Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to everyone and I hope you had lot's of fun during Trick or Treat. We sure had a lot of little people coming by our house tonight and it was so much fun seeing them in there costumes. As every year we were giving away little Play-Doh containers (for the little once) and candy for everyone naturally. But let me tell you, Play-Doh is the hit every year...

Appropriate for the day, our second October Card Class started with a Halloween Card.

It is a 5"x5" card base that had a rounded front. I adhered a dark purple piece of cardstock to it (I know it looks alomst blue, but it is purple!). I then opened the card and cut away the paper that was sticking out above the rounded edge.

The spider net is cut out by hand <grin> just kidding... I cut the net out with my Cricut and the Close To My Heart cartridge Philosophy. A little bit of glitter applied with a glitter pen makes the card sparkle.
  
The spider was also cut out with the Close to My Heart Cartridge. I placed two green bubble rhinestones as eyes on the head. I then covered the whole spider in glue and sprinkled a thick layer of black flock over it. A little bit of drying time and a good shake and your fussy spider is done...creepy isn't it?

 Finally the letters were also cut out with the same cartridge. I made the look a little bit more spooky by using a black pen and blackening the edges.



 HAPPY HALLOWEEN ....

A little Acorn surprise

The last project in for our October Class I is a little acorn surprise.

The acorn body was cut out with the Cricut, using the Close To My Heart cartridge "Artiste". I cut it out of Cocoa cardstock. The two leafs are also cut out with the same cartridge, but this time I used Goldrush cardstock.

 The body of the acorn was scored and folded according to the fold lines and glued together on one side. To close the acorn I used a piece of hemp string. I put a knot on one end and started to string it through each hole on the top. Slowly the acorn will close. Now is the time to place a little goodie in it or you can leave it empty.  

 I embellished the leafs with some ink. I bring out the golden color I used a sponge dauber to add barn red ink to the edges of the leaf and olive green to the stem  Add as much color as you like. Once the leafs are ready, you can finish the acorn.

Take the body of your acorn and string the hemp through the little hole in the middle of the leaf. Tie a knot as close to the leave as you can. Make sure the acorn is nicely closed and all ends overlap on top, forming a shutter like in your camera. I curled up the hemp and ready is your little acorn surprise. As I mentioned, these can be used with little goodies, for decorations, place settings etc. 

The Artiste Cartridge offers many more of these little boxes, as well as big boxes and other wonderful items. Want to know more about this cartridge and the other two exclusive to Close To My Heart? Well, sent me an email with your questions or check out my website for more information.

Thanksgiving

This is the third card we made in our October Card Class I. A wonderful combination of colors, techniques and individual touches. The card starts with a 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card base. I added a piece of Cocoa cardstock about 1/4" shorter than the base. I ran a piece of Champagne cardstock from Close To My Heart through my embossing machine. I nice deep impression of leafs and pumpkins was the result. Pretty, but still something was missing.

I went ahead and used my sponge daubers to "color" the paper in. Well, coloring is not quite correct. I first started out very lightly and then added more color if I needed it. I daubed on to the paper, I swished over the paper, just lightly. Slowly the embossing came to live. If there were spots to bare, I used a little ink to brighten it up.

 I used Olive and Autumn Terracotta ink (CTMH) to color the items in. The nice thing is, you don't have to be super exact with the colors. I used the champagne cardstock since it works very well with these colors. A white background would had been a to harsh of a contrast. Put as much or a little on it, just how you like it. A little tag with "Thanksgiving" on it finishes this card.

Happy Autumn

"Happy Autumn" is our second card from the Class I workshop. A simple but elegant card that can easily be used for any other occasion.

I saw that background paper in the Huntington Paper Pack (CTMH), but I hadn't enough to go along for the whole class. So I came up with my own version. I used a dark grey cardstock from CTMH and stamped with the same ink color the bigger image all over a 12" x 12" paper. I then used the lighter shade grey to stamp the middle image. If you ever try this at home, make sure that you stamp of the sides so your background paper looks more cohesive. 

Whenever you see a design paper you like, try to recreate it with you own stamps and inks. You will see it's fun and gives you so much more possibilities and you will never run out of paper.

A 5 1/2" x 4" piece of the homemade paper was glued to the 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" base. I then added a strip of 5 1/2" x 1/4"(little bit bigger) Smokey Plum cardstock to the base, slightly overlapping the grey paper. In black ink I stamped my sentiment and added the Smokey Plum square in the corner.

