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Happy Halloween!

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Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, but I do enjoy crafting for my grandchildren. I posted their Halloween card here, but made some treat boxes for the little girls who live in town, and shipped a package off to the two in Wisconsin.

TreatBoxes

I found the purple and black boxes at Target as well as most of the contents (sticker books, pencils, tiny notepads, and temporary tatoos.) The little "snow" globes came from Walgreens and I didn't realize that they weren't all the same until I took this photograph. Later the middle one was exchanged so that all three were identical. 

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I had all the ingredients for the tags in my stash: the orange tags, the stamps ("Monthly Moments" and "Friendship Jar: Fall" from Papertrey Ink, and the witch's feet from an unnamed Hero Arts set). I painted three clothespins to match the boxes, and add a little witch's hat (Little B sticker) to the clothes pin. The girls got their treat boxes over the weekend since tonight there will be ample excitement and too many treats as it is.  

Matt sent us photos last night of this year's pumpkin carvings. They always amaze me. The message was "This year's pumpkins. So far." Usually, the girls pick out the designs and Dad carves them. This year it's a pony, one of the characters from "Frozen," and interestingly, a car.

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Hopefully, I'll have some photos of the grandchildren dressed up by tomorrow, but I never count on it. They're usually far too busy to pose for a photo. Finally, here's the fourth photo I took for last week's "Take Three Thursday," the perfect Halloween scene.

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Autumn Birthday Card

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My niece's birthday is coming up, and I wanted to make a fall birthday card to enter into two challenges: Seize the Birthday: Foliage, and the Fusion Card Challenge.

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The Fusion Challenge is a sketch/photo challenge. This time my inspiration comes from the beautiful fall colors on this wonderfully decorated porch:

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It had been awhile since I pulled out my Distress Inks for the "smoosh" technique, but the latest Simon Says Card Kit, ''Thanks and Leaves" seemed perfect for it. There are a variety of different sized and shaped leaves in the set. I smooshed several different Distress Inks on my glass mat, and simply smooshed the stamps in them, and stamped them on a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper. I first tried spritzing the stamps with a mist of water, but decided I liked the effect better without it. After stamping, I trimmed the piece down and added it to the side of a Canyon Clay (PTI) top-folded card. A thin strip of bronze metallic card added a bit of glitz.

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Once that was completed, I hunted through my drawer of embossing powders and discovered an old one called Woven Tapestry. It was almost a perfect match for the strip of bronze paper. The sentiment is from a Simon Says set "Birthday Flowers," part of a card kit from 2016. 

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The card still needed a "little something," so I layered some gold and copper sequins and added them as a final touch. 

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After nearly a week of cold, rainy days we're having a glorious autumn day. Our Healthy Living class at the refugee center finally got outside to walk this afternoon instead of doing exercises in the gym! Hoping the rain holds off for treat and treating tomorrow night, but it doesn't look likely.

A CASE for an Anniversary

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I lost track of time, and needed an anniversary card ASAP. Sometimes I see a card on a blog, and it prompts me to buy the stamp set. That happened last month when I saw this card by Yana Smakula using a new set from Pretty Pink Posh. When my friend and I were in Buffalo spending our garage sale "money," this set was available and I picked it up. It's a very close CASE of Yana's card–I gold embossed the image, changed the sentiment, and used some different Copic marker combinations, but otherwise, stuck close to her design. One thing I loved about Yana's card was she took a wreath designed to be a circle and stretched it out into an oval which worked perfectly for my card as well. CASEing someone's design (which I try not to do too often) definitely shortens the time it takes to create a nice card.

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I chose a lighter cardstock for the base, as well. This is Papertrey Ink's Rustic Cream which took the Copics quite well. It's not often I make a truly one-layer card, and I gave thought to added some embellishments but decided the business of the wreath was more than enough. I added some sparkle to a few of the larger images with a Nuevo clear glitter pen.

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The orange glittery envelope is from the latest Simon Says kit and was just perfect for getting this in the mail with a bit of sparkle, too.

The coloring gave me a chance to try a few new blending colors with my Copic markers. Earlier this summer I purchased the Waffle Flower "Color Swatches" stamp, and created a notebook for samples of my Copics. I expect to expand it to include my various watercolors as well. It's already proven to be a good reference.

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On the left are samples of the green Copic markers I own, and on the right blending combinations using those markers.

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I have a two-page spread for each color, and probably will have to add some more pages for blending charts. When I was coloring the school bus for Caleb's first day of school card, it was easy to come to this page and see which of the blending combos might work the best.

