Shabby Pumpkins

Last weekend I was asked to do a make 'n take for Island Scrapbooking's 10 Anniversary Sale. Congrats Michele for making it to 10 years!

I wanted to keep the project relatively simple as the make 'n takes are for crafters of all levels and participants come in at different times, so you need something easy to follow to keep the flow going.  While trying to figure out what I wanted to make, I found this video on YouTube by MsLiberty25.  Check out the link here... Shabby Pumpkin Tutorial.  There are several pumpkins she makes on the video, but I decided to go with the strip pumpkins for the make 'n take.

Here's what I came up with...  Decided to cut them up at the 6" size, but the purple one is a little larger, so I could show them that you can make them bigger or smaller.

Added some roses I made using my SU flower punch and following this tutorial by Creative Zoe.  I actually started making these roses before deciding to put them on my pumpkin.  They are very addicting to make, so I suggest you mass produce them so you have a bunch to play with when you need them.

I think this green one is my favorite..

Decided to use some of my old white large flowers by Petaloo for this one.

And this is the Prima paper that was used in the actual make 'n take.

And the cool thing is that they are functional too!  You can slide open the strips and stick some candy in there.  I love how they came out!  Now that's my kind of pumpkin!  Happy Halloween everyone!

Don't forget to check out the Sister Stamps blog.. we are previewing the releases for November!  

Happy Halloween!

Uh yes, I know I'm a bit late.. but I've been busy getting through Thanksgiving, Black Friday and work. As I was working on some Sister Stamps posts, I came across these pix of Halloween goodies I made for my last craft fair!  Talk about late yah?  Well, even though I'm late I thought I'd blog about them so I can refer back to them next year when I'm grasping for ideas...

The Halloween craft fair I participated in was especially challenging.  When I think of Halloween, I automatically thing of Halloween candy!  Am I right?  Well, since the craft fair was at a school, and the schools now do not allow candy or other unhealthy snacks, I had to use my brain for once and come up with alternative treats.  Normally I would put M&M's or other small candies in the candy stick bags, but I lucked out and found these straws with flavoring inside, so when you drink milk, it will flavor your milk! It came in chocolate, strawberry and cookies 'n cream.  Kids seemed to like this a lot.  The bat, spider and kitty were part of a PTI set I bought last year.  The ghost is from an old Sizzix die and the pumpkin and Frankie were paper punch art.  I think I saw the Frankie at Ben Franklin.

Also made these fry box friends and dressed them up for Halloween.  See the healthy treats?  Added goldfish and fruit snacks.

 And finally, decided to go with some bookmarks- after all it is a school right?  Well, I guess no one was into reading cause I didn't see one!  That's ok cause I think they are funny to look at.  Hee hee. They make me laugh.

I found more craft fair stuff, so I'll post more soon. Until then- check out the Sister Stamps blog for our next release!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Everyone! I know, I've been very bad at posting here, but to see what I've been up to, check out the Sister Stamps blog. Today is your last chance to enter to win the new release stamps, so check out this post for more info on how to enter. So here's the Halloween goodies I made for some blogging friends when I visited Honolulu the other weekend. We had so much fun eating and talking that we shut the place down! They were turning off the lights and all! So much fun to see everyone. Can't wait till we can hang out again! Back to the project... Picked up these awesome dies and matching stamps from Papertrey Ink. They are quickly becoming my FAVORITE company! Anyway, I decided to emboss the faces onto the bag die and then added on their "accessories". Everyone seemed to like these cuties and the best part was that they didn't take that long to make! Thank you Cami, Linda and Aunty Jan for all the yummy goodies! See ya next time Kyoko! Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Boo!

Hello Weekend!!! So glad today was a furlough Friday for me. Got TONS of stuff done and about to do more. Cleaned up our living room- and I mean CLEANED UP!!! Woo Hoo! Now I can see my computer desk. Then headed to IS to get the store ready for tomorrow's 8th Anniversary Sale. Stop by if you are in Hilo- you won't want to miss out on the fun. Here's the make 'n take I'll be doing tomorrow morning. Used Lawn Fawn's Halloween set along with some IS lasercuts in "Boo". Cut the flags using the pennant die by Spellbinders. It was rather plain looking until I added in the ribbons and button. Here's a close up of the ghosts... So stop in if you are in Hilo! See you tomorrow!

Happy Hallo"wee"n!

