Christmas Matchbook

Front of matchbook

Matchbook opened up with a tag pulled out

Hi everyone.  A friend of mine sent me a tutorial on how to make these cute matchbooks and I've been thinking about using one in my next mini album, so I wanted to try one out before I actually committed to it. My daughter asked if she could have it so I made it all Christmas-y, used my Crop a dile to add some eyelets at the top and used some yarn to make a handle. I will be making two more today that I'm going to turn into birthday cards/money holders for my nieces so there will be more pictures to come. :)

Materials Used:

• Card stock - Red
• Card stock - Green
• Card stock - White
• Paper - Red, Green (to make the pouches)
• Two sheets of coordinating scrapbook paper

Am I crazy?

Hi everyone. Just taking a moment to myself to read through comments and reply back. I'm so sorry it took so long on some. I do read them, but sometimes I miss questions because I never get alone time. (In fact, I can hear my goober yelling at the dog to get off her hair. Sigh. Another short post!).

I started a Facebook fan page. I hope you will all go take one look, fall madly in love and buy it all! LOL, okay, okay, at the very least "Like" it and let me know that I'm not going crazy to try and do this and that I'm not alone out here.

Well, that's all the time I seem to have because the dog has found me and now I have to play with her.

Have a great holiday to you all and for those us who are cooking ... many blessings on a moist turkey! :)
Ta!

Glass Ornament with Quilled Snowflake

The Ornament

Closeup of the Ornament

Hi all! This is an ornament I made to enter into the Michael's Holiday Craft Contest. We had to use all three of the mystery items which were an ornament, beads, and ribbon. I came up with this concept while I was falling asleep the other night. I basically quilled all the elements of the snowflake outside of the ornament then assembled it piece by piece inside the ornament (like a ship in a bottle). It was a lot of fun to make and my fingers are crossed that it wins something, however, it's up against some stiff competition!

Materials Used:

• Glass ornament
• Seed beads in various shades of blue, silver and clear.
• Acrylic discs decorative accents
• Alcohol inks in various shades of blue
• Quilling tools
• Bright white quilling paper
• White glue
• Overhead transparency
• Ribbon with "lacey" edging (to mimic a snowflake)

Veteran's Day Card

Hi all! Veteran's Day is this Thursday and I made these cards for my sister to thank her! She and her husband are both Majors in the Army and I'm so proud of them both. They have both done 2 tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq. Anyway, enough bragging. :) I was inspired by the modge podge Thank You card I had made back in January. Same concept, tear the paper into small bits, chalk all the edges of each piece and modge podge them onto another sheet, cut and use. Here's my list of materials:

Materials Used:

• White paper
• Blue paper (I used two different ones)
• Red paper
• White Card Stock
• Chalking Inks (I used a black very lightly)
• Modge Podge
• Adhesive

Haunted House Cake



Front of Cake



Right Side of Cake



Left Side of Cake

Back Side of Cake

Well, here it is. It's finally done. The cake that I made for my daughter's class to enter in their cake walk. It came out  so cool!

Just some Stats:

• 6 lbs. of powdered sugar to make all the windows, door, shutters, ghosts, fence and roof points.
• 5 lbs. of buttercream icing.
• 4 cans of spray food coloring to get that nice purple color.
• 9 hours to pipe out all the windows, door, shutters, ghosts, fence and roof points.
• 7.5 hours to assemble.
• The only real layer of cake (otherwise it would feed 110!) is the second story.
• 3 hours to paint on the features for the door, windows, shutters and ghosts.
• The roofing is gingerbread.

What's coming up next ...

Hi all! I just noticed that I let a whole month go by without posting ANYTHING! That's never a good thing in the life of a crafter! But, I have been very busy. With moving and then working part time at my daughter's school (teaching PE ... being outside all day is very draining! I need to take a nap when I get home! LOL). But I wanted to give you all a little heads up on things to look forward to in the coming month.

Mini Paper Bag Album:
All my friend Lynn had to say to me was "Hey, do you know how to make a mini album?" and I was hooked!!! My daughter's teacher's son is either turning one or just turned one so I decided to make her a mini album to put all her photos in. So far, it's pretty bare, but I'm working on it a little each day.

Haunted House Cake:
My daughter's school is holding a Halloween Carnival on the 29th and each class is tasked with putting together a themed basket for raffle (we picked "Around the Campfire". The whole class smells like marshmellows!) and also entering a cake for the cake walk. I volunteered to make the cake and have decided (because I'm a glutton for punishment) to make a three tiered haunted house. I spent all day yesterday doing "sugar work" (well, not in the traditional sense of the term ... I was color flowing, but that sounds hokey!). I only got half of what I needed shaped and then I came home after having dinner with family to find tiny kitty footprints all through out the pieces. Lucky, I made extra! Phew!

So, needless to say that there will be lots of pictures of both coming up as they are completed!

Thanks for stopping by! :P

Happy Housecreeping!

How cute is this??! My friend ordered the Happy Hauntings cartridge for her Cricut and surprised me with the cutouts for not only the house but some trees as well! I accessed the booklet for the cart on Circut's website and proceeded to put it together. I totally recommend using a scoreboard to prescore your lines before bending only because some of the hash marks can get a little confusing if you're not sure where to fold. I also used my alcohol inks to color some acetate to put behind the windows so that when I place a light source in the house, they will glow. (Like in the second picture, I just held it up to the window to show you all how pretty it looks when it glows). Thanks for looking.
Materials Used:

• Cricut Cartridge - Happy Hauntings
• Cricut Expressions (unless you want a smaller house)
• Black cardstock
• Tim Holtz Andirondack Brights Alcohol Inks - Sunshine Yellow
• a sheet of acetate
• Martha Stewart Scoreboard
• eXacto knife and cutting mat (to get those pesky window pieces that refuse to come out)
• Tape
• Glue