Tricks & Treats for my Peeps

Hi Everyone, Now that the house is in full Halloween mode I am able to settle in to crafting. OK, so the Hubs and dear Daughter are at Walmart getting me some more orange lights for the living room. See that the thing is, I never really finish until I have completely exhausted my Halloween mojo. I am like that with Christmas too! I have what some people call . . . issues. But as always I can say this phrase "I like me, I really, really like me"! See that's the best part of being in your 50's. You finally get to like yourself with no questions asked. Yeah! because that leaves lots of room for good crafty mojo like these little nugget holders I am making for all the peeps I see at work and in my daily travels. Here is a picture:

 

 How cute are they!! I love 'em! Each one holds 2 Hershey nuggets and best yet I had all the paper. No new purchases for me. The vector cutting file was made in MTC. I broke apart a web and added the solid base. I sized it specific for the 2 nuggets. I welded in the words Tricks - Treats (one on each side) made the tag in Craft Artist 2 using  an .svg Stampin 'Up  file and punched them out with a standard 3/4 inch punch.  The paper is all Stampin 'Up that I had in black and old olive. Googly eyes from Joann's Fabric.  The tag is printed on HP advanced photo paper.  See my little green spider?  He is my EK Success punch that I bought last year and never used.  How cute is HE!  LOVE HIM! You can see on the tag I punched one and scanned him in to CA2 so that I had him as a digi as well.  I love how he holds the web top together. I hope to make about 60 of these so that I have enough for work and some to give Sam to take to work as well. I hope you like them and they put you in the mood to start your Halloween crafting. Before I go I thought I would leave you with  a picture of my Halloween tree.

  

This year I let the little girl do the decorating and she did a fantastic job. I am breaking her in so she can help me at Christmas.

Might not be the best picture but you get the idea, we are ready for Halloween! Enjoy your week and hope you all start thinking Halloween.  Thanks for visiting,

Lysa

Still Here - Just Lost in CA2

Hi Everyone,
Wow, September is so O-V-E-R! Really you should see my house! We are completely Halloween! For the last week or so I have been putting away summer and bringing Halloween down from the attic. In addition to work and decorating I have been playing with my new Craft Artist 2 software. In a word, AWESOME! I wish I could just sit here and play. Let me tell you what my favorite parts are. First off I love the .pdf import. Yes, even though I have other software that does that. I like this the best. You can really get some great graphic in that format so its a winner in my book.  The .svg import/export is also a fav.  Thanks to the Daisy Trail forum we are all learning the best way to use that feature.  Also I love the punch. I have so many of my Stampin 'Up punches in .svg format so that is just a great crafty addition for me to use along with all my Stampin 'Up digi files.  Now as you know I don't make videos often. I always want to but time gets in the way.  I wanted to show everyone how to flatten a graphic that has multiple layers and I really could not explain with words so I took a shot with this screen recording software.  Please my voice was enough to make the cat run.  Anyway I hope it helps someone along the way.  Here it is!

Again, I am not a video maker!  Have a great day.  Check back soon as I hope to start posting my Halloween goodies soon.
Lysa

Rory's Strangling Raven Costume - Part 2

Hi Everyone,
FEATHERS! Not my thing! I really think as a crafter we all have a craft we jive with! I think I am somewhat versatile as I seem to always be searching for some new crafty goodness to float my boat.  Feathers?  I just don't  like 'um!  I think I'd have more fun painting cute faces on little rocks (remember pet rocks?) Feathers just seem to have a mind of their own.  I'm telling you I will be picking up feathers for months. They are everywhere. And by everywhere I mean everywhere! I know they made it upstairs from the craftspace to the kitchen, and the bedrooms too! They are floating everywhere through the house, I am pretty sure I saw them on the floor of my cubicle at work. I think I coughed one up the other day.  To me feathers are like glitter, only with wings! They are never really going to be gone. You know what I mean, I'll bet you dollars to donuts when I empty the lint catcher in the dryer that I will see some black feathers.  Next time I need to make a set of wings I am going to make it butterfly wings that are made out of a coat hanger and some pantyhose.  NO MORE FEATHERS FOR ME!! Well, with that said . . .  I finished Rory's wings.  To be honest it was not an easy task. Now I am not sure if it is because me and the feathers just did not get along or maybe it was because I just did not know what I was doing.  So you saw the picture of the blank and bland back of the wings in my first post. Well, just to take up some space here is the picture again:

