It's a Pumpkin Thing - Happy Halloween

We didn't have a jack-o-lantern this year, but we did have........

Pumpkin Donuts

Pumpkin Ice Cream

Pumpkin Peeps

and a Pumpkin Moon in October

Teapot Tuesday 117

Well I guess I had to make up for being absent last week at the tea party so I made two cards for this weeks challenge.  One to go with the teapot and one to go with the story and the destination station. 

Cindy always comes up with the most fantabulous stories - read this - and she gives us the greatest opportunities to find some way to be inspired. 

The destination station is the stepson of one of our teapotters - a young man who was attacked and bitten by a friend's dog.  He has some intense healing to go through in the near future.  The story Cindy wove around the teapot also dealt with one of this fellow's passions - Nascar racing.  Well unfortunately, I know very little about Nascar racing, but thinking ahead, I had picked up this kid's stamp set at a $Tree not too long ago and I was able to use it on this card...........

It's from the Disney movie Cars (I think) and I stamped, colored, and cut out three of them.  I used a couple of embossing folders - the diamond plate in silver and the herring bone in black for the tire tracks.  I got out my Just Rite stamp set and stamped the sentiment - Hope You Have A Speedy Recovery.

The second card was purely inspired by the teapot.  I've had this Alma Lynn stamp for a long time - I got it on clearance from I don't know where.  But I knew it would be perfect for this challenge. 

She is stamped in Basic Gray on watercolor paper and I used my aquapainter and ink pads to color her.  The red card base is stamped with Trendy Trees in VersaMark - not sure you can see that in the picture. 

I gave her a pink glove because of this......... Pink Glove Dance Sequel

And now before I ask you to join me in the gallery I'm going to ask that you say a prayer for a colleague of mine.  We found out today that one of the teachers that I work with is losing her battle with cancer.  She was diagnosed just this August with Stage IV ovarian cancer and it has been a very tough couple of months for her and her family.  The surgery and chemo she has had has not been successful and we were told today that it's a matter of a few days.  Such sad, sad news. 

A Walk Around the Yard

It was a gorgeous afternoon yesterday and although my headache was still with me I couldn't resist trying to capture some of the color in the backyard.

I love the red leaves of the dogwood......

And these maple leaves on the driveway.......

My little pig totem is surrounded by leaves......

And this pale pink daisy was a surprise blooming up through the shrubbery......

And though the sun wasn't quite as bright to show it off, this is one of my favorite views.....

Halloween Goodies

Rachel was here this weekend and just in time for me to finish up the little Halloween gifts I had for her to take back to her girlfriends.  I usually send them socks on the holidays and there is a pair of socks here wrapped up with a fall themed reusable shopping bag that folds up nicely and is secured by a velcro strap.  Of course I stuck some candy in between the layers!  Her being here this weekend saved me a trip to the post office.  Well actually I do have one to mail, but at least I saved a little on the postage.  It was fun making these though. 

I used the Two Tags Die embossed with Vintage Wallpaper for the base of this wrap.  The image is from Greeting Card Kids and is watercolored and run through the Big Shot with my Ovals die.  The sentiment comes from Teeny Tiny Wishes and is stamped in Concord Crush on Whisper White, punched out with the word window punch and the edges were daubered with Pumpkin Pie ink. 

It was so relaxing to watercolor these images and luckily I had them done earlier this week.  I've had a killer headache most of the weekend and almost didn't get this pulled together in time. 

NJ Lighthouse Challenge 2010

Eleven lighthouses, two museums, and one life-saving station in two days.  Approximately 450 miles in the car and many pictures later with a new camera.  Just the lighthouses today as I'm still figuring this new software out and although HWNSNBP (otherwise now also known as the Clipboard Carrier) did all of the driving (thank you dear) I am beat.

Tinicum Rear Range Lighthouse - in Paulsboro on the Delaware - gives aid to the ships coming up the Delaware by marking the channel

Finn's Point Lighthouse - another range light that aids in navigation on the Delaware - from the top you can see the Delaware Memorial Bridge and Delaware

East Point Lighthouse - to me the most picturesque - on the Delaware Bay

Cape May Lighthouse - a very busy state park location with a bird observatory, beaches, and small museum.

Hereford Inlet Lighthouse - another picturesque setting with gardens in front and behind

Absecon Lighthouse - although the tallest lighthouse in the state, it is dwarfed by the highrise hotels and casinos of Atlantic City and sits almost obscured in their shadow. 

Tuckers Island Lighthouse (Recreation) - the original "fell into the sea".  This is created at Tuckerton Seaport

Barnegat Lighthouse - the closest to the water of all the lighthouses we visited.  From the top, looking down you will see the water of the inlet below.   

