A Halloween Hip Hop!!

Today we have a Halloween themed Hip Hop for you!!  

So start over at the Unity Blog to find the blog hop button to get you started on the Hop. 

You will head to the blogs of all the Unity and Ippity DT members.  You are on the right track if you are heading to me from Karen Maldonado's blog!!

For my project today, I made a candy treat holder that is very easy to create!!  The idea and directions came from this blog!  It's the template for the Peek a Boo Box.

The DP is from My Mind's Eye Boo to You series.  The Ippity pumpkin stamp from the That's Creepy set was embossed in black (excuse the spill over... I couldn't find my embossing buddy!) and then I cut out the center to allow the candy corn to show through the window!  I added some trim and ribbon to complete the festive Halloween look!

You should give one of these Peek a Boo boxes a try!! It was fun and easy and could be very versatile depending on the stamp you choose to use!!

Need to order your Halloween stamp set from Ippity? 

 Click HERE to find an Ippity Chick near you!!

Now to continue on the blog hop, your next stop will be at the talented Lisa Arana's blog!  Have fun!!

Did you hear the great news today???  Unity has their new website up and running!!  Make sure you check it out!!  We have been waiting for this for a long time!!  I am so happy for Angela and the Unity Gang!!

UNITY's NEW WEBSITE (click here!)


Please come by the Unity Forum at SCS for some chatting today too!!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!!

A Spook for You!

H appy Friday everyone!!

If you have already stopped by the Ippity Blog this morning, you may have seen the card that I am sharing with you today from my Fresh Idea Friday post.  But here on my blog I am going to give you some extra details on how I made that cute jack-o-lantern from the plain pumpkin in Ippity's That's Creepy stamp set.

As you can see from the kit image above, the face of the pumpkin is plain and just has the cute swirled embellishments coming off the sides.  But I decided to turn that pumpkin into this jack-o-lantern...

You might be surprised at how I created some of the details!

• First I stamped the image onto orange cardstock and cut around just the pumpkin, very close to the lines so that I could place it inside the pumpkin that I also stamped onto the front of the card.  

• Then to add dimension to the pumpkin and give it ridges, I used an embossing tool and drew three curved lines from the top to the bottom of the pumpkin.  I dry embossed the top of the pumpkin so that it would make the curves round out and the lines be the valley.  KWIM?

• Next, to add further depth and dimension I colored with my Copics orange marker YR04 right over the embossed lines.  (I chose that color because it closely matched the color of my cardstock.)  And then in a wider pattern than with the orange color I added Cool Gray C00 also to each embossed line and also to the perimeter of the pumpkin.  This provides the shadowing necessary to make it look more realistic.

• Next I decorated the face of the pumpkin.  Any guesses on how I stamped the triangles for the eyes and nose??  Why I used the tip of the witch's hat of course!!  Using a stamp a majig, I determined where I wanted the eyes and nose to be and then stuck a post-it note down to prevent any more than the top tip of the hat to be stamped!

• And then for the mouth... I am most proud of this discovery!  Believe it or not, but the mouth is cut out from part of the spider web border punch by Martha Stewart!!  YES!!!  It really is!!  LOL!! I love that!!  Take a  peek at the pictures below to help see how and where I cut it from ...

Here is what the spider web border punch looks like after punching.  The orange one is three consecutive punches (trimmed) and the black one is one punch.  To make the mouth you only need one punch, but I want to show you where I cut it out from by using both of these colors shown.

This shot shows you where I had to cut away to leave the part of the spider web that can become the mouth of the Jack-O-Lantern!  Isn't that fun??

• Finally for the crowning glory, I embossed the witch's hat with black embossing powder onto cream cardstock.  Then after cutting it out I added it to the top of my now Jack-O-Lantern!  And we are ready for Trick or Treating!!  :-)

Here is my finished sample...

Final Details:  Using the stamp-a-majig, I stamped the pumpkin with swirls onto both the card base and the Bingo Card (Jenni Bowlin) using black ink and then applied orange Stickles right over the black to give a little colorful shimmer!  I finished it off by adding the spider web border in black to the bottom of the card and adding the Halloween trim (source unsure of) and the orange pom poms (Joann's) on top of that.  I also stamped the word October from the journaling stamp and made a tab to add to the upper right corner!

