Sites of the week

Happy Halloween crafty friends! Pumpkins…check; candy…check; costumes…check; kid who still refuses to wear hat that goes with Yoda costume…check. Nic is now going to be Anakin. The cloak is the same and we are just adding a light saber to the whole get up and hoping he won’t whack too many kids over the head with it!

Friday’s playdate was lots of fun! Here are a couple pictures…

Gotta love ideas snagged from Pinterest!

Nic and friend having cupcakes…or at least some frosting!

Ellie helping a friend make her spider hat {Ellie has hers on}.

All in all, it was a lot of fun! I’m already getting the itch to do another at Christmas {shhh…don’t tell Tony!}.

What’s a Halloween blog post without a Halloween project? Today I am sharing a card that was inspired by THESE TAGS that I made a couple of weeks ago. I knew that I wanted to use the 3D pumpkin on a card and I love the way that it paired with the “Trick -or- Treat” sentiment from the new Verve set, Boo to You…

Yep, I said **new** set. It wasn’t part of the last release because of some manufacturing hiccups, but it is now available. I love the images and fonts…so elegant and cute at the same time! I used them in combination here on the sentiment panel…

The black panel behind the sentiment panel is a die cut of the Vintage Oval die that I cut it half to make larger. I love the curves of this die!

Detail shot of the 3D pumpkin with leaves from the Bloom and Grow set {cut with the Elegant Leaves die from Verve}, tulle and a button tied off with linen thread…

That’s all for me today, friends! I hope you have a great Halloween and your kids have a blast trick -or- treating tonight!

Well, we survived the Halloween playdate yesterday. It was a lot of fun and the kids were darling! I’m really happy that Tony home from work in time to see all the kids in action. I haven’t even checked out the pics on the camera, but as soon as I do I will be sharing some here…promise {I’m thinking Monday, k?}.

This is the last Saturday of the month…the 5th Saturday of October in which the calendar also holds 5 Fridays and Sundays. Did you see the rumor that this only happens once every 823 years? Who says that stuff? Whomever you are, please stop because I may have believed for minute and now realize that was kinda dumb. I looked it up and here’s the mathematical breakdown on how this does NOT occur every 8 and a {almost} quarter centuries… {source}

For a 31-day month to have 5 Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the first day needs to be a Friday. Each nonleap year has 365 days, which is 52 weeks plus one day [52*7=364; 364+1=365.] So every passing year will ‘push’ the first day of the month forward by one day, defining ‘forward’ as Friday -> Saturday, Saturday -> Sunday, etc. However, if it’s a leap year, the first day of the month will be pushed forward by two days. Since any six-year cycle will contain at least one leap year, this means that the same October calendar should reappear every six years [five one-day pushes forward and one two-day push = one full week covered] unless there are two leap years that fall in that space, in which case the whole cycle will be shifted forward by one day.)

So enough of the geekery, and back to the craftiness on hand here. It’s the last Saturday of the month {as noted above}. On the first Saturday of this month I introduced the October SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY, which is sponsored by the super awesome WALTZING MOUSE STAMPS this month. Here’s the sketch once more…

I seriously LOVE this sketch. Now, you are probably thinking, “Of course you do, you came up with it.” Yes, I did come up with it. I come up with all of the sketches for the entire year in November/December. I do it in word/Photoshop and not with paper. Most of the time it all works out and other times I think, “Oh man, I really should have tried this out with paper panels” because it just does not seem to work out. Fortunately, this time it did work out and this one is a keep in my book! For my second card using the sketch, I created a mini card with the super fun and spooky MIDNIGHT FEAST set from Waltzing Mouse…

Detail shots…

I love how crisp WMS images stamp…

You still have a couple days to play along! You can check out all the details and link your card on THE ORIGINAL OCTOBER SFYTT POST. Happy Stamping!!

TGIF Friends! I’m pretty excited about today! I’m hosting the “Cupcakes and Crafties for Kiddos” playdate/party that I mentioned earlier this week. I’ll have 15 kids ranging from 3 months to 5 years invading my house…eek! We are making a spider hat and a toilet paper tube mummy for our crafts and will have lots of yummies to fill our lil’ monster’s tummies. I’m doing a photo booth like I did for Ellie’s birthday, so I should have some fun pictures to share soon!