 To create the flower image, I stamped the flowers in light grey first, then in the darker grey on the other side and twice just the top of the flowers in smokey plum ink. This piece was attached with foam dots on top of the plum square. Two pearls round up the picture.

The flower stamps used here and upcoming images are from the stamp set "Happy Autumn" (D1550) from Close To My Heart.

Happy Autumn everyone...

Give Thanks for All you have

Here you can see the first card of our October Workshop Class I. Yes, we have two in October just so we can keep up with the demand on Thanksgiving/ Autumn cards.

The pumpkins on the porch and the falling leafs in the garden inspired me for this layout. The card base is  4 1/4" x 5 1/2". The bottom of the card was covered with the beautiful design paper from the Huntington paper collection from Close To My Heart. The upper part is a strip of Autumn Terracotta cardstock (CTMH) and the strip in the middle is a piece of Barn Red cardstock (CTMH). I attached the pieces in the order I named them above. This way if you ever have a little imperfection in space, the middle strip will cover it up.

 I stamped the pumpkin in Autumn Terracotta and cut the image out. A bit of chocolate ink around the edges give the pumpkin makes it more realistic. On the white piece of cardstock I stamped randomly leafs in different colors, about 1/3 of the lower card. Adhere the pumpkin with foam dots right on top of the stamp leafs like he is sitting in the middle of them. Stamp and cut out the stem and adhere it to the white paper. Use some hemp, twist it and adhere it with a glue dot under the pumpkin.

I also stamped 3 leafs in Olive, Barn Red and Goldrush ink and cut them out. I used chocolate ink to edge around each leaf. Two leaf are attached with foam dots the other one is glued directly on the card.

"Give Thanks for All you have" ...

Back on Track again

Finally I am back on track again. You may wonder where I have been in the last few weeks. Well, let me tell you…

First of all, my parents have been visiting us for three weeks and as you can imagine, I took time off to be with them. Since we don’t see each other that often during the year I have to enjoy every minute I have them around. We took a nice long week trip. We drove through more than 9 states, visited the “Blue Smoky National Park”, many beautiful little towns on the way, spend a wonderful day in Savannah and finally enjoyed the beautiful Charleston, SC. 

What a wonderful town this is. Beautiful houses, super warm weather, an impressing and eye opening tour on the air carrier Yorktown and a wonderful time with my husband and my mom and dad. Our rental car show a whopping 2500 miles more at the end of the trip, but it was worth it.

My parents are back home in Germany for about two weeks now and I have been busy getting craft shows, crops and my Card making Classes prepared. Last weekend I attended a craft show at the “Church of the Holy Spirit” in Highland. Many wonderful crafter's attended the first craft show at this location. We had plenty of visitors on both days and I like to thank all of you for your wonderful compliments. It was a pleasure to be part of this show and to meet so many interesting people, for example:

Scott, who despite being challenged with down syndrome, creates some marvelous necklaces and bracelets. He uses handmade paper beads and regular beads. Let me tell you, he has an excellent eye for the best combinations of colors and textures. Keep up this wonderful work Scott and I love my green necklace J ….

James Greene was another incredible artisan that I met that day. His woodwork is outstanding. He had many objects for sale that day, including tables, cutting boards, napkin rings and so much more. The most impressive item was the wood flooring he had done inside the church. Check out their website and see for yourself. Excellent craftsmanship…

So what’s coming up in the next few weeks…let me tell you, a lot!

In the next few post you will see the Autumn cards we made during our last class. These will be followed by more Thanksgiving cards for the second class of this month.

Starting November you will get to see some different projects. I am going to attend the Craft Crop of the Murphy Elementary School in Metamora on Nov 9^th. (Due to a schedule issue with the venue, this Crop is canceled for Nov 9th. It will be rescheduled on a later date, please keep checking back for updates!)

I will have two different page and card-making kits that I created for this event for sale online. Each page kit will create a two page layout. One kit will have Christmas as the topic and the other one will be Winter Wonderland. Each kit will have some special surprise on how to get more pictures on two pages…don’t miss them.

The card kits will both have Christmas designs and each kit will make 4 cards. Stay tuned for more information.

More cards from our monthly card class will be coming up soon to as well as my second Craft Show. Come and see me at the “St. Mary, Our Lady of the Snows” Craft Show on November 16^th from 9am-3pm in Milford, MI. Lots of cards, page kits, 3-D items and so much more or just have a chat, I would love to see you!

Well, it looks like I am going to be super busy and you will be able to enjoy a lot of ideas and items in the upcoming weeks. So, come back frequently and check out all the new things.

Happy Halloween