Sea Girt Lighthouse - contains a maritime museum with a lot of information on the rescue of the survivors of the Morro Castle cruise ship that caught fire off the coast of NJ in 1934

Sandy Hook Lighthouse - the oldest active lighthouse in the United States dates back to colonial times  

Twin Lights of Navesink as seen from across the Shrewsbury River - some say the towers were based on chess pieces

Odds and Ends

We had a downline meeting the last week of September and these are the projects that we worked on.  Click on the picture to see them up close.   The card in the front uses the new letterpress folder.  The Candy Wrapper Die came out real cute when we also embossed it with the Spider Web embossing folder.  See that cute little witch there!  The spooky item is a tube container.  The lace is a handle and there is waffle paper all around the top.  And lastly, a sweet magnetic bookmark.

I've mentioned having some tooth trouble recently - a root canal that had to be redone.  This last month has not been very pleasant dealing with the pain and the effects of the antibiotics.  I originally started going to this particular dental practice because of a sign I saw in their waiting room "We Cater to Cowards"  and for the most part they did.  I've often said I'd rather be giving birth that having my teeth worked on.  Well, my dentist retired and the practice expanded and somehow along the way, I think they forgot how to do that catering.  Would you want to see this when you sit down?  This is from the second visit.  On the first visit there was a lot more on the tray.

And finally for now, the screening project on the back porch at the condo is just about done, but not quite enough to keep this inquisitive butterfly from getting side-tracked from it's migratory path.  HWNSNBP actually spotted this and told me to get my camera.  My pocket camera was what was handy and I had to stand on my toes to reach up high enough to get this picture.  I really like the contrast of the screen in the background with the blue sky.  How about you? 

Mini VSN - Inspired by Cloud Nine

After seeing the Cloud Nine papers that one of our teapotters - Kelly - posted in the Mini VSN challenge tonight, I thought I'd give this a try.  Here is the paper that I picked for my inspiration.........

And here is my card.......

I'm not really that happy with the coloring of my leaves, but you only get 45 minutes to do these challenges.  So let's see - the image is Wired Leaves from Stampendous which I stamped in VersaMark and Basic Gray and then embossed with clear EP.  After I colored the leaf with Ruby Red and More Mustard using a blender pen and my ink pad, I covered the image with my VersaMark pen and then clear embossed the complete image.  Next I took some sponges, Rich Razzleberry, Marina Mist, and Not Quite Navy ink and sponged around the image and the edges of the panel. 

The dots on the leaves are part of the image and not randomly added by me, but I did glitter them with some MS Lapis glitter.   The flower was made from the Floral Fusion Die in Summer Sun.  I daubered the edges of the petals with some More Mustard, curled the petals slightly and then added the Fire brad.  The decorated panel was added to a base of Night of Navy.

Note to self:  Remember to use the embossing buddy before glittering!  The excess glitter was very difficult to get off the embossed leaves.

Boss's Day

Saturday, oddly enough, is Boss's Day, but we're going to celebrate it today.  I saw a great card on Lauri's blog and was going to case that, but the sentiment had me stumped.  So looking over my stamps, I decided on this design. 

I use some hemp twine on the very right side of the card weaving it into the holes in the Early Espresso panel.  The leaves from Day of Gratitude were stamped in VersaMark on the Cherry Cobbler panel.  These were joined on the Old Olive card base and a strip of Autumn Spice DSP (a scrap) was added over the seam.  I added a length of twill and then a row of stamped and cut out acorns (also from Day of Gratitude).  I actually took my markers and colored in the stark vanilla lines in the acorn caps in contrasting colors.  I think it kind of makes them look a little more dimensional.  The sentiment was handwritten in Cherry Cobbler Marker and sponged around the edges with Chocolate Chip. 

  

The Hope You Can Cling To Challenge 5 was to use twine so I think this card will qualify for that. 

ETA - Check that - I think all the HYCCT challenge cards are supposed to go to a specified place. 

Teapot Tuesday 115

Whew - can you believe we've been to 115 tea parties?  Wow!  And each one of the so much fun.  Really - I do enjoy doing these challenges.

This week we're a little timely with the holiday coming up - Halloween.  As usual, our hostess Cindy has a wonderful story to go along with this teapot............

My ghost is made from an oak leaf from the Leaves #2 Die on the Big Shot.  I just trimmed the end near the stem to make the head of the ghost.  I used a dauber to highlight the edges of the ghost and drew on his face.  There are actually two layers between which I added the string - or spider silk - to attach the ghost to the embossed spider web.  He is definitely movable.  

I used my brayer to ink up my embossing folder with Bashful Blue and Orchid Opulence ink before I ran it through the Big Shot. 

