and layer it. I embellished with brown checked ribbon from Hobby Lobby, a little red button and some hemp cord. Just thought I'd add a picture of my embellishments that Payton loves to play with so much.

2Sketches4U DT Call Kazan's sketch

I'm so excited about my next two posts because they are the cards I made for the

2 Sketches 4 U design team call. I always love their sketches, they are one of my favorite challenge sites. Both Laura and Kazan are so talented and their designs are so inspiring. What an extreme honor it would be to be a part of their design team. For my card I chose to do an off center gate fold card from Kazan's sketch. I tried to prop the card open a little so you could see where it opens.

Papers:

• Christmas ornament-Cloud9designs(Fiskars)
• Stripe-Christmas Magic by Nancie Rowe-Janitz
• Dark Green cardstock-DCWV
• Holly print paper-Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas Collection

The ornament on this card was cut from Cricut's Joy of the Season cartridge. The holly cut outs of the ornament inspired my patterned paper choice, with the holly print, it was the perfect paper to go on this card. The berry embellishments are Crimson Pearls from Queen & Co. I added a simple gold cording bow.

The sentiment stamped on this card is from Hampton Arts. It also seemed to fit just perfect for the holly theme of this card. I used Colorbox Chalk Ink in Chestnut roan and colored in the holly with Copics.

Project Tuesday Shaker Card/SASSC36

I'm really excited about how this card turned out. Two reasons--I've never made a shaker card and I hand drew my snowman image. My husband is starting to question whether I really need soooooo many digital stamps every time he see's a receipt. So to hush him for awhile I thought I'd give a little drawing a try. My pencils are rusty, but I thought a snowman would be pretty simple. After drawing with a pencil I outlined it with black marker, colored with Copics, then cut him out. I used the great sketch from The Fresh Batch Thursday Challenge.(http://sasthefreshbatch.blogspot.com/2009/10/stamps-and-smiles-sketch-challenge_15.html)

I have to admit I cheated a little with the shaker box though. I had some acetate for the window but I didn't have any dimensional foam to mount it on. But I did have this little window that I had saved from some clear stamps I bought with just a project like this in mind. I made my snow that is inside the shaker box by rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together to "grate" some off. Then I added some Martha Stewart crystal coarse glitter for a little extra sparkle. This wonderful tip for making faux flower soft came from Holly at Hog Wild About Stamping.
(http://hogwildaboutstamping.blogspot.com/). She's just a genius to figure out how to make this stuff and even color it. Thanks, Holly! I thought the little snowball fringe would be the perfect embellishment around my snowman window. The snowflakes came from Cricut's Don Juan cartridge. I added a small bow with a star in the center to finish this card off. This card will go to my 3 year old granddaughter Payton. I made her new baby sister a blue polar bear card a couple days ago (see post below). I didn't want Payton to be jealous of Paige's fuzzy (fun flock) card. I thought she would enjoy shaking the snow around on this card.

Sketch Saturday/Squigglefly Hollysoft

Yesterday was new release day at Squigglefly (www.squigglefly.com). That's where this adorable image came from. If you are a Squigglefly newsletter subscriber there is a coupon on this month's newsletter and it's good through tomorrow. They had an event at SNR last night where Holly, from Squigglefly, put out a challenge. It seems that Holly set out on a personal mission to make her own faux flower soft. By rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together you get a similar product. She has a video on her blog to show you how, even how to color it. http://hogwildaboutstamping.blogspot.com/2009/10/make-your-own-flower-soft.html. Anyway, the challenge is to put some "Holly soft" on your card. So here is my card using the sketch from Sketch Saturday. This image is Sledding Sara. I made two copies of the digital image and used one for background, cut Sledding Sara out of the other and used foam dots to layer her over the background image. I used Copics to color. I added Fun Flock onto her boots and you can see my "Holly soft" on the hill she's sledding down. Oh, after I "grated" my styrofoam I added a tiny bit of glitter for a little extra sparkle.

BBTB Monster

Boy, oh boy, am I ever having a hard time getting my computer to cooperate this week. It's been one thing after another. My laptop touchpad wouldn't work one day, lost pictures, couldn't get pictures to upload, grrrrrrrrr, very frustrating. Anyway, I finally got this one on but I think I missed the deadline for the Bitten By The Bug weekly challenge for this monster cut from Paper Doll Dress-up. This guy is very simply made. Orange background paper is DCWV and the monster is cut from Debbie Mumm's Holiday stack from last year. The sentiment is from The Cutting Cafe's (www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com) Halloween This and That set. I printed right on to my orange printed paper. Quick and easy.

Allsorts monochrome/BBTB number challenges

This was a fun card to make because it is for my newest granddaughter for Christmas. She will be four months old by Christmas and won't know what's going on but it can go in her scrapbook. I followed the sketch from Allsorts and did the card in monochromatic blues. Now that I finished I decided I should have done a pink card, but the polar bear on the blue was too cute to pass up.

