Welcome to Our Haunted House

Yes, Halloween is over for this year, but I wanted to share this last card which almost didn't get created because I forgot that I had just purchased the Whimsy Haunted Houses Designer Paper pack.  This is a gorgeous pack of papers featuring spooky Victorian houses.  I live in a Victorian style house so of course I was drawn to the illustrations. While our house is not scary-looking (it's pink!), it still has deterred trick-o-treaters over the decades.  This card was created rather easily requiring only the trimming of the designer paper, stamping and embossing the words with Hero Arts iridescent lavender embossing powder, fussy cutting around the words, and adding a few tiny lavender rhinestone stickers.  I wish this photo did justice to the card but a lot of the subtle details are loss in the reflective shine of the camera's flash.  Actually, I need to be a better photographer. LOL!  I'll keep practicing.  Next year I'll start my Halloween crafting earlier...do I say this every year?  Okay... well...onward to autumn and Xmas crafting...YAY!  

 

Halloween Chocolate Dipped Rice Krispies Lollipop Treats

These tasty treats are super easy to make if you start with Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats. (Costco sells a big box of 60 pieces.)  Because the bars are softer than ones you would make from scratch, I suggest that you dip each bar in melted chocolate, decorate them with the candy sprinkles (purchased from HM Ben Franklin Crafts), and then let them harden on wax paper. The chocolate melt candy wafers are available at HM Ben Franklin Crafts.  To melt them before dipping, just follow the directions on the bag.  Once the chocolate has solidified, you can insert the lollipop sticks (also available at HM BFC).  (If you try to put the stick in when the bars are undipped, the bars may fall apart.) Slipped into a cello lollipop bag (from HM BFC) and tied with a ribbon or pipe cleaner, these treats are sure to make your spooky trick-o-treater give you a toothy grin.  Enjoy the sweet, treats which are the perks of enduring the scariness of Halloween night. Boo! 

Quick Decorated Halloween Bag

I needed a Halloween bag to deliver treats but all I had were flowery ones or plain white bags.  Since of course I couldn't give handmade Halloween treats in a plain bag, I opted to decorate a white one. I started by spraying the bag with Tim Holtz Distress Mica Stain (sold at HM Ben Franklin Crafts).  I love this product because not only does it come in really cool colors, it imparts a nice metallic sheen which is perfect for Halloween.  After the bag was dry, I glued on some cut pieces of printed card stock from my stash (collected over years). To jazz up the bag even more, I wound two orange sparkle pipe cleaners around the handles and glued on purple sparkle pom poms.  This was an easy fix to change a boring bag into a colorful, exciting treat bag.  If you don't have Halloween paper scraps lying around, you can always hurry down to your nearest HM Ben Franklin Crafts store to buy some 12x12 sheets and then you WILL have leftover paper scraps to use on your next projects.  Halloween seems to come around faster and faster every year. I love having Halloween supplies on hand so I can spooky-up anything in a jiffy.  Have a colorful, spooky, decorative Halloween!  
 

Howl-o-ween Card

This card started with a Pink and Main Spooky Eyes Foilable Panel and Purple Cheer Foil.  Using my Minc  mini foiling machine, I applied the foil to the Spooky Eyes panel.  Then I cut out a 3-1/2" circle with a Spellbinder die.  I glued the 'spooky face' moon to a 5-1/2" square card made from a printed Halloween card stock that I 'found' in my stash. I stamped the howling wolf from the Lawn Fawn Wolf Before and After and the wolf from the Wild Wolves set.  Both wolves were colored with water color pencils and Copic pens before die cutting them with the matching dies.  These wolves were adhered to the card with adhesive foam dots.  Finally, the words from the Lawn Fawn Happy Howloween set were stamped on a strip of scrap (this is the print on the inside of the card).  That was it...super easy Howl-o-ween Card! Hope you're having Halloween fun incorporating new products with what you've been 'saving'.  My stash is going down one sheet at a time...LOL! only 381 to go! Hahaha!