A blank canvas for sure! I started off by gluing single marabou feathers to the border of the back.  I was able to buy black duck feathers from Joann's and I laid them out before gluing. Here is that pic:

I kept flipping back to the front to make sure I was placing the feathers correctly.  This really does matter because if you stack them wrong they look kind of funky!  The key was to work from the center out to the edges of the wings. First from center to the left, then from center to the right.  I added a marabou boa at the neck to hide the end of the quills.  It took lots of glue and lots of time and I think it was worth it because here is a picture of how they turned out:

 

 You can see how the marabou feathers really bumped up the wings and the fact that both the back and the front are covered make all the difference.  I can't wait for Halloween and I can't wait to post a picture of Rory in this costume. I also want to tell you that stated on the costume and on the purchased feathers they tell you the black dyed feathers are not water safe. In fact my hands were black just from working with them.  If it rains this Halloween, Rory will have black running all over her costume for sure.  It's back to papercrafting and favor making for me.  I have a lot going on in the craftspace this weekend and I can't wait to show you all my 2012 Halloween nugget holder. Have a great week end! Thanks for stopping by.

Lysa

Rory's Strangling Raven Costume - Part 1

Hi Everyone,
So here we are at September 2nd! I can't believe summer is almost completely behind us.  School starts in just 3 days.  I was lucky enough to grab a few vacation days so I could enjoy the holiday weekend. You all know we are lovers of Halloween in this house. Well . . . I should say I am a lover of all things Halloween.  I don't do scary as a rule.  No blood, guts and gore for me.  No sir, I like more mellow side of Halloween.  The colors, the pumpkins and maybe a cute little ghost or two. It is true I like to get an early start with crafting and I do try to get decorating as early as I can.  We get the costume action going in August as soon as the catalogs start to come.  This year the little girl picked another awesome costume.  This year she will be sporting the "Strangling Raven" based on artist Jasmine Becket-Griffith's artwork.  The 3 of us (the girl, the Mom, & the Nonna) loved it the minute we saw it in the catalog. So the order was placed.  Here is a picture from the catalog:

WOW!! How Cute is that! We were so excited to get it. I myself, loved the wings the most.  I kept looking at the picture.  I thought they did a fantastic job with the wings. I mean I loved the jumper and the belt with the birds. I loved the blue, black and gray color scheme. We all thought it was great. And it is! I know because it came yesterday.  The jumper is well made even though the fabric is standard costume level fabric.  The quality of the sewing is well done.  The seams are well done and the patterns line up well.  The chain belt with the birds is awesome because the birds are pins and can be recycled somewhere after the fact.  The tights are great. Plain striped footless tights that will be used again. Gloves are good, Choker necklace is good but I need to make it smaller. The wings, well, NOT SO GOOD! I mean they are do-able but they look nothing like the picture.  The wings in that picture are not the wings that come with the costume. OK, OK . . . so I am a bit picky.  I just really thought the wings made this costume.  So they should be awesome crafty good, right?
If you really look at the picture you will see that the wings have 2 courses of feathers. No, they only have one. Even worse yet, they only have feathers on one side.  The back has only black felt.  Here are the pics:

I know what your thinking!(your thinking: "Lady you are nuts!, These wings are beautiful and are just fine for a kids costume for trick or treating") I know that's what your thinking because I am quoting the Hubs from yesterday while we were standing on line at Joann fabrics. Which was where we went after A.C. Moore. Which was where I bought the first supply of black feathers. Which just didn't seem to be right so I needed to go to Joann's too. . . . . .( this is me trailing off as wonder how the man stayed married to me for 29 years) Yup! A mere $18.00 later and we are going to have ourselves a pair of double sided wings! OH YEA! Here is a pic of my new found feather supply:

 

 Really, I think I just may have hit the crafting wall! So I got up at like 5 a.m. this morning and started to plot how I was going to bump up these wings. The feathers don't match the front, I just barely have enough long ones to cover the felt. With that said I am off to give it a go.  I will post part 2 at some point after I finish the wings and vacuum up all this feather stuff that is all over the floor and floating in the air.  Thanks for stopping by and here's hoping your laughing with me and not at me.

Lysa