Happy Halloween!

We had Trick or Treat in our neighborhood tonight. Usually I keep the blog limited to my crafty things but I couldn't resist showing off a picture of my little Tinkerbell (Isabella). :) She had a great time at Trick or Treating this year, even though she was still too shy to say "Trick or Treat" at most of the houses. And here are a couple of photos of our decorations.

Last but not least, some photos of little treat boxes I made for the ladies at work using Lauren Meader's Tucked Away template. It's a cute little box and so easy to put together, thanks to Lauren's genius talents! :)

Supplies: Stamps: Paper Trey Ink Spooky Sweets , Polka Dot Basics II, Retro Backgrounds. Ink: Palette Noir, Orange Zest. Cardstock: Black, Orange Zest, White. Accessories: Black grosgrain ribbon, decorative paper by DCWV, circle punch.

Have a safe and spooky Halloween!

Spooky Greetings!

Well, it's an exciting night in our house. Papertrey release night! I am stalking the website to participate in all of the fun. I hope I win the big package tonight so I can get all of the wonderful goodies. In case I don't win I have my list ready to place an order but I had to make some hard decisions and some things will just have to wait for another month. While I'm waiting I thought I'd share a couple more Halloween cards with you. These also use the new Papertrey Halloween Tags set that was released last month.

Although it looks black in the photo I actually used Smoky Shadow ink for the card base and the graveyard border punch. I stamped the decorative circle from Spooky Sweets II onto Spring Moss cardstock and then cut it out with my Nestabilities and distressed it a little. Then I stamped the Boo tag onto the plaid paper from the Autumn Abundance collection and layered it over a ribbon on top.

This card came together very quickly. I find that having a small child in the house and very limited time to create, I want to get as much accomplished in my time as possible so I am going for simpler cards when I have to mass produce for holidays but I still want them to have some pizazz. For low fuss but a nice impact I have been trying to use up more of my decorative papers. Plus I can clean out some of the giant stacks I've accumulated and make way for more Papertrey stuff! I simply layered some cute K& Co web paper onto my orange zest cardstock and then topped it off with one of the holiday tags and embellished with some ribbon, buttons and rhinestones. Easy peasy! I hope you enjoyed my projects. :)

Supplies Card #1: Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009, Spooky Sweets 2. Paper: Smoky Shadow, Spring Moss, Autumn Abundance. Ink: Palette Noir and Smoky Shadow. Accessories: photo corner punch, Martha Stewart border punch, circle punches, Nestabilities, Orange Zest ribbon and button, vintage twine, white gel pen.

Supplies Card #2: Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009. Paper: Orange Zest, Smoky Shadow and K&CO dp. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: corner punch, rhinestones, Plum Pudding buttons, black ribbon, black twine.

Ghouls and Goblins Time!

I just love Halloween! To me this holiday is pure FUN! Lots of fun decorations, candy to eat, cute costumes, and no juggling which family to visit when, etc. :) Every year we get a few more decorations. My DH loves to do up the outside of the house. That's his "thing". He could really care less about the inside decorations. Honestly, with a 2 and 1/2 year old in the house we don't do a lot of "decorating" right now, unless you count the assortment of toys all over the carpet. LOL! This weekend we started putting out the Halloween decorations and I even came up with a few displays indoors in places where little hands can't reach.

Tonight I'm sharing with you a card made with the new Papertrey Ink Halloween Tags set. It has so many wonderful images in it and I am just beginning to explore all of the possibilities.

This card is my favorite of the ones I've made I think.

I started with an orange card base and layered on some cute K&Co paper that I"ve been hoarding since last year. I keep meaning to do more of this layering with all of the paper I've accumulated but it is so much fun to create my own backgrounds with PTI stamps that I usually forget. :) Any way, after I put on the dp I layered several scalloped circles cut out with my Nestabilities and then the Black cat image was stamped in Black on Spring Moss. For a little "bling" I used my quickie glue pen on the cat and then doused him with some Doodlebug black glitter. It's so sparkly! I added some lovely Black dotted ribbon and Plum Pudding button from Papertrey. I felt that the bottom of the card needed something so I used this fun new border punch from Martha Stewart. It's a little graveyard. How spooky! Then I framed a sentiment from the Halloween Tags set and colored my hodgepodge hardware Black by using a Copic marker. Those markers a da bomb! Held the hardware in place with some rhinestone brads and I'm done!