The bats are from Fang-tastic and popped up and the pumpkin uses the new oval punch.  The sentiment was stamped in Concord Crush, punched out with the word window punch and highlighted with Pumpkin Pie.

I bought these little sparkly spiders this summer and was just waiting to use them - thank goodness for this challenge!!!

Our Destination Station this week is a little boy named Jacob.  Jacob just had his tonsils out and unfortunately they also found some cancer so he won't be trick-or-treating this year, but he'll be showered with some wonderful handmade cards.

Speaking of which, don't forget to check out the gallery.

TLC Challenge - Wet Paper Stamping

This morning I had a little bit of extra time before I had to leave for work because it was an In-Service day.  I managed to get in my exercise and then I made the mistake of sitting down at the computer.  When I saw the Technique challenge for today I had an idea that I wanted to try. 

This technique involves wetting watercolor paper first and then stamping an image on the wet paper.  The image blurs because it is wet and the next step would be to use a heat gun to dry it.  Once the paper is dry, you stamp over the image.  You'll see my Paisley Print oak leaves are done this way.  I stamped them in Pumpkin Pie on the wet paper, heat dried it and overstamped with Cherry Cobbler. (Sounds like a dessert special doesn't it?)

That's about all I got done before work.  Then when I came home I stamped a Paisley Print Pumpkin in Pumpkin Pie, rolled it in Cherry Cobbler and used my markers to color the stem and vine.

I had a Starbucks coffee sleeve on my table and I pulled it apart to get to the corrugation.  After I squared this piece up, I tied a piece of hemp around it, placed the pumpkin on it and added the button with the linen thread.  Oh, almost forgot - the sentimenet "Gratitude" was added from the Day of Gratitude set using Cherry Cobbler and my Stamp-a-ma-jig.

The leaf layer is backed by Cajun Craze, then Autumn Spice DSP on a Cherry Cobbler card base.  I kind of like this technique and will probably give it another try.  What do you think?

Dollar Store Eye Ball

I love visiting "dollar stores" as some of you may know.  You never know what you're going to find there and how you might use it.  Saturday I had some time to myself in the afternoon and was able to visit one of my favorite dollar stores - Dollar Tree.  I was looking for something particular for Boss's Day but I came away with a basketful of things as usual.  I was in the mood to do some Halloween crafting and I came up with this project - an Eye Ball.

The ingredients included 2 bags of wiggly eyes ($2), one styrofoam ball ($1), a small ceramic incense burner ($1), a twist tie, glue, toothpicks, and screen scraps which I already had on hand, and some glitter (which was an after thought I'll relate below).

I spilled out the wiggly eyes and started gluing them to the styrofoam ball, but I thought it needed a little more, so I got the glitter and also a pie pan to help control the mess.  Once I decided to do that, I realized that I would not be able to hold it without the eyes sliding all around in the glue so I stuck a toothpick into the ball to help me hold it as I worked and used another toothpick to help spread the glue.  After the eyes were on a section, I sprinkled the glitter on to fill in the gaps between them, tapping off the extra into the pie plate.  I continued this until the entire ball was covered.  Then it had to sit and dry for a while.

While it was drying, I took the strip of screening (this is flexible plastic screening leftovers) and gathered it into a bow using the twist tie in the center.  I used the tails of the twist tie to wrap around the incense burner and then set the Eye Ball on top.  Voila!  Total cost $4. 

I did take a soft brush the next day and gently brushed off the errant glitter.  I'm planning to put this on my counter at school - do you think it's too creepy for 3rd-5th graders?

Hope You Can Cling To - Dabble With Scrabble

We were away yesterday so I didn't get to play along on the day of the challenge, but I knew I had to when I saw it.  Our Teapot Queen, aka Mothermark, aka Cindy Motherway, was the hostess for the Dabble With Scrabble Challenge in the ongoing month of challenges in honor of Breast Cancer awareness. 

The rules - yes there are some - were simple:  Make a square card.  Make it Pink.  And give it a minimum of 4 other squares in the design/layout.  Oh yes, and since the challenge is about Scrabble - include a word if you want to.

I had something different pictured in my head, and though it didn't work out, I'm pretty satisfied with this.

I started by stamping the Medallion image in VersaMark and embossed with clear embossing powder.  Then I used a combination of VersaMark and Pear Pizzazz to stamp the leaves from Just Believe.  Again I embossed with clear embossing powder.  Then I took some sponges and using circular motion, rubbed on some Rose Red and Regal Rose Ink in the background.

The letters were stamped on 1" squares using my Lovely Letters Alphabet.  You'll see in the picture below that I used my Pear Pizzazz marker to highlight the leaf motif on the letter.  Then I daubered Rose Red on the edges of each tile. 