During my summer reorganization and purge, I also invested in an insert for my Raskog cart that holds Copic markers. It's designed to hold an entire collection of Copics which I will never have (nor do I need). I've been collecting Copics for about 10 years now, and have pretty much everything I will ever need. The insert came from Etsy, and holds all of my Copics as well as my set of Tombow markers. Now when I want to color, I pull the Raskog cart up to my desk and easily pull out (and replace) the markers easily. 

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I wasn't 100% sure I'd be happy with this, and ordering from Etsy is a bit of a risk since it couldn't be returned, but I couldn't be happier with the purchase. 

 

 

Take Three Thursday: Halloween Decorations

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Halloween is less than a week away. I have yet to do much decorating, (not a pumpkin in sight,) but on one of my walks this week, I spotted some cute Halloween decorations in the neighborhood. 

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This string of bright orange witches' hats caught my eye immediately, and then I saw the reflection of them in the window.

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A more traditional arrangement, and one that I'd like in my yard. I do have an idea for a stack of pumpkins, but I'm not sure if I'll manage to find what I need before Halloween. This transcends Halloween, and will still be appropriate until the U.S. Thanksgiving at the end of November. That's if the squirrels don't get to them. One year the squirrels ate right through all the pumpkins on our steps.

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This one made me chuckle! I love those striped witch's legs hanging out of the pumpkin as well as the black cat poking out from the bottom one. I have one more photo, but since this is Take Three Thursday, I'll save it in case I have a post for Halloween. Linking in with Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards.

Papertrey Ink October 2018 Blog Hop & Time Out: Giving Thanks

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It's the 25th of the month, so it must be the monthly Papertrey Ink Blog Hop, one of my favorite challenges. This month's inspiration piece features a chalkboard sign, pumpkins, and gourds among other fall motifs. 

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The main focus is the chalkboard sign, and it's been a long time since I played around with the chalkboard look on a card. I started there and once the background was "chalked," embossed a sentiment from "Giving Thanks," a new to me Papertrey set. I absolutely love the fonts in this sentiment; it's one of the reasons I added the set to a recent order. I attached a "Pierced Frame" in black to the chalkboard and tucked a pumpkin and two gourds from "Simply Gourd-eous" within the frame. Although I used the coordinating dies to cut the pumpkin and gourds I ended up fussy cutting them to eliminate the thin white borders from the dies.

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I originally thought I'd mount both pieces on a top-folding black card, but when I looked again at the inspiration piece, I decided to use Scarlet Jewel cardstock to mimic the frame on the chalkboard in the photo. It's hard to see, but I used my Chai distress cube to distress the Scarlet Jewel cardstock much like the frame in the photo. 

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The pumpkin and gourds needed a little more definition so I added some Polychromos colored pencils to areas to enhance them a bit. Off to PTI to see what others made of this photo.

I'm also entering this in the current Time Out Challenge. It's a quote this time about gratitude; perfect timing.

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Guest Designer – CASology for the “Scary” Challenge

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Guest Designer Badge

I'm so pleased and honored to be asked to be the guest designer for this week's CASology challenge! Here's the cue card:

 

Week 318 - Scary

Once my grandchildren were old enough to appreciate getting a card in the mail, I began to accumulate a few stamps for each of the holidays. Since they are still quite young, there was nothing truly scary in my collection, but I decided I could increase the scare factor a bit by drawing spooky mouths on each of the die cut ghosts from Poppystamps, "Group of Ghosts. Then I found the perfect sentiment in a Papertrey Ink Mini-Market kit, "Halloween Pin-ups," and had the basic elements for my card.

CASology specializes in clean and simple cards—one of the reasons I enjoy the challenge. Typically, a significant amount of "white space" is required. In this case, that space needed to be black to enhance the "scary" factor.

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I wanted the ghosts to be emerging into the night sky, so chose some pumpkins from Papertrey Ink's "Friendship Jar: Autumn" to set before the ghosts. They were colored with Copics and fussy cut. They also add a bit of needed color to the card.

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Finally, I embossed the sentiment in white. I ended up making two identical cards, one for each set of grandchildren. Many thanks to Melissa for the kind invitation to guest design this week.

I'd also like to enter this card in the Inspired By: Halloween challenge.

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Five in Five: October

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Once again I'm late to the party! I missed a couple of opportunities so this week on a walk down a city street, I challenged myself to take five photos in five minutes. It's not a block with much beauty–a row of multiple family homes, some woods, a school and a hospital, but I managed to find five pleasing subjects in less than five minutes.

