Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you are having a wonderful day with those you care about most.  I have all three "children" home, my husband, our dog, Duncan the wonder dog, and my "grand-pup", Magnus!  It seems like a house full even if it isn't!!!

Earlier in the week I promised to post more photographs with better visual details of my North Pole house today.  Click on any of the photos to see them larger.  The house was cut using the Happy Hauntings spooky house. I know there ARE 3-D Christmas houses on other cartridges, but I like the details on this house and thought it would decorate well.  I especially like the to roof sections and the widow's walk area.   I cut the sides of the house in red Swiss dot Bazzill card stock and the roof and porch pieces in smooth white card stock.  Everything was cut at seven inches.

I used Zip-Dry glue to assemble the house, because it does dry so quickly.  I also found have paper clips and mini binder clips available to hold sections together while they dried to be beneficial.  I love that Provo Craft included step by step assembly instructions in the back of the Happy Hauntings handbook. 

After I assembled the basic house, I began to decorate.  The first step was adding the snowflake buttons to the edges of the roof pieces.  I used a 1/8th inch hole punch and punched eleven holes in the edges of the roof (because I only had 12 snowflake buttons and I did not want to risk one breaking and not having enough).  I added glue to the back of the buttons and inserted the button loop through the little hole, securing the buttons to the roof. 

Next I began adding Christmas buttons: Rudolph, two wreaths, and two candy canes.  I glued the red candy canes to the roof section around the gable.  I added Rudolph to the very top roof section.  I placed one of the button wreaths on the front door and the other over a circle window above the side porch. 

Next I used gold thread and hung the mini lights on the widow walk railings.  I added dots of glue to the thread to secure it into place.

At this point I still had miniature evergreen trees, bushy evergreen wreaths, eight strips of red beads, a bag of iridescent shred, and a bag of iridescent snowflakes.  I decided to glue iridescent snowflakes to the sides of the house.  I am not sure where this idea came from, but I really liked it and added snowflakes all over the house.  I set aside the remainder of the snowflakes.  I then added red beads around the top roof section, the balcony edge, the side porch roof, and the front porch rails and steps.  I added fuzzy wreaths to two windows and to the cellar doors.

I applied big swirling loops of glue to a deep red charger and spread some of the shred onto the glue.  I then add big swirling loops of glue over the shred and set the house in the middle of the charger.  I glued the  miniature trees around the house to the charger. 

I found my leftover iridescent snowflakes and using small dots of glue, I added the snowflakes over the shed and around the edges of the charger. 

The last element added was the North Pole sign.  I found a leftover holiday cardstock sticker and wrote North Pole.  I stuck the sticker onto a strip of clear plastic and affixed it in the shred. 

I was truly very lucky that the house came out this nicely.  I think one of the big factors was the iridescent snowflakes and the shred.  I was lucky to happen across both at the craft store!!

Spooky Halloween Layout with Happy Hauntings

Today's spooky Halloween offering isn't really spooky at all!  This is one of four Halloween layouts I will have to make this year.  Normally I complete a two page layout for each of my children, but this year there will be one more.  It seems that no matter how old we get our family still loves Halloween (what was it I said yesterday about fun for kids of all ages - yes, I meant all of us).

This two page layout was creating using layers of Halloween themed paper.  The two base papers are Halloween pinstripes of oranges and greens with two three inch strips added to the bottom half of each page - a pretty orange floral print and a bolder stripe.  My favorite paper in this layout is the rectangle added to upper half of each page, a green cardstock with pumpkins and leaves.  Love this paper...!  I added a strip of ribbon to each page - fun witches feet going across the seams.

The main focal point (do I even need to say?) on this layout is the fun over-sized Trick or Treat bag.   I would love to tell you that I cut this bag with the cricut but that would be a big fat lie!  This great embellishment was a $1.00 coupon purchase at the Creating Keepsakes Convention in Charlotte - in 2008.  Yes, I have had this embellishment stored for two years and had not used it.  Embarrassing but true.  The good news is, I am FINALLY using it.

Normally I use solid cardstock for my photo mats.  But this simple black and light, light gray Halloween paper is perfect for photo mats.  I tried to cut the paper so that some of the fun phrases will show at the edges of the photographs.  After adding the matting to the pages, I felt like more definition was needed.  I used my two layer Stampin' Up corner punch to create corners for the photo mats and random page corners.  This punch is one of my favorite Stampin' Up products!