It might also be hard to believe that the dotted yellow paper (Pebbles) is the same paper that was in yesterday's card HERE.  What a difference a different color palette can make on the same paper huh?

I know you are going to NEED this adorable That's Creepy stamp set designed by Lisa Hetrick, so be sure to find an Ippity Chick near you and get yours order right away so you will have plenty of time to make a batch of Halloween cards for yourself!!

Have a great weekend that is anything but Creepy!!  Enjoy your day!!

Halloween Treat Box

Hello from gray and rainy California! It is ironic that I leave FL where we have had such unseasonably cold weather and go to one of the dryest states in the country only to have it be raining and cold!!

But none of that matters because CHA is amazing!! I am having a wonderful time, am exhausted but loving every minute of the SuperShow!  Yesterday Eva, the Unity Boyz, Angela, Chris and I all spent some time helping our booth visitors complete some cute Make-n-Takes using some of the {ippity} new releases! 

Have you signed up to get the new {ippity} releases yet?  Head on over to the {ippity} blog to find out all about it!

Today I want to show you some pictures of another project I made for the Dirty Dozen Gallery back in October.  Sorry that Halloween has passed, but really this project could be made to celebrate any holiday!  Think /Easter and St. Patty's day!!

The only stamping I really did on this was to use one of the first stamp sets that The Stamps of Life made.  They are really cute stamps that you should totally check out if you haven't already!

Isn't this the cutest little set that was made by covering some unfinished boxes from

 Michael's the cute DP from Recollections.

A little Modge Podge and some creative cutting of DP is all it takes to recover the box.  This paper was so cute and easy to use!

Not a lot of  details this morning for the blog, but if you have any questions on my project, please let me know! 

We are heading back to the show this morning for one more day of Make N Takes for {ippity}  I hope I will get to see some of you there!

Have a great day and may your bucket overflow with excitement for what is in store for you this weekend!  Have a wonderful Saturday.

Growing In Unity with a SSW Sketch

I know that my Unity Friends are aware that on Thursdays we get to have the Unity DT blog hop, and on Friday's we have the Friends with Flair blog hop, but did you know that Wednesdays can be really sweet too?

For me and hopefully for you now too, Wednesday's mean that it is time for a release of a new card making sketch from Sweet Sketch Wednesday! The creator of these sketches, Arlana, who happens to be a Unity fan also, makes some really sweet sketches. Many of the weeks are sponsored and have prizes to be given away. So I hope you will try and play along with us in the future! Just stop by the SSW blog and check out more details.

We are up to SSW Sketch # 21 this week and here is a picture of it...

This week's sketch also incorporates a color challenge, but we were also free to use Halloween colors since this is the last week before Halloween.

As you can see, I chose to use Halloween colors for my card...

That adorable Frankie image is from the Unity stamp set called Little Monsters, the sentiment comes from the Hauntingly Sweet set and the cute spiders are in the set called Unlucky 13.

I used my Copic markers to color Frankie in and cheated a little by using this great DP from Recollections that helped me create the scene you see on the right side panel without having to go to a lot of extra work.

The three bat brads are from Recollections and are so cute because they have a little flocking on them! I should be about finished with my Halloween cards now and plan on getting them in the mail today!!

You may have read some hints of mine about leaving some comments on my blog this week. On Friday when my week of Growing in Unity is over, I will be choosing one person to win a random grab bag of Unity stamps just for leaving comments on my posts throughout the week. Please only comment once per day. For each comment you make you will have a chance to win the stamps. Good Luck!!

Two more things...

I have a project to share with you on the Sweet N Sassy Stamps blog where I was Guest Designer for the month of October. Click HERE to check out that post!

Also, today I am the sponsor for a card challenge over at Paper Craft Planet in the Whimsie Doodles Group. Click HERE to go to PCP and then just join the Whimsie Doodles group if you want to play along!

Have a great day and may your bucket overflow with goodness!

It's Friday with Flair (Unity Style!!)

I feel like I have a hangover from all the hoopla of being announced as one of the new Dirty Girls at SCS yesterday! It has been a crazy ride already but I love it!! Now that the new Fan Club Gallery is all loaded up, I am hoping for things to settle a bit! I am looking forward to a nice weekend!