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As you can see we're still waiting for the leaves to change color. These red leaves are among the very few reds–most of the colored leaves are a pale yellow. Not sure what has caused the delay, but I'm thinking the colors may be disappointing this year. I'm joining in with Sandie for her 5 in 5 meme. It's one of my faves, despite the fact that I almost never managed to post on the fifth! Fortunately, she gives us until the 25th to get our post up. Click on the link to see a charming sculpture and read the backstory about launching lifeboats with the help of horses during the the late 1800's.

Inktober: Part 2

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We're more than halfway through October, and despite the travel and busy calendar, I've managed to keep up with my Inktober project. I haven't shared any of the cards I'm making with the list of prompts from Louise Gale, so I thought I'd share the first fifteen.

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I'm pretty happy with the way they've turned out, especially considering how sporadic I am with my sketching. The prompts from top left were:  rose, gingko leaf, trillium, poplar leaf, chrysanthemum, seed pods, fern, poppy, daisy, dogrose leaf, lavender, start anise seed pod, dahlia, fan palm, and cosmos. Not having photographs of my own, or actual specimens to work from I had to rely on Google searches for photographs and drawings. Now I need to get back to the lessons in Louise's course. 

Autumn Colors

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I certainly didn't anticipate that it would take me two weeks to get back to the blog after our trip to Michigan and Wisconsin. We had a lovely road trip and a wonderful stay with Sarah and her family. As frequently happens, after a good time away, our calendars were very full when we got home. Just now, I'm getting back to the craft room, and having some time to play. I have quite a few new products to try out, but today's card actually features some "oldie but goodies:"  Papertrey Ink's "Friendship Jar: Autumn," and a small stamp set that was part of a scrapbooking kit from Gossamer Blue several years ago. I can't remember the last time I ordered a scrapbook kit, but when I did I particularly liked those from Gossamer Blue. 

This card is for the current Time Out Challenge: Colorful.

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I wish the autumn colors here were as colorful as the ones on my card, but the trees have been very slow here to change colors. It's turned quite cold in the last few days so we'll see what effect that has on the colors. Here's my entry to the "Colourful" challenge.

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I started with a textured card I found in my closet looking for something else. It was prefolded, and as you will see in the next photo, a small border peeked out from the inside. The colorful pumpkins and leaves are from the Friendship Jar set, colored with Copic markers, and fussy cut. The sentiment and frame are from the Gossamer Blue set and I embossed them in gold.

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I trimmed a small strip of patterned paper from a pack by Sunny Studio that I picked up in Buffalo the last time I was there, and adhered it to the bottom of the inside of the card. It accentuates the browns of the acorns in the fall cluster. Finally I added three small gold sequins to pick up the gold from the embossed sentiment. I'm not sure how I'll use this card. It could easily become a thank you note, or even a birthday card with the right inside sentiment. 

 

 

CASology Challenge: Gratitude

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I have a quick and easy card for this week's CASology Challenge on Gratitude.

Week 315 - Gratitude

I like to have small thank you notes on hand to send out whenever the occasion warrants. I love the 4-bar cards made by Paper Source and also like the ones by Memory Box. This card was a Paper Source card that seemed to be the perfect autumn shade of green. 

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The die cut is from Papertrey Ink's Make-It Market Kit, Herb Garden. I added a thin twine bow, and stamped a sentiment from my very favorite Penned Elegance set, also by Papertrey Ink. Couldn't be easier, although it would be even nicer if I had a whole set of these ready to set out—perhaps another goal for October!

Take Three Thursday: Inktober

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I decided to participate in Inktober–an online challenge to draw an image in ink each day of October. Although the official Inktober site provides prompts for each day, I am using Louise Gale's prompts. I purchased her book, Botanical Mandalas, some time ago, and am in the midst of taking one of her online classes now. For those prompts, I'm drawing on 3X4 cards to create an inspiration deck to use in creating mandalas if I ever get that far. But on Day 2 I decided to also make some drawings based on some objects I've found in Sarah's yard, as well as a pumpkin I bought at the store the other day. These drawing are in a sketchbook, and I've not set any expectations for the number I'll complete during the month. Here are the first three. I took the photos with my phone on Sarah's kitchen table, and didn't see the shadows until I uploaded them this evening. If I wait to retake the photos tomorrow when the light is better, I'll be too late for Mary-Lou's meme, Take Three Thursday! 

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It's been a long time since I did any sketching, and I'm pretty happy with how these turned out, given how little practice I've had in the last year. The Inktober drawing can be all ink or colored in any way you'd like. I'm using my new Altenew watercolor set which is perfect for traveling. 

It's not too late to join in the Inktober challenge!