I used Happy Hauntings to cut the double layer title, Spooky 2010. I used a black cardstock base layer and a scrap of paper printed onto archival paper using the Cricut Imagine (leftovers from a previous project).  The Imagine is going to be a treasure trove of great paper!!!

Finally, I added leftover (from a previous year) Halloween journal squares.  I used another Stampin' Up punch, the label punch, to shape the label in lower left corner of the layout.

With two Halloween layouts done I would normally only have one more to go.  But this year I too will need a Halloween layout - I dressed up for the Halloween Chili Cook Off at work.  This was my Charlie Chaplin get up!  I liked how the costume came out and I love that other than the hat and moustache the costume was put together with things we mostly had at home!

Do I even need to tell you that I will have another Halloween project again tomorrow???  :-)

Beware Card with Prima and Happy Hauntings

Continuing my week of Halloween, I have another card to share today.  In case you have not guess, I love the Happy Hauntings cartridge.  I think Halloween should be a fun for children of all ages.  Happy Hauntings has some very fun cuts.  I have previously shared the 3-D house, some of the treat boxes, the frames, and a character or two. Today I am going to focus on the BEWARE gate.

I used a black base card and added a triangle of fun Halloween paper to serve as a background on the front of the card.  The second layer on the card front is a wonderful glittery Halloween paper with shimmering jack-o-lanterns.  I cut the gate at 4 inches tall in a heavy weight black cardstock and affixed it to the front of the card.  I added the gate plate with black brads as well as the spooky BEWARE gate sign.  Beware would frighten me away!!!

I embellished the card with strips of natural twill.  On the left of the card the twill is attached with black brads.  On the upper right corner I knotted a small strip of twill and attached it to the card with a medium sized glue dot.  I added this fabulous black flower to the lower right for a bit of dark beauty.

I will be back tomorrow with results from a chili cook off in which I am involved.  I made vegetarian chili tonight and I have the "bring it on" attitude. 

Everyday Cricut Treat Boxes with Happy Hauntings

Hey there!  Today is my Saturday at Everyday Cricut.  Because Halloween is just around the corner I am sharing Halloween treat boxes.  I have crafted five boxes as samples of what you can present to your trick or treaters.

Be sure to go by Everyday Cricut and leave a comment to be in their weekly drawing.  And of course I like comments too!!

Spooky Haunted House with Happy Hauntings

Happy BBTB2 Monday!  This week's challenge cut at BBTB2 was selected by me and it is the Haunted House cut(s) on the Happy Haunting cartridge.  The other designers are probably disparaging my name after cutting and assembling this adorable house; it was a bit of a challenge.  There are A LOT of cuts needed to create the haunted house, but I think the end result is well worth the effort.  The house has a place of honor on my coffee table.

I set up my cut file in Design Studio, cutting the house and all of the house elements at 7 inches.  If you choose seven inches, the cuts will just fit on a regular 12 x 12 cutting mat.  Only two colors of cardstock were utilized, black and yellow.  The yellow window cuts on the cartridge are great in that they are grouped on two keys.  The grouping makes it so that you never use more than one color of cardstock at a time on the cutting mat.  And where the cutting of the house is very easy, the assembling does take a while. 

I love the way this house is assembled.  I especially like that although it was cut at seven inches tall, the addition of the fireplace chimney and the widow's walk on top of the house add extra height.  Although this house was cut at seven inches, it "towers" to a finished height of twelve inches.

While the house itself is adorable (in a cool spooky way, of course), I added a few additional finishing touches to my haunted house.  When I set up my design studio file I selected the section of fence on Happy Hauntings and welded several lengths of fence together.  I created five rows of welded fences, enough to go around the edges of a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock, my planned "yard".    I also cut the spooky 3-D tree from the HH cartridge (again at seven inches) to add a bit of fun to the yard area (see the photo below).

If you look at the photo above you will see round glittered roof shingles (photo above).  The shingles are not part of the cartridge house cuts.  I used a 3/4 inch circle punch to create the shiny shingled roof. It was tedious, but again the results were fabulous. I did not cover the entire roof, but covered sections and used the circles as gingerbread-type trim in other areas.

The final elements that I added to give the house my personal touch were the moon and witch cuts and the ghost.  I added the ghost to the widow's walk area of the house.  The moon and witch were glued together and then wired to the chimney.  The last two things I did to this project was to affix the house & fence to a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock and add touches of purple Stickles to the house, birds and tree limbs.

Overall I really like my finished project.  My name may be mud with the other design team members, but I bet they are loving their haunted houses too.  Please do consider playing along with us and post a link to your project at the BBTB2 website.