But before we can get to the weekend, we have to address today!! It is Friends with Flair Friday and that means that we get to visit 50 blogs all filled with Unity goodness! I am excited because I was out of town last week and never got a chance to get around to all the blogs, so I am definitely looking forward to some amazing Unity projects today!! The Unity Fans never disappoint me with giving inspiration!

Be sure to visit the Unity website this weekend because there is a 30% off sale going on through Sunday! Click on the banner below and head over to Unity and see some of their new releases and also some of the items that are on sale this week!

I am so proud of my fellow DT member Kelli Caslow who is on the Whimsie Doodles DT with me. She is the very talented stamp designer who along with Lisa Hetrick created the newly released stamp set shown below!! I know that I am going to be buying this adorable set and I hope that you will too!! You can find it for purchase HERE!

Happy Fall Y'All

So onto today's project!




I was commissioned by my neighbor and good friend Lisa to make the cards that she wanted to send out to her family and friends for Halloween this year. She was a big part in designing them and had a pretty good idea of what she wanted!





They are photo cards and she is going to slip in a picture of her daughter and son where you see that I left the opening!


The images were colored with Copics. The orange CS is from Coredinations, and the DP is from K & Co. The black card base is from Recollections.


This set is so fitting because she has two kids, one girl and one boy and I just altered the boy a little to make him shorter than the older sister. I used the masking technique to do that!


I stamped the web in the corner and hand drew the silk that the spider is hanging from!

The set you see used is Trick or Treat Peeps which includes the Witch and Frankenstein kids and also the cute little spider and web shown here, plus more images and some sentiments too! (The sentiment we used is from PTI's Spooky Sweets II collection though.)

The card is rather clean and simple in style (well for me anyway! LOL!) but they really make a statement because of the bright colors and contrast that we put in them.

The border punch is from Martha Stewart!





I am making a total of ten of these and they are almost done! All I have left is to cut out the Trick or Treaters and attach them to the card. She plans to insert the photo of her kids and get them out in the mail soon!

Isn't this set just the cutest Halloween set you ever did see??

Be sure to stop by the Unity blog if you didnt' start there already and follow along the blog roll for today's FWF participants. Have you found the FWF Blinkie yet?? And don't forget to take advantage of that awesome sale going on right now at Unity!!

Have a Flair-filled Friday and a wonderful weekend too! May your bucket be overflowing with all treats and no tricks!!

I am posting soon the winner of the Kissmas Gingers

set from yesterday's comments... be right back!!

A "Sweet" Whimsie Doodles Sneak!

(Mom if you don't want to see the Halloween card I am going to give you this year then

STOP reading and exit right now!! LOL!! )

Today was one of those fortuitous days when things happened to line up just right. I knew I had to post the sneak peek for Whimsie Doodles before tomorrow's release but I also had to post my Sweet Sketch Wednesday Sketch card today. So, I decided to combine two assignments into one card!! And then in addition to that, the card I made also fits this week's challenge at the Digital Tuesday Challenge blog! How lucky is that??

Here is the today's sketch that you can use for this week's challenge at Sweet Sketch Wednesday. This week is not sponsored, so there aren't any prizes to be awarded, but we would still love for you to play along.

And here is the card I made that combines the above sketch with the soon-to-be released Voodoo Mummy and the Digital Tuesday challenge to include a heart on your project.

The striped DP is from MM and the Boo paper is from DCWV. I used my Recollections black cardstock as the base and matting for the image.

To create the brick wall that the Voodoo Mummy is sitting on, I masked the mummy image and used a background stamp from Stampin' Up with Really Rust SU ink. I shaded it with a little of c1 colored Copic Marker. The mummy is also colored with Copics. Coloring things that are white can be a challenge, but in this case I added some shades of tan and peach to give a skin color and also a worn, dirty look on the bandages. Then for a little pop of color I made the safety pin orange, the heart red and the button eye green!! I just love Melyssa's images!!

I thought the gauze that I added as the two accent strips next to the main image was a fun idea. I was trying to mimic the mummy's gauze wrap! Not sure I did, but I tried!! :-)

Now, for YOUR assignments....

Please go to the Whimsie Doodles Blog and leave a comment for Melyssa. She is going to pick one lucky winner from the comments on each of the sneak peeks to win that image. Good Luck with that!! Remember that all three images we have shown you this week go on sale beginning tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 1st.)

