Santa Claus does not seem to have sole claim to chimneys anymore. Ghosts and skeletons seems to be popping out of these miniature Halloween houses. Thank goodness they don’t need to be pulled by a team of eight snakes.
Shudddddder….I really hate snakes. Hate them. Really I do.
More Halloween crafts just for you–It is Day Six of Paper Calliope’s 13 Days of October and today I am featuring the second of four itty-bitty teeny-weeny Halloween houses.
Created in a putz style, these adorable haunted houses glisten with glitter.
It is Halloween time and I have a confession to make. I used to be called the Queen of Halloween. This came about after I designed and implemented a Haunted Library at my kids’ elementary school. For many years, myself along with two incredibly partners dedicated a month of 15 hour back-breaking days, 200 volunteers, miles of extension cord and enough black duct tape to cover the earth to create a professional level haunted house on basically zero budget.
Years later, when I am out and about town, some stranger will still greet me, letting me know that they had helped volunteer at my haunted library.
What almost no one knew was that the Queen of Halloween despised haunted houses. More accurately, I hate the startle factor of haunted houses.* The creepiness and scary scenes don’t bother me. It’s the unknown psycho clown who suddenly jumps out at me, making me wonder if there is a defibrillator nearby. Read the rest of this entry
If you looked closely in my Graphic 45 audition, you might have noticed that fawn in the Spring Matchbox really knows how to celebrate the new season. He has donned a purple polka-dotted party hat, complete with glitter and streamer-like tassel.
I chuckled when today I visited the web site of one of my favorite artists, Lisa Kettle, because coincidentally pictured on her blog is a cute-as-can-be zebra wearing a glittery red party hat. Her post reminded me that more than likely she introduced me many years ago to animal party hats when I read her book Altered Art Circus. Read the rest of this entry
Open your windows and put out the patio chairs for a new season has arrived. It’s the season when Graphic 45 selects its new design team for 2014.
Just like the Graphic 45 Staples Collection Metal Butterfly, I am irresistibly drawn to this event. The projects below serve as my audition to this prestigious annual event.
I made this gigantic egg (you can see it at at the top of the post) to add a little playfulness into the audition. You poor judges can only look at so many scrapbook pages, before getting a little blurry eyed.
The egg stands 11 inches tall and features the Graphic 45 Sweet Sentiments collection. The 45 is the numerical portion of the actual Graphic 45 logo, which I enlarged, traced and then hand cut from several pieces of foam core. I then stacked them together in order to give the 45 substantial depth. Read the rest of this entry
A long, long time ago, when this blog was brand spanking new (last month), I switched hosting services. I just now discovered that something went awry and the pictures to an early post disappeared. What’s worse, I’m not able to edit the post that was created on the other hosting service.
Since I only had about five readers the first time this was posted (and one of them was my fictional test character), I figure there is no harm in reposting it. If you saw the post the first time around you can compare the experience to re-watching your all-time favorite movie. Because some things are worth repeating.
Honestly, I’m not that arrogant about my work. From my experience, it is pretty near impossible to be cocky and anxious as the same time. However, I do hope you like these pages and inspires you to repurpose unusual materials for scrapbook pages. Read the rest of this entry
You Heart aMazing
I’ll be honest, this tag is my least favorite of the five. I like each of the elements on their own, but somehow they just didn’t mesh together well. I guess it is kind of like that big ol’ box of Valentine chocolates. You always end up biting into one that you don’t like. By the time you realize it, you are half way through and then you are left with the quandary of deciding whether to go ahead and finish it or stick it back in the box to disgust some other member of your family.
I’m speaking from experience, as my daughter has been known to do that with just about anything. The other day I found a solitary doughnut left in the box with the topping completely gnawed away. Now that’s an enticing breakfast. Read the rest of this entry
Valentine’s Day is exactly one month away. So today I bring you the second tag in this series. I should mention that all of them use a basic alteration of a technique I learned from Tim Holtz’s 12 tags of Christmas sometimes around 2007 or 2008. Read the rest of this entry
Nothing says Valentine’s Day like chocolate and berries. Okay, flowers and jewelry can also speak the language of love pretty loudly, but those won’t be making an appearance at our house this year. At our house we stick with the less-than-$5-valentine. Thankfully, after all these years I’ve trained The Husband™ not to buy cutesy talking stuffed animals or dancing plastic flowers from the nearest Super America gas station.
Today, I’m going to share with you a non-caloric way to enjoy a delightfully rich Chocolate Berry Valentine treat by showing you how to make the first in a series of five Valentine tags.
The first time I walked into a an Archiver’s store, I was in love. I had been in scrapbooking stores before, but this was something different.
Archiver’s was classy. Archiver’s offered scrapbooking options beyond those cutsey stickers–you know, the ones I told you reminded me of Precious Moments figurines. This in itself is why Archiver’s was, at least in my eyes, something extraordinary.
It probably didn’t hurt that I fit perfectly into their niche target market. I was middle-class mom with a two-year-old son and a daughter on the way, who yearned to express my creativity in some way other than Duplo structures and pudding painting.
My stash of bargains