I tried something new on this polar bear--Fun Flock. Pretty cool stuff. It feels so soft and fuzzy now. My snowflakes came from Cricut's Don Juan cartridge and they're covered with Martha Stewart glitter. The word Christmas is from the Cricut Beyond Birthdays cartridge and it's also got glitter on it.

The number (1st) at the top of the card is a digital stamp from The Cutting Cafe

(www.thecuttingcafe.com). I will enter this card into the Bitten By The Bug blog's number challenge. My card is embellished with some clear rhinestones and the Let It Snow ribbon that I just got last week at a local scrapbook store. I'm really sad because the store is going out of business. I don't think they can compete in this economy with the big chain stores. I will miss the personalized service. The scallops on this card are from a Fiskars punch.

Squigglefly,Sketch&Stash,Allsorts,CCC,ABC,Papertake, CuteCardThursday,Paperplay

I swore I wasn't going to make one more Halloween card, but too many challenges were asking for one. I used the sketch from Sketch and Stash http://sketchandstashchallenge.blogspot.com/.
They also ask that you have never used paper, or a new or neglected item. My new item is my border punch from Martha Stewart (drippy goo). The other challenges are:

• Squigglefly (www.squigglefly.com) - Halloween with black, orange and purple
• Sketch and Stash (sketch)-Never used paper, new border punch, neglected flowers
• Allsorts-Halloween
• Creative Card Crew-Scallops (scalloped squares)
• Papertake-The dark side (papers)
• Paperplay-Favorite embellishment (buttons)
• ABC-F is for flying (witch on broom)
• Charisma Cardz-Distressing (all paper edges distressed with ink)
• Cute Card Thursday-Spookfest

Whew! Never did this many challenges for one card. Good thing my visiting adult children went off to see the Red Wings hockey game tonight. I needed the peace and quiet to think of all this stuff. My old stash of Halloween paper from last year's Debbie Mumm collection had this orange, black and purple stripe and the black and purple print behind the stripe. Perfect for the Squigglefly challenge and the witch digital image from them. I colored her with my Copics and added glitter to her hat, mounted it on light orange cardstock and trimmed around it. Then I mounted her onto my black scalloped square that I cut from my Nesties. The scalloped squares are for the Creative Card Crew Challenge (http://creativecardcrew.blogspot.com/). Also used the Nesties for the sentiment scalloped square. Charisma Cardz(http://www.charismacardz.blogspot.com/) asked for distressing so I used ink to distress all the edges of my papers. My papers are all dark colors to fit the Papertake Weekly (http://papertakeweekly.blogspot.com/) challenge.

It was hard picking one favorite embellishment for the challenge at PaperPlay (http://paperplaychallenges.blogspot.com/), but I love to use buttons so that's what I chose.

ABC Challenge (http://abc-challenge.blogspot.com/) this week--F is for Flying--worked great for a witch on a broom. I had another image I was going to use on this card but when I saw this challenge I knew I had to use the witch on the broom. Love her striped socks. Both Allsorts

Challenge (http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.com/) and the challenge at Cute Card Thursday (http://cutecardthursday.blogspot.com/) are for Halloween cards. It seems to be the going theme, but absolutely, positively this is my last one.

2Sketches4U, Saturday Challenge, Creative Belli Blog, Creative Inspirations

I just realized I forgot to post this last night. Uploaded the pictures, went and took a bath, then just went to bed. All the company is wearing me out plus I have a miserable sinus infection, again. Anyway, this card qualifies for the Saturday Challenge with Autumn colors, the Creative Belli Blog with the Thanksgiving theme with a leaf, the Creative Inspirations Family challenge and I used the 2Sketches4U sketch. I think this card pretty much sums up my feelings right now having my son home on leave and my daughter here from N. Carolina. We have spent a lot of time in the past two weeks together and I am very grateful. My daughter is leaving tomorrow morning, but we still have a few more days with my son before he leaves on Monday.

My circle sentiment and family sentiment are Debbie Mumm. I backed the Gathering in Gratitude with a scalloped circle I cut with my Cricut Mini Monograms cartridge. I used DCWV cardstock and embossed the rust color with QuickKutz. I used The Cutting Cafe's Autumn set to print the circle of leaves on the gold cardstock. The edges of all my papers are inked with Colorbox chalk ink in Chestnut Roan. I just used brown organdy ribbon and a brown heart stickpin to embellish.

Project Tuesday-Acetate

Good Grief!!! I am having the hardest time getting anything done with all this family visiting. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying every minute I get. Especially with my son, the MARINE. My husband took him off to hit some golf balls at the driving range this afternoon, so I had a tiny bit of time to run into the design studio. I chose to do Project Tuesday's acetate project. Of course, since this is Breast Cancer Awareness month and I am personally working on being a breast cancer survivor, I chose that as my theme. I noticed as I scanned a few comments on the Project Tuesday blog that several people mentioned not having any acetate to do this project. I save the acetate that comes on top of my Cricut mat when I purchase it. As soon as I open a new mat I take the acetate off the top and put it aside so it doesn't get messed up. Then I use an older one on the new mat. I also tend to look at packaging of things I buy with a thought to how I can reuse them. My little contribution to the environment, I guess.

