Halloween Is In The House!

Hi Everyone,
The past week has been so crazy busy that I barely had time to play in the craft room. The whole living room and dining room are glowing in black and orange and we are totally ready for Halloween.  Rory and I made a new banner for the mantle way back in September.  It was the last day of summer vacation and I have had it hanging off the china cabinet since then.  It looked so silly amongst the summer patriotic decorations.  I am sure everyone who stopped by thought I was a bit off my rocker.  I did have a hard time getting good pictures (as usual) but I thought I would post them anyway.  I think Rory and I did a great job. Here is the picture:

Well, that is really a better picture of Rory than the banner!  Maybe this one is a bit better:

and here is a close up of the letter S, I was glad I could catch a bit of  the gold sparkle:

So here is our crafty recipe:  The banner base pieces are from the Stampin Up banner kit called chalkboard.  The DSP layer is from SU's cast a spell from years ago.  I have the digital file so we printed the paper using CraftArtistPro2. The stars and the medallions were also made and printed with CAP2 and we used the Brother SnC to cut them out.  I made so many of the stars and I still want to make more. The letters and shadows were cut with my Zing through make the cut.  I love watching Rory use the computer and the die cutters. She really is a wiz with the Zing. If you look closely behind the letters you can see we added an embossed piece.  We used our sizzix and a cuttlebug embossing folder of a web.  Last but not least we even used my favorite Martha Stewart bat punch for the little bats. Each piece is sprayed with champagne mist so it sparkles. Wow, that's is a lot of product.  But worth it for sure.  We did not plan to hang this in front of the mirror but it was so long that this was the only place we could put it.  So if I had to change one thing, I would have made sure that the backs of the pieces were black.  I think that the chipboard reflection makes for an unfinished look.  All in all we love how are banner came out.  Today I have to finish some craft kits for Rory's friends that are coming over for a little celebration.  The girls will be making the paper pumpkins that I made last year.  We needed a quick and easy craft to do and this is perfect. Here is a peek at the project and the kits:

Don't the kits look great in the Stampin Up cases??  Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by,
Lysa

Halloween 2014 Favor Box

 Hi Friends,
Well don't you know Halloween is coming fast and furious.  I could not believe when I got to work today and the first time I typed the date this morning I thought to myself "How the heck did we get to Sept. 17th!"  Time is surely slipping past me. So this weekend I am taking down all the summer/patriotic decorations in the hope that I can get Halloween up the following weekend.  I made my annual speech to the family about how I was going to scale it back.  I say the same thing every year. "No bales of hay, Not taking out the Halloween dishes, Not going to put up the 5 foot twisted wire Dept. 56 tree . . . etc" and then every year I do the exact opposite and put up pretty much every single decoration I have.  Well, that would be me. Say one thing and do the other.  So today I have for you this years candy favor.  I cased it from Stampin Up.  You know they came out with the curvey keepsake die.  Which I think is kind of a blast from the past as this little bon-bon box has been around forever and a day.  I have it as a .gsd file from my Wishblade years!  Now what got me was you have to cut it in 2 pieces.  Which is great when you want to make it with 2 patterns. Plus it does save a bit on paper as you can cut it with half of a sheet of 12X12. My problem is  I really don't like the way it goes together and it was just a bit to big for me.  I have to make about 30 or so of these so I need to take candy cost in to consideration. As it is I went with Hershey Kisses instead of my normal Hershey Nuggets. I created the pattern where the base was 2 inches and it was huge so I shrunk it down to my liking.  I used my CraftArtist2 to draw the box and exported it to a .pdf file so that I could cut it with my Zing using MTC.  I saw these pumpkins all over Pinterest and thought they were so cute.  I see SU peeps are making Frankie and Vampires and all sorts of cuties.  I even saw a penguin.  I loved them all and thought I would share my file with all of my digi cutting friends. Here is a picture of the pdf file:

For those of you who want the PDF you can find it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/8e9iqkb93h8a92z/bonbon_box_with_pic_2014.pdf

And the MTC file is here, I have included the faces and the leaves with the MTC file:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/vu58hx4v42c1y9x/curvey_box__share.mtc
I hope you like this file and I think at Christmas you can make some really cute boxes by adding a cut out window. If you need this box to be larger you can easily resize to your need.  Hope to be back with a picture of Rory and my banner that we made in the next day or so.  It came out great and I can't wait to see it hanging with all the other decorations.  Please let me know if you have any problems with the file.
Thanks for visiting,
Lysa

Skullys, Kittys and Tear Bears . . Oh My!

Hi Crafty Peeps,
Today is September 1st. How sad is it that summer is on it way out.  Well I guess it is only sad for people like me who love the heat.  Our August here in Jersey was a cool one so I didn't spend as much time in the pool as I would have liked.  It was however a perfect August for outdoor activities.  You can see by my lack of crafty blogging that I was at least enjoying the nice weather.  I did manage to show Rory how to make a tear bear.  In fact I made a second bear and a kitty.  Rory chose a panda to make for her Mom.  We had a lot of fun and she had an easy time so I can see why these little guys are a great craft for the kiddies.  I will say I did tear the parts for Rory.  I made each pattern piece 4 layers thick.  Rory stacked and glued all her layers as well as assembled her bear.  I think she really loved brushing it out with the wire brush.  Rory even did all the shading on her panda.  Being all the pieces were torn prior, Rory completed her panda in about 2 and half hours.  I think she did an awesome job.  Here are a couple of pictures:

I think you can tell Rory is pretty darn happy about the way her panda came out.  Now me, I made a second bear just like the first one that I made for Rory. Here is my pic:

I really like making the brown bear.  I wanted to make another but I need to buy more of the mocha colored paper.  I did have some more of the black and white so I thought I would give a kitty a go.  I tried to copy a picture of an assemble one that was posted on line.  I have been using CAP2 to make my patterns.  Here is a pic of my kitty.  I want to make a witch's hat for him. I just haven't gotten to it yet.

 

He looks so sad with the big droopy eyes! And he is way to big, but I love how he came out.  Don't you like his wire whiskers? 

Now for the skully:

So back a few year Stampin' up had that awesome ornament on the cover of the holiday catalog.  2012 I believe it was.  If you remember or look back on my blog you will see I was making them with a Halloween theme instead of a Christmas theme.  I only made about 5 or so.  I kept them all and use them around the house at Halloween.  Well my friend Karen asked me if I would make one for her as she wanted to give it to her son.  He is a dude who loves Halloween and he (like me) love skullys.  She knew which one she wanted so I made it up for her this weekend.  I even made a box for her.  Here are a couple of pics, I should have taken some along the way but I didn't! Silly Rabbit, I am no kind of blogger.  Here are the pics:

I even stamped her up some tissue paper.  My favorite part is my skully embishment.  I printed the skulls with the 31 out on SU whisper white cardstock and then domed them with Lisa Pavelka magic gloss.  Gee I just love that stuff.  I use my Teresa Collins stampmaker UV light to cure it.  I use the light to cure my gel nail polish too.  In fact the only thing I don't use it for is to make Teresa Collins stamps - go figure!  I can't wait to bring this ornament to Karen, I am pretty sure she is going to be thrilled! Tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation and I am staying home from work with Rory.  Guess what we are doing! Yup, we are going to spend the day in the craftroom and we will be making our Halloween banner for 2014! I can't wait, I don't know who is more excited.  OK, I think it's me! Hope you stop by again as I have some Halloween goodies coming up.  Thanks for stopping by,
Lysa