BBTB2 Spooky Candle Card

Hello Monday Bloggers!  Today the BBTB2 design team was asked to use the candle cut from the October 31st cartridge to create a project.  Sadly, I do not own that particular cartridge so following the design team rules, I used a different candle cut to complete the challenge.  I used the candle from Christmas Noel Solutions cartridge.  I love Christmas Noel; it is one of my favorite holiday cartridges. 

I cut the candle in rust Bazzill cardstock and used gold cardstock to cut the top layer of the candle stand.  I cut a basic black Bazzill shadow.  I used fabulous glitter cardstock to cut a frame from Happy Hauntings, tweaking the size in Design Studio.  I must tell you about this particular glitter cardstock:  I cut the glitter cardstock with the blade set on 6 and the pressure on High.  I only needed to cut this particular cardstock once.  This is not the hugely heavy glitter cardstock that you will find in the craft stores.  I purchased this cardstock from Scrap Your Trip (Yeah Julie!) at this LINK. 

I cut the boo two layer cut from Holiday Cakes to create the inside sentiment.  I also added a strip of the the front background paper.  The base card was cut in light gray and a strip of boo/spooky ribbon was added to the bottom front edge.

Be sure to go by BBTB2 and check out all of the fabulous designs.  I am always amazed at the talent of this group of designers!

Chocolate Bar box for my favorite Gobblins

Happy Monday bloggers!  My first project of the week is the weekly BBTB2 project.  This week's challenge cut was selected by the lovely and amazing Regina Easter!  Regina chose the crayon box on Cricut's Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More cartridge.  For those who may  be interested, the last time I checked TBBM was available at the Cricut rewards site for 800 points.

Obviously I chose to go with a Halloween theme for this challenge.  I was thinking of my favorite little neighborhood gobblins and designed a spooky-fun box to hold full-size Hershey chocolate bars.  As an added bonus the will also hold two of my large cut out sugar cookies! 

I used several additional cartridges to decorate my tick or teat boxes including: Storybook for the the tag, Happy Hauntings for the fence with the creepy bird and the bat, George for the moon shape and background rectangle, and Celebrate with Flourish for the Happy Halloween title cut.  I used fun Halloween papers and I added a square of sticky Velcro to the flap for secure closure.

I embossed the tag and added white pen dots to enhance the edges.  I also added black dashes around the half moon on the flap.  I finished the box off with a bit of black rick-rack along the top edge. 

If you have not already been by the Bitten By the Bug 2 blog today, click on the name and you can view the design team's amazing projects.  I will be back tomorrow with a new Yudu project to share!!

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

Happy BBTB2 Monday!  I feel like dancing today, how about you?  This week the challenge cut at BBTB2 is the flamingo from Cricut's Life's a Beach cartridge.  I chose to use the triple flamingo cut on my card.  After all, if one flamingo is good, three must be even better, right?  And three dancing flamingos just take the prize!

I used two cartridges to create this card:  Life's a Beach and Happy Hauntings.  I am loving the frames on Happy Hauntings!  I also used long nestabilities, plain and scalloped edge, as well as my I-Rock.  I added silver beads to the flamingos and to the sentiment statement.  I finished the card with a black and white striped ribbon, keeping with the formal feel of the card.

I wanted the background to be white, but not just flat white.  I used a herringbone embossing folder and created a background insert for the frame.  I am so happy that I remembered to emboss.  I am not sure why, but I almost never remember to use embossing folders with my BBTB2 projects.  I believe I get so involved in using the Cricut that I forget about embossing.  I remembered today AFTER I used the nesties.

If you have not already done so, please stop by BBTB2 and check out the FABULOUS projects.  My design team sisters WOW me every single week!

Drop Dead Gorgeous Diva at Everyday Cricut

 

Happy Saturday!  It is my week as the Saturday designer at Everyday Cricut.  I was channeling Tim Burton this week as I created the Everyday Cricut layout, Drop Dead Gorgeous Diva.  I used three cartridges to cut the layout elements, Happy Hauntings, Rock Princess, and Plantin Schoolbook.  Complete details of the layout and products used are discussed at the Everyday Cricut blog.  The cut file is available in the left column of this blog or by following this LINK.  I hope you enjoy scrapping your divas!  

Speaking of divas - or in this case diva girlfriends - I will be spending the afternoon at the movies seeing Eat, Love, Pray with my friends Peggy, Suzanne and Kathy.  We will be celebrating My Friend Kathy's birthday, which is Sunday.   Happy Birthday Kathy!!!