Spooky Goings On

This week, my children (well, two of them, my 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter) have been in a frenzy of Halloween excitement. I've never really paid it much attention myself, but their excitement is quite infectious. My daughter asks me about 5 times a day how many days left until 31st! I am not keen on them 'Trick or Treating' though as I know that many people do not 'support' Halloween for a variety of reasons and would feel uncomfortable opening their door to hoards of unfamiliar children on the trail of chocolate and sweets.

I am happy for them to carve a pumpkin - in a happy face though as we also have a 2 year old son and I am trying to keep the event as 'unscary' as possible. Our pumpkin is usually more about the autumn harvest than celebrating anything spooky. We'll let them dress up too, but in fairly benign costumes (most likely as a princess and Batman, rather than gore or horror - they are only little!), but instead of Trick or Treating, I have suggested that they visit the neighbours we know to deliver an edible gift. I'll warn the neighbours to expect them though. Our son has Asperger's syndrome and I know that he will not cope very well if every door he knocks goes unanswered!

My parents usually host a small gathering for all of their grandchildren at Halloween, complete with apple bobbing and eating doughnuts off of a string. This year, they are unable to host it as my Gran is very ill and they are visiting the hospital every day. Instead, I think my Mum is buying up half the confectionery aisle at the supermarket for the Grandchildren to share. I think my children will have enough sweets from them that they certainly won't need to Trick or Treat!

As we'll will be delivering little treats to our neighbours, my daughter told me firmly that I needed to make cards as well. I've made a few as I would never hear the end of it otherwise! I have to say that I have enjoyed it though, even if I am a bit of a Halloween humbug! In my defense, it comes from being at a birthday party on Halloween when I was 6 years old and the outside of the house was pelted with eggs and flour bombs as we left the party to go home. I know now that it was just mindless yobs who attacked a party of little children, but I was terrified at the time.

Anyway, on to the important bit of my rambling post - the card! It is made using the cute L'il Spook digi stamp from Pollycraft. Instead of my usual Promarkers, coloured this one with Aquamarkers and Stampin' Up! watercolour pens. I added doodling with a Letraset fineliner in black and a white gel pen. I layered the image on to textured yellow card cut using my lovely new Grand Nestabilities (I know I keep saying it, but I love large cards and large dies!). Again, I doodled stitching around the edge of the die cut. I made an A5 base card from purple card and covered the front in strips of patterned papers. I punched a star border along one edge of each strip and overlaid each one on the layer below so that the 'holes' revealed the colour below. I ruffled the edges of each strip a little bit to add texture too. The card was finished of with a double cross-over wrap of yellow elastic, a little green tag and a trio of yellow buttons.

Unusually for me, I would like to enter my card into a few challenges this week. Pollycraft's 'Spooky Goings On', Crafty Boots 'Autumn or Halloween', Daisy Doodles 'Halloween', Crafty Cardmakers 'Cute with a dark twist', Paper Creations Ink 'Halloween' and Top Tip Tuesday 'Trick or treat'. I only usually enter one at a time, but thought I would go mad today!

A Cause for Celebration

As I have mentioned here previously, I have been working on an album for some friends who married last year. Unfortunately, I have only managed hasty snaps of the pages as they are too large to scan in and I have yet to ask my resident expert to photograph them for me.

This page is quite masculine deliberately because it features the groom's sons. I wanted to lighten it slightly with an injection of my theme colours, so I chose to add texture and colour at the same time with lots of different ribbons. I tied the colours in again with flocking on all of the stamped areas (stamps from Stampin' Up!). The scalloped edge paper is from Papermania. The celebrate wording is printed onto Safmat from Letraset and the paper behind the photograph is from Papermania's capsule collection. It isn't clear on my poor photo, but I have embossed around the image and around the medallion stamp which adds detail without clutter.

I would like to submit this layout as an entry into Crafty Ribbons' challenge this week. They have a great prize of an autumnal tones ribbon bundle, which I would love to win and use of my humble crafting projects.

Alien Adventure

Having been working on cards for men this weekend, I thought I would make a card for a younger member of the male gender. This card is for a friend of my son who will soon be 7. It is made with the Stamp Fairy challenge in mind, which, this fortnight, is based on one of their sketches.

The card base is 8x8, so it is actually made from two card sheets joined together with the seam inside disguised by the insert. The central base panel is iridescent paper from Kanban. It is hard to photograph, so the colours don't look as though they go together - but trust me, they do! It is green with a sheen of purple in the right light. I embossed around the outside of this layer and infilled the area with purple Promarker and Sakura gelly roll pens. It doesn't look like it in the photo, but it makes the central panel really stand out against the white border. The scalloped circle was hand-cut with a pair of fancy scissors borrowed from my 5 year old daughter's craft cupboard! Most of the papers are Cosmo Cricket, with a little Papermania thrown in for good measure! The cute alien stamp is, of course, from Stamp Fairy, coloured with Promarkers and Flex Markers with a little doodling using a Letraset 0.5mm drawing pen. The sentiment was stamped onto white card which I inked up to tone in with the alien background layer. The three circles at the top left were cut from a 6x6 paper sheet, accented with Sakura gelly roll and glaze pens then layered up with foam dots. I love the circular foam dots (from The Range) as they are easy to peel and the 'left over' sticky foam is great for giving dimension to larger areas. They are great value too at just 99p per pack. I added lots of doodle detail all over the card and also used very thin strips of paper along my main stripes just for extra dimension and detail without cluttering the overall look of the project.

Polkadoodles Challenge Week 33

As I am a confirmed Polkadoodles addict, I thought I would have a go at one of their weekly cardmaking challenges. This week's challenge has been set by team member Ruth and it's quite a tricky one! The theme of the challenge is 'Single Layer Cards', either printing or stamping directly on the card, and only using minimal embellishments to finish it off.

For someone like me who struggles with the 'less is more' concept, this was a challenge indeed. I really did have to restrain myself!

I used the 'Mummy' black and white digi stampi from the fabulous 'Sundae of Seasons' CD-Rom (available from Polkadoodles of course!). I coloured the Mummy using the new Flex Markers from Letraset, then hand stitched around the image with a thick cotton floss to give the impression of a red layer under the image. To add another 'fake' layer, I coloured in a rectangle around the Mummy and red stitching, again using Flex Markers. To enhance the effect, I added faux running stitches using a white Sakura pen around the rectangle, which makes it pop out from the card a little bit more. I edited one of Nikky's sentiments from the same CD and printed it directly on to the card. As I couldn't help myself, I finished the project off with a short piece of Cosmo Cricket ribbon woven through the card, tied in a knot.

It is my birthday in October, so I think nearer the time, I will leave this card laying about in the hope that one of my three little ones writes it out and gives it to me, along with birthday breakfast in bed and a whole load of crafty goodies for a present (I'm compiling a Polkadoodles wish list kids, just in case you were wondering what Mummy wants for her birthday - the last one in my 30's, so don't forget 39 'kisses' in the card lovely children!!).