Lip Balm Holder for Halloween 2014

 Hi Everyone,
I am so happy to say my final Halloween favors are done.  As you know my most favorite non candy favors are made with AVON products.  I love their lip balms and hand creams for crafting.  I am almost always able to purchase them for .79 cents or so.  I also like to buy from AVON as I have a co-worker who is an AVON lady and I would much rather support her than Dollar Tree.  I used CraftArtistist2 to design the file and I used my Zing and MTC software to cut them out.  The pumpkin and bat are Martha Stewart punches that I have had for years.  Don't you just love when you spend money on something and you use it for years! I also printed all the paper using Stampin' Up digital files.  I buy all my favorite papers as digi files because as you know once they retire they are gone.  The pumpkin paper is from the "Cast A Spell" DSP line from back in either '09 or maybe '10.  I still use it all the time because I love it so much.  Here is a picture of the pdf file share for these quick and easy favors:

You can find the PDF file here at this link:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/r5hf80cw3mmtr58/lip_balm_holder_halloween_2014with_photo_and_tips.pdf
and the MTC file can be found using this link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/n02t6gc70vcxz7i/apothacary_lip_holder.mtc
Here is a picture of the lip balm holders and whats left of the little jack o' lantern boxes waiting to be handed out at work next week:

So to sum up Halloween 2014, I think my favorite favor was the beaded spider.  I made so many of them and could have kept going if I had more peeps that I wanted to give them to.  He may resurface this Christmas as "The Christmas Spider" from the Ukrainian legend. Next week I will be on vacation from work for a few days and all the Halloween paper gets put away and out comes all the Christmas craft supplies. I can't wait for this years Christmas crafting season as I bought some great Stampin' Up paper and supplies.  They did a lot with Kraft paper and boxes this year.  Kraft is my all time favorite for Christmas.  Thanks for pit stopping my blog and I hope to see you again soon.  Enjoy Halloween!!
Lysa

A Beaded Spider, Perfect for Halloween!

Hi Everyone,
I am so addicted to making these little cute beaded spiders this year.  I have made 10 and was thinking of making even more.  There are so many tutorials out there in cyber land all you have to do is google beaded spider and you will find many tuts and pictures of  them.  I think what got me going was the wreath kit from Stampin' Up.  The frightful wreath came with a beaded spider kit.  I didn't really like the wreath but loved the spider.  Everyone started to make them.  Angie over at Chic N Scratch made a nice video of hers and you can check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsxF04OFhiw
  Here is a picture of some of mine:

Look how cute they look just hanging out around the house:

I like them because they are creepy in a cute sort of way.  I made so many that I can get one done is less than 20 minutes.  Here are the supplies I used:
24 gauge wire
silver bead caps
silver decorative head pin
acrylic beads by Jewelry Fundamentals 
black seed beads size 15
small white glass beads size 2
silver tube (bugle) beads
pliers
Here is a picture of the beads I used.  There was no "mm" sizing on the package:

 All I did to create the body was thread one small bead along with a bead cap, large bead and second bead cap onto a head pin.  I twisted the end of the head pin to hold it all together.  I cut 4 strands of the wire in 6 inch lengths.  I twisted them around the body where the "head" meets the body of the spider.  I shaped the legs out to 4 on each side of the body.  On each leg I threaded the following bead patten:
3 black seed, 1 bugle, 3 black seed, 1 bugle, 3 black seed, 1 bugle, 3 black seed.
I then finished each leg with a white size 2 bead.  I looped the wire through twice and then clipped the wire flush. I used very thin wire and if you wanted something a bit more sturdy you may want to use 22 gauge wire in lieu of the 24 gauge.  I was posing one of my spiders and bent the leg so many times that I broke it.  I hope you give this little guy a try.  I am off to make a few more to bring to some friends at work. Thanks for stopping by,
Lysa