Sunday, September 26, 2010

OMG!!!! Really...is this my life???

I have to laugh or I will cry. My arthritis is attacking me full force. I can't stand, sit, lay for very long and then on top of it Faith's best friend showed up to spend the night unbeknown-st to me and her mother that she had lice. So did the mom and her sister. They were infested. I have been cleaning their heads for 2 days now. It's crazy. I feel so bad for them. I was up til 3:00 a.m this morning and after delousing Faith's room yet again & I am now off to pick heads. This lice stuff is for the birds!! Really, can't they do something about this? A cure, a preventative other than Tea Tree oil in the shampoo. i am so sick of the smell of it. Luckily...Faith did not catch this. I am praising the Lord for that.

I have a great, fun layout to share using one of Kerri Bradfords digital die cut kits and one in my head. I have to attach things to paper and I am hoping to have them up within the next few days.

See you then! :)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Sweet Treats

Hello everyone! I'm back...finally! No more sickness, no more lice, kids are back in school and the house has been cleaned from top to bottom and I am ready to dig my heels in for the next 3 months, before I go back to college, and do some serious creating from now to Christmas!

Today I am sharing a project that has been bouncing around in my head since Hero Arts released THIS spider web. Now if you know me.... you know I am not big on Halloween. I love to make my kids costumes...even though I grumble through it, I love to carve pumpkins and ok I do occasionally decorate the house but I live in Halloween Central. Yes, Salem, MA and it gets so congested and so crazy around here that I live for November 2nd when all (most) of the tourists have gone back home. This year though I am really excited about a lot of the Halloween releases. I have lots of mini book ideas bouncing in my head and plan to get a jump on them very soon. For now I am just working on little treat bags that I will send in with my daughter for her school party.
Mr & Mrs Spider
I bought the spider templates from My Scrap Chick. I have a lot of her designs. I really love them and you will see many of them to come in the next few weeks.
I started by cutting out the spiders with my Silhouette. My Scrap Chick gives you a file for just about every digital cutter out there. I delete the ones I don't need and only keep the GSD files for my Silhouette. They work great!
Mr Spider
Once everything was cut I went to work decorating and assembling them. I started with the cellophane bag...I used the Hero Arts cling stamp LARGE WEB. I place it on the back of one of my wood mounted Design Block Stamps by HA, instead of an acrylic block and use it that way...it works so well (I store them that way too). I inked it with Stazon ink and then stamped the image. The cellophane bag sticks to the stamp so I flip it over and gently peel it off. It works perfect every time.

Then I went to work on Mr. Spider. I used the Hero Arts new graph background stamp on him. I inked the stamp with Versamark and then I heat embossed him. After that I did his hat. I did it the same way except I used the cling flourish on his hat, I then traced the embossed flourishes with stickles. I use Stardust on almost everything. (I need many of these bottles, I love this one). After it was dry I pop-dotted the brim of his hat and added a star to it. I did his eyes and then a small piece of string for his mouth. the body of him is 2 ovals...one with legs attached, one without the legs. I put the plain oval over the other oval and only sealed the very top with adhesive so that I could put the top of the bag in there and staple it shut. It was super easy!
Mr Spider close up 2

Mrs spider
Mrs. Spider was a little more intricate. I did her basically the same way as him, stamped her with Versamark, heat embossed then added Stickles.
For her hat I pieced together and used 3 different stamps and a star punch. I then used similar color distress inks and inked over the heat embossed images to make the hat pop just a little bit more. After I punched the stars from the purple brim I mounted a bright piece of yellow paper behind it to make the stars shine. For her eyes I cut 2 very small triangles and then cut them into very tiny strips without cutting all the way through to create her eyelashes. I then just added some Stickles to them for extra shine. I stamped another star and cut it out. For her shoes I cut them all out of white paper and then inked them with distress inks so they would match her hat (except for the purple shoes...I used Colorbok chalk ink) I added her face and I used string for her mouth and a little pink heart pearl from Hero Arts for her lips. (sorry for bad picture below. My camera is only good for so long)
Mrs Spider close up 1
I hope you enjoyed. Off to wrestle two very hyper 9 yr old girls into bed and then off to make something for the Operation Write Home weekend going over in the Hero Arts Flickr group!

Happy Haunting's! :)

Supplies used:

Cardstock: Bazzill
Stamps: Hero Arts: Cl318 galaxy of stars, K5175 Houndstooth (yellow on hat), S5101 raindrop background (green on hat), S5213 dots & flowers (orange on hat), CG119 flourish background (spider), CG234 Large web, S5435 graph background.
Inks: Stazon, Versamark, Tsukineko; Distress inks, Ranger, Colorbok
Embossing Powder: Ranger
Glitter: Stickles by Ranger
Other: pearls (hero arts), string

Sunday, September 5, 2010

i'm still here....but now Im sick...

I promise I have not abandoned my blog. After the kids being sick and the lice clean out I have worn myself down and I caught whatever the kids had. On top of that I got rear-ended and the kid hit me so hard I hit the very large SUV in front of me so I have some pretty severe whiplash. I promise I will be back soon. I have been stamping and coloring in my moments of "working tylenol".

See you soon.