Finally got to play with my new fairwee stamps by Sweet November. I just love these little fairwees! So small- so its super fast to color! I also found my old set of hats by Lawn Fawn, which contained a witch hat that was the perfect size for this little fairwee! Paired it up with the heebie jeebie's halloween set by Lawn fawn too. Love how the web has the sentiment right in the middle! I must admit, borrowed the idea about using the hat set from my CBFF Debi. She used the Santa hat on one of the fairwees, which totally inspired me to dig up my old set and dress up my fairwees. Background was colored using my distress inks- orange, green and purple. Love how you can blend colors you wouldn't normally be able to blend! Have a great weekend!

Happy Haunting!

This is probably my all time favorite Lawn Fawn stamp set! I have a soft spot for cute halloween stamps and fell in love with these little ghosts. I was anxious to get my class stuff out of the way so I could play a bit with my new stamps. I had seen this video on Jennifer McGuire's (my hero!) blog on how to make a floating window card. She has some great tips for hiding your adhesive etc. Go check it out and see what you come up with. I love things that hang and look like they are suspended in mid air, so this card really appealed to me. I must credit the black background idea to my DH. At first I just stamped Happy Haunting in black on the kraft background. It looked OK, but didn't make the card stand out. He suggested adding the black background and suddenly my card came alive! The ghosts stood out more and so did the moon. Added the fence punch to give more dimension to the card and left an opening so it wouldn't block the front of the house. Here's a close up of my favorite ghosts! Happy Haunting Everyone! Supplies:

• All stamps- Lawn Fawn
• Fence punch- Martha Stewart Crafts
• Cardstock- Bazzil

More Halloween Fun!

Had more Halloween photos to share with you all. This year Halloween was on a Sunday, so we had a weekend full of Halloween activities... First up are the cool Halloween cake pops I found at Puff City.. I was buying cream puffs for my class and saw these cuties and had to buy them for Akemi. They also had a bat cake pop too, but didn't get that one. Here's Akemi in her Mario costume... She is really into Mario Party so we thought this was a good choice for this year. Isn't that moustache so funny on her??? Here's Akemi trying to imitate Mario punching the (imaginary) dice block. Here's the Mario "Sistahs". JJ wanted to be Luigi after she found out Akemi was going to be Mario. We met Luigi at the mall. It sure was crowded! They had free kids crafts then trick or treating- totally chaotic but at least I got free Yogurtland!! Here's DH's pumkin this year. He saw something on the net that inspired him to make this cannibalistic pumpkin. I actually like the face on the smaller pumpkin. Here's what it looks like lit up. If you look closely, it looks like the small one is throwing up wax! The candle kept blowing out, guess cause it was tilted. Hope you had a Happy Halloween! Be back soon with more calendars.

Halloween Fun!

Just wanted to share some photos of the Halloween fun we've been having so far. Akemi's school had a "Literacy Parade" where kids could dress up as their favorite characters from a book. Guess they had to tie in the whole dressing up with education. Since her costume this year was not exactly educational, we looked through her books to figure out what she was going to be for the parade. She chose Trixie the Halloween Fairy from the Fairy book series she loves. Found all the accessories from Walmart, but for some reason no one had orange shirts!! We finally found one at Macy's. Thank goodness. Made her Madonna-esque skirt following the instructions on Joy of Crafting. Took two rolls of tuelle but was very easy to make! Akemi loved it! She was so excited to get dressed she woke us up at 6:00am to start getting ready! Here she is with her book... Here's some fun photos from work this year. Every year we dress up for Halloween and try to coordinate our costumes with a theme. Its fun when everyone participates! This year we went with a Disney theme. Everyone kept guessing me as a Musketeer! What the heck? Guess I don't make a very good Hook since I'm so short! Should've brought Akemi's blow up Crocodile pool toy!! Do you like my pirate face? Diane had to fix my hat because I was looking like a pimp at first! Isn't Fiona awesome??? Robyn always has the best costumes!! Have a Safe and Happy Halloween!