My sentiment "Early detection saves lives" was done on my computer. The tag that I mounted it on came from my Cricut-Tags, Bags, and More cartridge. I inked the edges of the tag to make it stand out more. I used a Fiskars border punch for the white scalloped edge.

The pink ribbon was cut with the Cricut-Stand and Salute cartridge from DCWV textured cardstock. The paper that I used for the top and bottom of the box is Melissa Frances and designed especially for breast cancer. I used the Inspire paper on the top and the Strong paper for the bottom.

The Dove chocolates that I filled the box with are another Breast Cancer Awareness product. They are really cool because on the inside of each wrapper is an inspiring message from different breast cancer survivors. That is where I got the inspiration for my sentiment. I like to purchase as many awareness products, that donate proceeds to the cause, as I can. I feel like I'm giving back to the places that have helped me through my journey.

Ahoy Matey/The Cutting Cafe/One Stop B'day

I won the Ahoy Matey set from The Cutting Cafe (http://www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com/). How exciting is that?!!! Just in time to make a birthday card for my grandson and enter it in the birthday card challenge at One Stop Craft Challenge. If you haven't visited The Cutting Cafe lately, hurry over there. Regina has some awesome new digital image sets to die for. That is one busy lady. She had a little blog hop this week to preview some of her new images. And...because she is always so generous, did a giveaway. You had to visit each highlighted Design Team member's blog and leave a comment. This is never a hardship because you always, always see amazing cards and projects. Talk about inspiration. This set was featured on DeeDee Campbell's blog (http://deedeecampbell.blogspot.com/2009/10/ahoy-matey-pirate-stamp-giveaway.html). I was the lucky one chosen to win this set. Fun, fun, fun!

Now onto the specifics about my card. Like DeeDee, I chose to use a pirate image from Dustin Pike (http://doodledragon.dustinpike.com/Digis.htm). This is Lookout Pirate. Because I made my image small enough to fit in this spot on my card I used colored pencils to color it. I didn't trust myself with the Copics on such a small image. I had to add just a little bit of sparkle on the skull and crossbones flag with Martha Stewart glitter. I used one of her glitter markers on the pirate's bandana. My background paper actually came from DisneyWorld. I bought it to scrapbook the Pirate's of the Carribean ride. I didn't want to cut it up for a card because it's two-sided so I scanned it then printed it on cardstock. Then I put it through the printer for the digital image stamped around the edge. The X Marks the Spot is also from the Ahoy Matey set. Since this card is for a boy I didn't add any ribbons or bows. I can't wait to give this card to Troy tomorrow when I see him. Tomorrow is the day my whole family (23 of them) will be here for dinner. My son (the Marine) and his wife are here from Hawaii, one daughter from N. Carolina and another from Ohio, my other two daughters and their families live here in Michigan, but not close by. It will be a grand day. It's not easy to get everyone together in the same place at the same time. So I'm off to finish getting things ready.

Project Tuesday Smores in a Jar/2RedBananas

I wasn't going to do this week's Project Tuesday (and 2 Red Bananas) because sadly, I didn't have a jar. Yesterday when my husband and I went to watch our grandsons' football games my daughter mentioned having some jars in her truck for a friend. My ears perked up and I asked what kind of jars and when she said quart canning jars I was so excited. The football games were quite some distance from where we live so I brought my new GYPSY from Provocraft for the long drive. I am still learning how to use it, but I just love it. I was able to design and plan out this project on the drive home. Then when I arrived home I just put my orange and black cardstock on my cutting mat, hooked up the Cricut to the Gypsy and poof, out it came. I grabbed my ingredients, which I already had, and whipped up my project. I had this cute spider ribbon that came from the $1 bin at Target so I used spiders to decorate my jar lid and tag. I cut them from the Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge at 3/4". The spider webs are Goosebump Stickers from Imaginisce. My scalloped circle on the jar lid was cut from the Cricut Mini Monograms cartridge and the scalloped square is a Nestie. The black and orange print paper around the jar is called Spellbound from Making Memories. I did have to add a few rhinestones onto the webs for a little bling. I found 2 Red Bananas was also asking for a Halloween project, so this will work for that challenge, too. I'm so happy this was a quick project because we have a houseful of guests. My son is home on leave from the Marines with his wife and my daughter from North Carolina was able to come home, too. My son's buddy from Basic Training came up from South Carolina to visit for the weekend. Next week our other three kids (one from Ohio) and their spouses and children will come for a family dinner. Plus my husband's brother and his kids, his sister and her husband and my mother and father-in-law. It is so rare to be able to get them all together in one spot at the same time so we will enjoy every busy, noisy, crowded, hectic minute. Lots to do before then so I probably won't get too much opportunity to get into the design studio.