Also head over to the Sweet Sketch Wednesday blog and see what the rest of the DT has done with this sketch. Some of them created a second card with a bonus sketch that Arlana did, so there is lots of eye candy to look hat.

And if you haven't heard about the Digital Tuesday Challenge blog you should visit there too. This is the first time that I have played along, but I definitely plan on going back there again!

Keep scrolling down to see the post I made earlier this morning

showing you the last of my September projects for SheetLoad of Cards...

Have a Sweet Wednesday and may good things happen fortuitously to fill your bucket today!!

"Ghoul" Friends are to Die For!!

Melyssa has done it again!! This Ghoul Friends digistamp with accompanying phrase is set to be released for sale on Thursday, October 1st at the Whimsie Doodles blog!

Have you seen anything cuter lately?? I am in love with the sweetness of this set. It was so fun to color with my Copic Markers too. The bright and cheery candy corn DP is from the Recollections paper pad available at Michael's. The orange die cut strip comes from a laser cut sheet from Bazzill. The small white square rub-ons in two rows is from American Crafts. All the flowers are from Prima and the brad is from Basic Grey. I used the Nestie label 3 and trimmed the bottom so it was square. I repeated the same shape by only cutting the top portion of the sentiment panel.

Want to see some more sneak peeks?? Click on the links below...

Whimsie Doodles

Thanh

Nikki

Joni (Witchy Girl sneak)

Have you tried digistamping yet??

There is no reason not too. Once you have your image printed onto your cardstock it feels no different than stamping with red rubber or acrylic stamps. Melyssa even has two FREE digis available on her website so you can try digistamping without investing any money until you know you like it! And trust me you will!!

The Whimsie Turtle you can download immediately from the site and the Berry Much Bear you will get when you sign up to receive the Whimsie Doodles Newsletters. I hope that you will give them a try! Just click on either of the pictures above to be taken the WD blog where you can get them!

Be sure to come back tomorrow for one more sneak peek before Thursday's new images are released!! Have a great day and my your bucket flow over with lots of "ghoul" friends!

Feeling Just a Little Bit Wicked!

Well at least this adorable witch is that will be released from Whimsie Doodles on October 1st!

Isn't she amazing? I just love every part of her from her funky glasses to her clunky shoes, I think she is great! This witch image called Witchy Girl and she comes in digital format with two sentiment options; the one you see here and another one that says "Bewitched by You."

What a perfect card to send to your significant other if you are feeling a little naughty! Or she could be added to your child's scrapbook page remembering that special year she dressed up as a witch!

The DP and CS used for this card come from the MM Spooky Alley Paper Pad. The border trim was made using a MS punch. The ribbon is from PaperTrey Ink. To get an idea on the size of the images, I printed these directly out onto GP white CS without adjusting the sizes at all. The finished card size you see above is 5 x 6 1/2 inches.

The Witchy Girl was colored in using Copic markers. I created the starry background by stamping a small star background stamp I have from Unity's Little Sprout set using Versamark ink and then I lightly rubbed grey and black chalk over it! It provided the perfect amount of grunge to the card and repeated the star pattern you see in the DP.

Want a chance to win this great digistamp set? Simply go visit the main Whimsie Doodles blog and check out one of the cards that Melyssa created and leave a comment. She will be choosing one random winner for each sneak peek!!

For more sneak peeks please visit the following links...

Whimsie Doodles Blog

Nicole Anderson

Nikki Tanner

Joni Wilson (may be posted tomorrow!)

Happy Monday folks and may your bucket be filled and overflowing with feelings that aren't so witchy!! LOL!

Final Sketchfest Challenge Card

I have had soooo much fun working with the sketches all week long at the Sketchfest going on at Caardvarks! The sketch designer Heidi Van Laar is uber talented and provided such awesome sketches to inspire us! My thanks go out to Caardvarks for hosting the challenge, Studio Calico for sponsoring the challenge and also to Heidi for the awesome sketches! I was able to submit a card each day this week which will put me in the running for a chance at winning a spot on the Caardvarks Crew beginning in November! Wish me luck!! It would be such an honor to be chosen and it makes me really nervous since I saw so many fabulous entries in Mr Linky this week!! AAck!!

I decided to go with a Halloween themed card for this sketch which you can see pictured below...