Halloween RAKs

Happy Halloween Weekend everyone! I'm very happy that its finally the weekend! Yay! Gotta get ready for another busy busy weekend. I teach class today and then will take Akemi to the mall for some trick-or-treating. Then we have Halloween at our house, so need to clean up a bit and get ready for the party. Just wanted to share some of the Halloween goodies that I made and I received. The first photo was some treats I made for Akemi's class. Decided to keep it really simple by cutting cute Halloween paper (from last year) using my new candy die from SU. Its so tiny that you can barely fit those Halloween sized candies in them! I thought it was good though since the kids get so much candy anyway. The next treat is a RAK from Joy! Hi Joy! She was so sweet to send everyone who left a comment on her blogaversary post a favor. I love this box! She really dressed up the french fry box by making it into an owl. So clever! I loved all the goodies inside too- she gave us a gift card to BF, a clear stamp, candy and little note pad. This last RAK was from my CBFF Debi. She made these really cute note pads (love it!) and added some candy. Here's the candy all wrapped up and secured with a clothes pin. Don't you love this tag?? Thanks Debi! Also wanted to thank all of you who took the time to add your comments to my sister's artwork. I'm thrilled you all like her work as much as I do. I will let her know- maybe we can convince her to make them into stamps??? :) Happy Halloween!

HPA Pumpkin Patch

Hello Bloggers! Just wanted to share a few photos from our Waimea adventure this past weekend at the HPA pumpkin patch. We went last year and the girls had so much fun, we decided to take them again this year. Here's Akemi with her BFF J.J. at the fake pumpkin patch. The pumpkins actually looked good this year, but we passed on getting one there since we didn't want to carry it around the fair. I like their smiles in this photo, but the exposure was junk. Sorry- tried to fix it but didn't do that good a job. The girls were squinting because it was really windy with lots of dirt. Here they are on the mini train. Akemi didn't want to go but her BFF did, so she caved and went with her. I think she had fun- see her smiling? Here's the "bat girls" showing off their prizes from one of the games. We've got a busy busy weekend planned too, so I'm sure I'll be sharing more photos then.

October OCS From North Shore Craft Girl

Happy Friday!!! FINALLY! The weekend is here! In for a busy weekend but am so glad that its gonna start soon. Just wanted to share this cute card I got from my October OCS partner Ka Ren aka North Shore Craft Girl. Isn't it cute!? She told me she doesn't normally make Halloween cards, but I think she did an awesome job considering! She also sent me those black roses. Perfect for Halloween.. don't cha think? And here's a close up of the cute witch. I think she's from CC's Designs.

October OCS- Halloween Card

Hello! Wanted to share my October OCS card for Ka Ren. I sent out her card last week, so I'm hoping she got it by now. Please check out her blog for some awesome projects! I decided to work on my swap card early this month since I had a little break before the Anniversary Sale and my classes. I love this Witch Brigitta stamp by CC's and wanted to use it on this card. I guess I went for an all black and white theme without realizing it. Here's a close up of the little witch... I decided to decorate the inside too by using my new Sizzix spiderweb die. I cut this one from acetate this time and tried out my new Tim Holtz alcohol inks with my blending tool. I think I just used silver and then stamped all over the acetate before adding it to the card. Decided to punch out my MS Crafts spider instead of using the spider that came with the die- not sure why as they are pretty much the same size. Because the background was black, the spider blended in, so I mounted it on another white spider for a shadow effect. Finished off the card by stamping spiderwebs in silver. Here's a close up of the spider... Supplies:

• Witch Brigitta and sentiment- CC's Designs
• Bat and spider punch- MS Crafts
• Oval and scallop oval punch- SU
• Spiderweb die- Sizzix
• Spiderweb stamp- Hero Arts
• Cardstock- American Crafts

Cat Girl

Is it Wednesday already? I guess that's good and bad. That means the week is half over! But it also means the week is half over and I have lots of work to do. Even though its more stressful, I'm thankful to have a furlough Friday this week. I've been busy at home too... making lots of calendars! Since I'm mass producing them, I haven't really seen any finished product yet, so it feels like I haven't done anything in awhile. I decided to take a few minutes and make this Halloween card using my new Honey Cat Girl stamp by CC's. Isn't she a cutie? She's all dressed to go trick-or-treating. Reminds me of Akemi's costume last year. For some reason, she wanted to be a cat for Halloween. I had leftover ears and tail from the previous year, so she used them for her costume. Here's a close up of Honey. Supplies:

• Honey Cat Girl- CC's Designs
• Happy Halloween stamp- CC's Designs
• Spiderweb and spider stamp- Hero Arts
• Bat punch- MS Crafts
• Cardstock- Bazzil
• Distress inks- Ranger