Trick or Treat - Halloween Door Card

We're having a door decorating contest at work and each department that wanted to play along had to pick one door. Some of the rules were:

90% of the door had to be covered

Candy could not be used as part of the decorum

You had to use at least one "supply" that is found in your department

No gore/violence

Lights were allowed (but no candles ::grin::)

You're limited to $30

I wanted to try to do a headless horseman riding through a graveyard but couldn't figure out a way to do it with the carts I have and make it look right. So I decided to try a trick or treating "scene".

For this "card" I used the Paper Dolls Dress Up cart and made the following cuts:

Haunted House at 12" (bottom windows are covered in glitter)

Two trees at 12" (cut from two different shades of brown and entertwined)

Remaining trees cut at 4"

Ghosts cut at 2 1/2"

Picket fence at 2"

Skeleton at 4"

Trick or Treaters were cut at 5"

Treat bags cut at 2"

Tombstones cut at 6" (this is where I used our office "supply" - business cards for myself, Resort Manager and Assistant Resort Manager)

Ravens cut at 1 1/2"

Bats cut at 1 or 1 1/2"

I used Accent Essentials to cut the circle for my moon and Child's Year for my witch but I do not remember the sizes I cut.....sorry.

The stars were cut using my Sizzix.

I am not a colorer but broke into my daughter's crayons to "color" the sky/grass/road. I then spot sprayed adhesive to the sky so that I could adhere random bits of glitter.

After my husband help me hang the "card" (yep, I work with my husband - and I love it - we've been working together for years) we poked holes and worked my lights into the sky.....

Judging takes place on Saturday so wish me well.....

Santa Stops Here - Tri-Shutter Card

This is my first (and perhaps my last) attempt at creating a tri-shutter card. Why my last you ask? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure, except to say that personally it just didn't feel right to me and I had too much difficulty figuring out what to put on it for the design.

I like the idea that I was going for with this one but because of the size I wasn't able to do all that I really wanted detail wise. So I'll be doing this design again but on a different style card fold.

For this card I used my Christmas Cheer cart and cut both the house and the tree at 2". The large snowflakes are Jolee's stickers, and the small silver ones are brads.

'Owl' Miss You

Very simple one tonight. This card was made using my Sizzix dies only.

The inside sentiment says:

What will I do without you.

'Owl' miss you.

Ghostly Halloween & Screech Owl

Here are a couple more of the smaller cards I made using only my Sizzix dies this past weekend. I absolutely love this little tree and moon.

The ghost in the first card is actually a sticker from Jolee's boutique.

This second card was also embossed using my swirls folder from Cuttlebug.

The inside sentiment on this one says:

"The wailing owl screams solitary to the mournful moon. ~ David Mallet"

Christmas Gifts

This is another card that I created last night using my new Sizzix dies as well as my Martha Stewart branch punch.

I will say that this girl was a little challenging for me - making sure I got all the different layers/cuts made and then pieced just right. Of course using the dies instead of the Cricut made the small cuts cleaner (IMHO) which made for easier piecing. But still the smallness of it all is what made it a little bit of a challenge for my big, fat fingers. :o)

The background paper is a flocked snowflake pattern and it didn't show it's true colors in the picture but I still think that it turned out nicely.

High Flyin' Halloween

Here's another one that I made this week.

For this one I used A Child's Year for the flying witch - 2"

Camp out for the sign hanging from the tree branch - 3/4"

PPDU for the tree - 3 1/2", cauldron 2" and the moon/stars - 1"

The glitter background doesn't show up well in the pics since the sky is really shades of black and orange topaz but at least you get the idea...

Snowball Cookies - Gate Fold Card

Made this one using my Speaking of Winter and From My Kitchen cartridges.

The outside snowflakes are 4 and 3 3/4". The white snowflake is covered with MS crystal fine and carrara marble to give it a snowish texture/sparkle.

The snowman is 2 1/2" and the bowl is just under 1".

The inside snowflake is 5".

