Pumpkins!

Last night, my husband and I finally got around to carving our Halloween pumpkins. It's probably been at least 5 years since I have carved one, and I have always done the stereotypical terribly hacked "jack o lantern" face. This year, I wanted to challenge myself. After much inner debate, I ultimately decided to make Samus' Varia Suit helmet.

So we grabbed some hot chocolate, put in the DVD of 30 Days of Night, and got to carving.

I realized through trial and error that it is easier to thin out the pumpkin (for the highlighted sections) by scraping out the inside, instead of carving out the front. The spoon was my weapon of choice for this. On the front, I tried to be as precise as possible, leaving those thin little trails of pumpkin skin. Below is a pic of the final product- The first 2 pics are okay, but once lit up, it looked just the way I imagined!!





My husband, Dave, also did an awesome job with his- Vault Boy from Fallout:

A Festivus for the rest of us

I have to be honest- I made today's card just for a laugh. Papertrey Ink is having their October blog hop, and I wanted to participate! The challenge is to make a holiday card that is NOT a Christmas card.

I went through the possibilities....Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice- I knew everyone else would be doing these. And then it hit me- Festivus! If you're a fan of Seinfeld, you are probably already familiar with this bogus holiday. I made my card with that in mind, complete with an aluminum Festivus pole!

It's not my best work by far, but it was quick and fun to make. I hope this counts for the hop! :)






Update: I just found out that someone else made a Festivus card too!! You can check out Stacy's here. It's a Festivus Miracle!!

EBTKS #25

Good morning! My card today is for Everything but the Kitchen Sink. I ended up flipping the sketch upside down- I couldn't figure out how to make it look right the other way! It took a looooong time for me to select the paper in the stripes. I kept trying different combos until I found one that I loved! I'm happy with how it came out :)

Flashback Friday 4.0

Happy Saturday! Today I am re-posting my first Christmas card that landed on my blog. It's from this post, and I cannot quite remember when I made it-probably a few Christmas' ago. It's also the first time I embroidered on a card.

I am posting it for the current Flashback Friday challenge at Amy's blog...it's so much fun, you should play along!

i {heart} papers birthday!

In celebration of i {heart} paper's birthday, I made a card using their sketch for today's challenge. I always have trouble with ovals/circles, so I changed the shape in the middle to a rectangle, keeping the scallops around it. This was a really quick and easy card to put together!

OTWC wedding card

I know I always say this, but I love the inspiration photos from Off the Wall Craftiness! If you look in the upper right hand corner above, you can see where I got the idea for my card. I'm realizing now that I should have used a brighter, limier (lime-ier?) green near the flowers, and an orangier orange. Oh well!

EIC 110

This is my very first time playing along with the Etsy Inspired Challenge blog. I've always been meaning to check it out, and I'm glad I finally did! This week's inspiration comes from Capturing Creativity. There are lots of fun stuff in Kerry's shop, and I was most excited when I saw this card that she made:

Look at it- the colors, the layout, the sentiment- it's perfect! I tried to pull my favorite elements from her card and inject them into mine, including some felt in the upper left corner:

(check out this post to learn more about me and my relationship with felt!)

Embellish Felt

Today's color inspiration comes courtesy of Embellish Magazine, with the added challenge of using felt. This was certainly a difficult one for me. First of all, the colors are not ones I would typically put together. Secondly, I have a weird thing with felt- I can't touch it! Not sure why, but for as long as I can remember, the feeling of felt really makes me uncomfortable- which posed a problem for this challenge. I ended up wearing a pair of leather gloves while I worked, and it was perfect! Here's what I came up with:




I machine-stitched the felt, and through trial and error figured out a really simple way to do it. I printed an image I liked onto computer paper, placed that on the felt, and sewed over it (see pic below). It was easy to trace the design, and once I flipped it over, it looked beautiful! I hope to use this technique again soon- it was a lot of fun!


(pic of the backside once I was all done)

Languish in Luxurious

Using the gorgeous photo above from this week's Tuesday Trigger, I drew inspiration from the wallpaper and pretty floral arrangement. I went pretty literal with it, as seen below:




I stamped the background, careful to keep everything lined up. The branches are embroidered, and the buds are little french knots (my favorite!). I made the flowers from small pieces of fuchsia paper, and hand-cut the vase from black. Thanks for checking it out!

Pleated Butterfly

I am so excited about this card for the Moxie Fab World's Perfectly Placed Pleats Challenge! I chose to make a pleated butterfly by accordion-folding a piece of white vellum, then cutting it to the shape I liked. To hold the pleats together, I wrapped purple embroidery floss around the "body," then tied a knot at the top for the head, and used a needle to thread the "antenna" through to the back side of the striped cardstock panel.

The purple strip across the bottom was a perfect anchor for the sentiment, and I brought more of the same embroidery floss to the bottom of the card by threading it through 2 blue eyelets.

Thanks for checking it out!

it's almost here...

Yep- Halloween! I can't believe I still have not decided on a costume. My husband and I usually do couples costumes, and we have no idea what to be this year. (previous costumes include Fry and Leela from Futurama, Vincent and Mia from Pulp Fiction, possessed Dana and Louis from Ghostbusters, Peg and Al Bundy). Clearly, we prefer costumes from cool TV/movies. If you have any good costume suggestions, please leave a comment!

I used a color scheme from colourQ and sketch from Lizzie Ann to make this Halloween card.

The eerie tree is heat embossed in black, and I wrapped black tulle around the middle of the card. For the flower, I randomly hand-cut jagged edges on each of the 3 layers, inked them with some black, and used an eyelet for the center.