I didn't change it up very much, but where you see the small circle, I inserted my adorable spider brad from a new collection by MM called Spooky Alley. I bought the fibers that you see below at Michael's and have been hoarding it for a very long time! It is a great fiber to make scarves out of!!

The stamps are from PaperTrey Ink's Spooky Sweets II collection. The stamps you see used are the ornate circle and the spider web. The sentiment strip is actually a strip of paper from the Recollections Halloween Paper collection. In fact all the paper comes from the same collection except for the white mat which is GP cardstock.

I added a bit of sparkle to the spider web by drawing over the stamped image with my Sakura Gelly Roller pen. I debated adding some more touches to it but finally decided that between the DP, the ornate stamps, and the furry fibers, it really didn't need any more embellishments or treatments. Enough is enough!!

Thanks again for taking a look at my card today. I appreciate all the nice comments that have been left and it has been nice to see some new names visiting my blog. I hope you will come back again!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and may your bucket overflow with sweets of the non-spooky kind!

Sweet Sketch Wednesday

This week was a fun week at Sweet Sketch Wednesday because we were sponsored by Dustin Pike and were able to choose two of his images to work with. He is an awesome artist and is very generous giving away a ton of freebies. So if you have never used his digital images I strongly suggest you go and visit his site and give them a try.

As a side note, he is getting ready to retire all his previously designed digistamps (because they will be made into rubber soon) and he is selling the first five pages of his images all for just $25. That's an incredible bargain!! You might want to check it out!

So on to today's sketch! It's another great classic one by Arlana from Sweet Sketch Wednesday!

I made two cards this week because I was given two of Dustin's images to work with. Here is the first card I made. It uses his image called Say Ah, which can be found on page six of his catalog HERE! I will just admit ahead of time that there is something not right with this card, something bothers me about it, so I hope you can look past its imperfections.

I do like the brightness and vibrancy of it, and I love the way that I was able to color the inside of the Jack-O-Lantern's mouth to look like the candle was glowing inside. But there is something about how I arranged my elements that I don't like! I used my icicle border punch by MS upside down to make the grass!

The next card uses Dustin's Witch Riding image found on the same page of his catalog. This one is a little dark, but I wanted it to look like the witch was flying in a night sky on Halloween. I think the witch is adorable!! The embellishments are from Recollections at Michael's and the DP is from K & Co. The spider web border you see here is actually a rub on that I rubbed onto orange paper and then cut out!

Please stop by the SSW blog and see all the creations made by the DT. They always amaze me with their talents. I am so lucky to be on this DT with these great ladies! You can win THREE of Dustin's images FREE if you play along and are chosen as this week's winner! I hope you play along!


Have a sweet Wednesday! May your bucket overflow with sweetness in the sugar-free kind of way... I am dieting!! Ugh!!

It's a Sketch Challenge from Whimsie Doodles!

Today is the 21st of the month which means it is time for another WD sketch challenge! I think Melyssa's sketches are unique and interesting which makes them a lot of fun to play along with. I hope that you will play along because there are FREE digistamps at stake!! Check out the details on the Whimsie Doodles Blog. A winner will be chosen next week and will two free digistamps or one free Digistamp set! Are you ready to play???

You must use a Whimsie Doodles stamp on your card, but don't forget you can get two free ones from her blog, so there is no excuse not to play!!

Here is this month's sketch...

And here is the card that I made for this challenge...

I know!!! It's another Halloween card!! LOL!! But I was trying to think outside the box a little and decided that the top note shaped piece could be a spider web instead and just had to go with it!

In all, this card uses four Whimsie Doodles digistamps. The spider and the web are from the Just Hanging Around set, the Pumpkin is from the Halloween Bits and Bites set and the "trick or treat" sentiment is from the Candy Monster set.

I masked off the spider and rotated the web so that I could print it directly onto my card front. Then I filled in the lines using my black Stickles. I also masked the web and then printed the spider right where I wanted it on my card front. I drew in his web string with a black pen. I printed the spider twice so that I could cut him out and pop him up on the card. I also printed the sentiment directly onto the card front after masking the "smell my feet" portion of it. I promise a tutorial on manipulating your digistamps very soon!

Head on over to the WD blog and check out some more sketch inspired cards and be sure to get some WD digistamps so you can play along with us this week and have a chance at winning!!


Have a wonderful Monday! Until my next post, may your bucket overflow with energy and excitement for the upcoming week!!