I used the Scallop Trim Border punch on the white piece and added a strip of Stitched Poly ribbon in Pear Pizzazz.  The letter tiles are popped up with dimensionals over the ribbon.  The flower is a combination of the Itty Bitty Shapes punch and the Boho Blossom punch.  The flower center is one of the new Jewels Basic Rhinestones.

This card was made with all Stampin' Up products.  Let's go see what everyone else did - click here.

Thank You For the Flowers

One of the teachers brought in some lovely end-of-the-season hydrangeas from her garden to put on my counter in the office.  She put them in a cute little green pitcher.   Almost everyone has commented on how pretty they look, I just had to tell her.  And what better way than in a card.  I used the hydrangea flower from the hostess set Because I Care.  I stamped it in Basic Gray and then used my watercolor crayons and aquapainter to color it.  The sentiment and the leafy frame are stamps from Just Believe. 

I layered Pixie Pink and Pink Passion onto a Pear Pizzazz card base and used my Pear Pizzazz ribbon stitched poly for the bow. 

I meant to take a picture of the flowers today and forgot.  I'd love to let the hydrangeas dry out and save them for awhile - if only they would keep their wonderful color!

Teapot Tuesday 114

I am so coming in the back door to the tea party this week and I'll tell you why.  Take a look at this teapot....

Cindy's story that goes with this teapot is another winner - you can check that out here.  "If you embarrass us and blow up your computer then you have to come in the back door. And while you are back there, check to see if you tripped on the cord and the back door is unplugged!" - is what Cindy says......

Well, I didn't exactly blow up my computer, in fact, I was trying to get it fixed.  I'm talking about my work computer at school.  I was getting pop-ups and reported it to our tech guy.  He tried fixing it and installed something that caused it all to go "corrupt".  That meant a new hard drive.  Or should I say a rebuilt one.  It took the better part of the day on Friday for him to rebuild an old drive and then come over to our school and try to install it.  He said it would be easy - it was not.  And, although it is "fixed" everything is new again - my favorites are gone, my photo software and Print Shop are not installed, and all my programs are in a newer version which means almost everything that I'm working on needs tweaking.  Well, I suppose it could be worse and all my files could have been lost! 

But anyway, seeing the teapot for this week just reminded me of my computer woes and this is what I came up with..........

There's a little bit of the dreaded blue screen spewing forth the inside out of the computer.  The gears are punched out of some old dsp, and the background is stamped using Trendy Trees.  The sentiment is stamped using Rough Type.   Colors are Sahara Sand, Marina Mist, Pear Pizzazz, Bashful Blue, So Saffron, and I think Certainly Celery.

Come on, let's go see what everyone else came up with in the gallery.

World Cardmaking Day

Saturday was World Cardmaking Day and I decided to play along with some challenges.  The first was the Hope You Can Cling to challenge to turn a holiday pink.  I thought the little witch from Fang-tastic would look cute in pink.  What do you think? 

Next I decided to try another one of the Hope You Can Cling To challenges - Bring in the Brown.  The challenge was to use pink and brown.  I used my new Just Believe set with Regal Rose and Chocolate Chip.

And finally, I tried the Inspiration Challenge for today.  The website inspiration was Studio Nommo and you'll find my inspiration here.

My new Amuse Artic Fox is traveling through SU's Tree's Three with a sentiment from Cute by the Inch.  The DSP is Autumn Spice and I used the new color Cajun Craze in this. 

My cold is finally breaking up and my tooth is settling down - I think mostly because of the antibiotic and ibuprofen I've been taking.new toys  We hit the Kirkside Garage sale early this morning and then ran some errands.  I'm sorry I procrastinated most of the early afternoon after we got back because I really had fun putting these cards together.   

October - Saving the Hooters!

I was checking some blogs out a couple of nights ago and came across this post by Kris Kilkenny.  She inspired me to make my own Hooters for some of my friends who were going with me to a Longaberger Basket/Vera Bradley bingo.  It's October and Breast Cancer Awareness month, thus the message to "Save the Hooters!" 

The Pretty in Pink container is the milk carton die and it's holding two milk chocolate truffles.  The Melon Mambo roof is the smallest scallop from the Scallop Square Duo die.  The owls are punched as well as the leaves, flower, and sentiment tag.  I hand wrote my message and added a stick on pearl to the center of the flower.  I gave the owls wiggly eyes.  I punched a hole in the top of the roof with my crop-a-dile and added the pink taffeta bow.  And the last touch was to add some Breast Cancer Awareness ribbons to the owls vests.

Thanks for the inspiration Kris and I hope anyone reading this is inspired to "Save the Hooters" this month!