This week’s TCP Tuesday is hosted by the super sweet and talented, Julie. She is challenging everyone to use acetate on their card. WOW!…I think it’s been awhile since I broke out the acetate. Now that we are wrapping up the Halloween craftiness, I am moving on to winter/holiday, so I thought that it would be fun to try out an acetate snowflake paired with the oh so cute SHEEPISH set from The Cat’s Pajamas…

Detail of acetate snowflake cut from the TCP Snowflake CutUps die…

I had to add a little something to the snowflake. I cut a red felt heart from the Heart Trio CutUps die. I love the warm texture of the felt to go along with the paper pieced {Echo Park paper} sheep image…

Want to play along? Be sure to check out THIS post on the TCP blog for all the details how you can win the next release in its entirety. I’ve seen the next release and OMG is it ever cute! So, get to stamping and good luck!!

While this doesn’t fit in with the challenge, I still want to share another TCP card that I realized that I had not posted yet from the current release.

This first card uses my favorite lil’ bunny taking flight in OH CHUTE…

This card was so fun to paper piece. If you’ll recall, I am NOT a technique-y person, and paper piecing is about as messy as I prefer to get. I really like how you can piece the whole parachute or each segment. Gotta have options!!

Alright friends, I gotta run and get ready for mayhem! LOL!!

The new releases continue to come at ya from YOUR NEXT STAMP! Today is extra special because there is a fantastic prize up for grabs! You may recall that YNS just started their newest product line…YOUR NEXT DIE! Karen, owner of YNS, is giving the HAPPY HOLIDAYS stamp and coordinating die set to one lucky commenter.

My project today, a tag, is in combination with this week’s YNS Challenge: ABC {Anything But a Card}.

You can find all the info, including PRIZE details, HERE on the YNS blog. I love ABC challenges, because anything goes! Tags, bags, boxes or anything you can come up with…as long as it’s not a card. Have fun with this one and let those creative juices flow! Think of it as a jump start on all those holiday crafties that you have been wanting to do…at least since you saw them on Pinterest, right?!

Here are a couple of detail shots. The Santa is from the new SEASONAL ICONS set and the awesome word block is from the HAPPY HOLIDAYS set {the one that is up for grabs…along with some seriously cool dies to one lucky commenter today!}…

I added some white Flower Soft to the Santa hat for some added visual interest and texture.

Word block embellished white itty bitty rhinestones and partially colored with Copics…

Ready for **YOUR** Next Stamp? Check out these details…

1. Karen’s got a little *early bird* special–Free surprise gift with every purchase PLUS Free Shipping to Canada and the US for orders over $30 (code is YNSHolidays) starting October 21st and ending Nov 2nd.

2. All the stamps and dies will be available for purchase at the YNS Store the day they are released and the full release will be available on November 3rd.

3. Be sure and check out the YNS blog and Facebook page daily for all the new stamp reveals and PRIZES!

Are you all ready for Halloween? I think we are over here! I finally have all the peices to Ellie’s costume. She is going to be Mary Poppins and we went on a hunt to about 5 or 6 stores all over town to get all the bits and pieces to the ensemble. All I have left to do is hot glue some daisies and red berries to the hat. We got a Yoda costume for Nic, but at this point in time he refuses to wear it, so it looks like he will be attending the trick or treat festivities in his Elmo jammies…some things are just not worth the battle!

Other than that, candy and pumpkins are purchased and all craft kits for my “Cupcakes and Crafties for Kiddos” are complete. As for my crafties, I have a Verve-y Halloween card to share today…

Detail shot…

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I used a combination of 2 Verve sets for this card. The sentiment comes from the HAPPY FALL set, which has the perfect sentiment set for all things fall. Then, I used the frame from LOVE NOTES and cut it with the coordination CLASSY LABEL die from Verve. You’ll notice that I used the dotted lines from that frame behind the bats, too! I love the kraft pattern paper that I found at my LSS recently. It’s from Canvas Corp. When I was all done with the card, I kept looking at it and thinking that it needed “something.” That “something” was the black rhinestones that I added to the pattern on the left. That really made a difference…at least to my eye!

ETA to answer a question…The bats are punched out and then covered with black Stickles. The Stickles are still a little wet this pic, so they are not quite so slick looking.

I want to share some pics from the trip to the pumpkin patch this past weekend. It was a lot of fun, until we realized that Ellie was probably allergic to all the hay that we were playing around in!

I used {the free version of} Picnik online photo editing software on this one…

Nic picking up his pumpkin {you’ll have to click on it for full size}…

In case you missed the expression on Nic’s face in that last frame…