P.S. I forgot to mention that after foiling the Spooky Eyes panel, I decided to spray on Tim Holtz Distress Inks (purple and green) and wipe some of it off  because the panel was too white.  

Halloween Scene Card with Confetti Moon

 

Recently, I bought some Halloween confetti so of course I just HAD to make a confetti card. LOL!  Rather than make the whole card a shaker, I decided to just make the moon opening contain shakable confetti.  This card started with Pink and Main Foilable cards and transfer foil. To make the background I used the purple foil that was peeled off the foilable card after it was heated in the Minc Heidi Swapp mini machine.  This normally thrown away used foil was applied to a color blend foilable card.  I really like the spooky faces that lurk in the purple background.

Next the Lawn Fawn die was used to die cut the scent from black paper.  I used a circle Sizzix die to cut out the moon from the foiled background.  Behind the moon I taped a small cello (Heiko) bag filled with Halloween confetti.  Then the whole scene was glued together and then taped to a yellow card blank with double stick (Heiko) tape.  Although it looks complicated,  it was quite simple to construct this card because there was just die cutting and no coloring.  If you haven't invested in a foiling machine (like Minc) I think you will be surprised that it is not very expensive but that owning one unleashes a multitude of creative possibilities.  I guess I'm like a magpie and I love shiny things so foiling really appeals to me.  I think Halloween is an especially fun time that just seems to need something spooky and shiny.  Happy Scary, Sparkly Crafting!   

Candy Corn Halloween Earrings

Did you love candy corn as a kid?  I did and I still do! For me, it wouldn't be Halloween without candy corn so of course when I found glass candy corn beads, I had to get some.  I held on to the strand of candy corn beads for awhile before I decided to use some of them to make earrings.  They were simple to make requiring just gold filled ear wires, gold filled ball tipped head pins, Swarovski crystals, tiny white beads, and of course the candy corn glass beads.  The tools I used to fashion these earring were two small tipped pliers and jewelry wire cutters. If you can't find glass candy corn beads, I suggest you make your own candy corn with Fimo clay (sold at HM BFC)which can be baked to look very similar to real candy corn.  Also real candy corn can be painted with 1-minute UV-LED resin and hardened under a UV lamp to resemble real candy corn.  I recommend not drilling the candy (it will probably crack) but rather gluing on a gold filled bell cap to hang the resin candy corn from the earring wires.  I hope that you will have some safe Halloween excitement and create some fun Halloween jewelry for yourself. Have a candy corny kind of Halloween!

 

Autumn Fox with Halloween Treat Boxes

 As you can see the Autumn Fox and I are still busy and having fun making Halloween treat boxes.  Like the last set of boxes, these were made with an i-crafter die (Valentine Gable Box).  As with the i-crafter die used in the last post, this set comes with small dies to make labels and embellishments but I chose not to use them because I was making Halloween themed boxes. It was easy to use the pages in the Simple Stories 6x8 Faboolous paper pad to die cut out the boxes ( only two sheets needed per box) and hand cut the labels from pages within the pad.

                                                  

Fabri-tac glue and Heiko tape were used to assemble the boxes and simple thin ribbons were tied through the die cut holes.  I like the unique style of these boxes and the fact that they have adequate space for yummy treats. I had fun matching the papers to the labels contained within the Simple Stories paper pad.

For this box the ghost label was hand cut and iridescent glitter applied over the ghost image that was spread with glue.

   

This box was probably the most successful of the three boxes because the label fit well on the box with just a little trimming and the extra part of the label was adhered to the back of the box (not shown). The basic supplies for these boxes are very minimal and many boxes can be constructed from just the paper pad and and die set.  I hope you'll take the time to make some special Halloween treat boxes for the special little (or big) ones in your life. I know they'll always remember your generous handcrafted Halloween sweetness.