Supplies: All supplies by PTI unless otherwise noted.

Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009. Ink: Palette Noir. Cardstock: Orange Zest, Smoky Shadow, Spring Moss, Plum Pudding bitty box paper and pumpkin paper by K&Co. Accessories: Martha Stewart graveyard border punch, hardware (SU!), rhinestone brads (stash) and Vintage button in Plum Pudding and polka dot ribbon.

Halloween in July??

Halloween in July??

You’ve heard of Christmas in July, well what about Halloween? We love Halloween and have already been talking about what we need to do to get ready for this year. I guess that it what made me think of my Halloween stamps for this month’s Papertrey Ink blog hop.

The PTI challenge was to focus on text and use it any way we wanted in a project. The first thing that came to mind was to create a fun text background using my PTI Halloween sets Spooky Sweets and Spooky Sweets II. So here we go!

I love the funky pattern on this first card. Look real close to see how I created this retro looking background. It’s one of the bat stamps from Spooky Sweets! I stamped the bats in a row across a sheet of Guidelines Two cardstock and then turned the bat upside down and stamped it directly underneath the other bat. The result was this really cool pattern. In between the X created by the bats I used the Boo! stamp from the same set. I kept the layout very simple so the focus would be on my background. Just a simple band of orange suede ribbon topped with a scallop circle and a little bat and sentiment on Ripe Avocado cardstock.

Backgrounds for the next two cards were also stamped on Guidelines Two cardstock. I can see that I am going to need more of this cardstock! ;) The cards are basically the same but with a few slightly different embellishments. I started my background by stamping one of the decorative ring stamps from Guidelines Two around the circles. Then I stamped the little spider from Spooky Sweets in the negative space between the circles and alternated sentiments inside the circles. Again I tried to keep the focus on the text since that was the theme for the Blog Hop. :) I cut out the text background using Nestabilities Labels 2 and then added another layer with Smoky Shadow cardstock. In the first sample I edged the panels with silver pen and added black glitter to the little spiders. For the embellishment I stamped the larger spider on PTI white cardstock and added Doodlebug crushed velvet in black. IRL it is so cool looking and fun to touch, unlike real spiders which give me the willies! Why do I like making Halloween cards with spiders when I’m terrified of them? I’m sure Freud would have had something interesting to say about that but I digress. I finished it off by using some thin silver cord as the spider’s web string. I got a little messy with the silver pen. Note to self: Add silver pen BEFORE you glue down the layers. If I had it to do over again I would probably leave that part out.

The second card is just like the first without the silver pen and using some lovely polka- dot ribbon and a big Summer Sunrise button. And I’ve included a shot of the inside of the cards too.

Thanks for stopping by! I can’t wait to see what you all came up with.

Happy Halloween 3 months early!

Kim

Supply lists (All supplies by PTI unless otherwise noted):

Card #1: Stamps: Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, Ripe Avocado. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Suede ribbon (stash), circle punches by SU!.

Card #2: Stamps: Guidelines II, Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: PTI White, Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, SU! Pumpkin Pie, Heidi Grace dp. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Doodlebug glitter and crushed velvet, Silver Cord (stash), silver pen (Prismacolor), circle punches by SU!

Card #3: Stamps: Guidelines II, Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: PTI White, Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, SU! Pumpkin Pie, Heidi Grace dp. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Swiss dot ribbon, Summer Sunrise button, black twine (stash).

ETA: Fixed some spelling errors and put in the title of my post. Geesh, I always forget to do something when I'm prepping for Blog Hop! :)