Pumpkin Poop Treat Cups

So tonight's project is one that I am doing for my daughter to hand out to her friends for Halloween this year. I was searching around the net one day for Halloween ideas since I've never been one to really decorate or make cards for the "holiday". But this year I decided to do something different and make some of the cutesy items (I'm just not into the gore). Anyhow, while searching around I came across a poem for Pumpkin Poop and knew that this would be the project for this year.

Fast forward, a couple days ago I showed my daughter four different pumpkin faces and asked which one she wanted? When she saw the one from Doodlecharms her face lit up in a big smile and she said that one. From there this project was created.

For this I used:

Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More for the nut cup - cut at 6"

Doodlecharms for the Pumpkin - cut at 3"

Tags, Bags, Boxes and More for the tags - reshaped to resemble candy corn and then cut at 2" and 1 3/4"

No Such Thing as Too Much Candy

I finally broke out my Child's Year cartridge yesterday and started having fun with it. And I gotta tell ya' for someone who's never made Halloween cards until last month I think I'm on a little roll.

This card is my interpretation/scraplift of one featured in the Sept/Oct issue of Papercrafts in that I used the shimmer and the forest look for my card. But I wanted more of a "scene" to the look so I added the moon, stars, grass and trick or treaters.

The trees are from Stretch Your Imagination

The Moon and stars are from PPDU

For the background I applied glitter - in two shades: copper and orange topaz - to the paper. Beginning at the top and working my way down I used copper going lighter as I got to the bottom. The I repeated with the orange topaz starting at the bottom and working up.

Unlike the traditional cards this does not "open" - it's just two sided. When I created this in DS I created it so that the trees would fold up over the top of the card adding a little dimension to the overall look.

Spongebob Altered Clock & Birthday Card

My youngest daughter turns 17 tomorrow and as those of you with teenagers know it's difficult to know what to do for them sometimes. Yeah, you can always buy music, clothes, or movies but would you buy the right ones? Ah, now you see my problem....Too often I have purchased some of these items for one or another of my children but it wasn't the right style, color, size, genre, etc.

So Saturday morning my daughter woke up poured herself a bowl of cereal, sat down and turned on Spongebob before getting ready for work. Needless to say, the lights went on and I knew whatever I did would be Spongebob related. Then I remembered that I had another clock waiting to be altered and the rest was history.

For this clock I cut:

Spongebob at 3 1/2"

Hamburger at 1"

Spatula (From My Kitchen) at 1 1/4"

And of course I had to have a card........

Winner of Stretch Your Imagination Cartridge

Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to my cry for help in deciding which card to enter into the County Fair. And congratulations to Terri for being the lucky winner of a brand new Stretch Your Imagination cartridge.

It was a close race but Combination Confusion received the most votes with Magical Christmas only 4 votes behind.

Stay Tuned and I'll report back for how my card does. I'm also entering a clock that I altered so we'll see how that one goes as well.....

Snowman Soup - Double Pocket Fold Card

Here's another one of my card challenges. The assignment for this card which was from Diane:

Cart: Christmas Cheer

Cut: Candy Cane

Theme: Christmas (that was kinda obvious) I would love to see what you'd come up with using this cut. I've had a couple of ideas for it, but have never actually done anything with it.

I decided to try a new card fold technique that I've had flagged for some time now. It's featured in the resources/tutorials section of the splitcoaststampers website and is surprisingly easy to create.

Of course this card would be perfect to give away along with a Snowman decorated coffee mug filled with a pouch of cocoa, marshmallows and a peppermint stick!

'Fangs' for the Treats

I created this card a couple nights ago for a challenge on one of my Yahoo! groups. All cuts are from the Paper Dolls Dress Up cartridge.

Dracula at 4"

Pumpkin at 1"

Fence at 1 1/4"

Moon and Stars at 2"

Bat at 1"

The background for my card is a new technique - Gradient is Radiant - for me and was spotlighted in the Sep/Oct 09 edition of Paper Crafts. I ran a sheet of white cardstock through the Xyron and then applied two shades of glitter beginning at opposite ends.

The idea is to go lighter as you get to each end. I need a little more work at it but I love the way this card turned out.

If you're curious to see other versions of this technique take a look at the Gradient is Radiant challenge that is going on over at the Moxie Fab World Blog: http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2009/09/gradient-is-radiant-next-moxie-fab.html