American Indian Inspired Necklace

 I spent a semester in Santa Fe during my college years.  It was there that I fell in love with Indian jewelry and pottery.  At that time, the Indian made items were relatively affordable, but I was a poor college student so I just acquired a few pieces.  To this day, I still search in antique/thrift stores for that one lucky find of American Indian jewelry or pottery. While not on the hunt for the genuine collectible/antique, I collect beads, rocks, and even pottery shards with an Indian look.  Sometime, I actually put them all together into an American Indian inspired jewelry piece.  The necklace in the photo above is something I made just recently.  I lucked out and found a silver bezel wrapped pottery shard (supposedly very old) at the Tucson Bead Show.  The pottery shard is the focal point of this necklace that was made with silver beads, two sizes of jasper beads and tiny turquoise beads. I left the silver beads unpolished to give the piece a more ancient look, but I think I may polish them up a bit to match the bezel around the pottery shard.  Happily, this necklace came together rather quickly and the design pleases me.  Now I need to find an outfit to match it. LOL!

Grateful Girl Card with Confetti Shaker Heart

The Whimsy Primitive Gratitude Quick Card Fronts pack was so sweet, I just HAD to get it.  I had a difficult time deciding which image to use, but settled on this one because it had a sweet little heart hanging from the bare tree. The little heart coordinated with the confetti heart window that I had planned to construct on this card.  It was easy to make the confetti window by first die cutting the small heart with the Spellbinders die.  Next, I made a small, clear pouch of confetti hearts using a Heiko clear bag and tape.  This confetti bag was attached with tape to the back of the heart window. Then the card front was adhered to the Whimsy Prim Colonial Americana Designer Paper which was cut to size to fit the brown card blank.  You can see the print of Prim Colonial Americana paper behind the heart window. 

In this photo you can see what the card looks like with the confetti filling die cut heart.  To finish off the card I added the words that were cut from a word panel that was contained in the Whimsy Card Front pack. The only drawback of this card front pack was that it contained only one each of eight card designs and I always like to have extras in case of 'accidents'. Luckily, this card was created with no problems. Whew!  I like the images in this card front pack so much that I think I'll purchase another one. You'll certainly be seeing more cards like this one in the future so please keep visiting this blog site and leave a comment if you have the time...love hearing from you! 

'Enjoy the Little Things' Colonial Card

As a frequent traveler to the east coast and collector of antiques, I am drawn to the rustic, simple look of colonial objects.  When I spied the new sets of Whimsy stamps and papers I immediately knew that I had to buy some.  After flipping through the pad of plaid papers, I settled on this blue and brown one (hard choice..so many good ones).  I used my Crop-a-Dial (We R Memory Keepers) to clip the corners of the plaid paper and the brown kraft blank card.  At first I was planning to use regular twine around the plaid sheet but then 'discovered' a multi-colored twine in my stash of assorted yarns and ribbons.  The colors of the twine matched perfectly with the plaid paper....how lucky!  (I think you could dye your twine if you aren't happy with plain brown twine.)  It was simple to stamp the doll, house and saying on beige card stock.  I fussy cut out the images and used a Sizzix die to cut out the saying.  I rubbed on some ink to age the papers and used a reddish Copic pen to add some color.  The doll and house were adhered with foam adhesive dots.  I really agree with the saying on this card and feel that it has special meaning for this Thanksgiving season.  I hope all of you in blogland enjoy and appreciate all that you have even if it is not as grand as you hoped and imagined your life to be. Be grateful and generous to others!

 

Thankful Pumpkin Card

This card had its start with a foiled orange pumpkin designed paper made with my Minc machine, some Pink and Main orange foil, and a Whimsy pumpkin foilable design card.  I didn't like the white background that remained after the card was foiled so I used Tim Holtz distress sprays to color in the background.  I used my We R Memory Keepers Crop-a-Dial corner rounder to clip off the corners of the brown kraft card, plaid (Whimsy) card stock and the foiled pumpkin card.  Next I stamped the saying from the Whimsy Prim Little Things stamp set onto a beige card stock and then used a Sizzix die to cut it out.  I rubbed on some green ink and distressed the label a little with metallic sprays.  In hindsight I should have heat embossed the saying in gold or copper powder because I wanted more metallic shine to match the ribbon.  Anyway, all the parts were glued with Fabri-Tac or adhered with double stick Heiko tape.  I like the way the colors matched on this card to give a very autumn-ish look and went along with the grateful/meaningful saying.  Life is good so be thankful!

 

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!