Sunday, October 28, 2012

Monsters

Monsters
I finally got my Gypsy cable back from my sister yesterday and I took the opportunity to play with my new Everyday PopUp Cards Cricut cartridge. This is going to be a fun cartridge. My GB’s love popup books so I see lots of pop up cards being sent their way in the near future.
I’m entering this in the Little Monster Challenge over at My Craft Spot
My GBs are a little leery of ‘scary’ Halloween at the tender ages of 1 and 2 so I opted to use the Cookie Monster from the Sesame Street Seasons Cricut Cartridge as my caged monster. Since I hadn’t tried the Pop up cartridge before I decided to make a larger than usual card so I wouldn’t have to worry about working in minute detail. (My eyes aren’t what they used to be) I was pleased that it is not as difficult as I was afraid it was going to be. That’s partly in thanks to the PDF that CraftyJAR told me about that gives directions for assembling all of the popups.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Is it Fall Yet?


I stepped outside last night before I went to bed and the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees in 3 hours. A cold front was supposed to blow in so before dinner Hubby and I took a cruise down the back roads in his little Miata to enjoy possibly the last good convertible weather until next spring. Of course, in Texas, you never know. The weather was perfect and by the time we headed home the sun was slipping behind the horizon and you could tell a change in the weather was on its way. I’m glad. It’s hard to get excited about Fall when it’s 85 degrees. I guess that’s why I decorate for Halloween; to remind myself that it’s fall. Sure enough, we woke this morning to colder temperatures and drizzle. Glad we took that drive while we had the chance!
A week ago I left the cable to my Gypsy at my sister’s house and haven’t been able to do much cutting with my Cricut. I took the lull in my crafting to do a little purging and organizing in my craft room. Over the past 7 weeks I’ve been taking the Organization Challenge from the Scrapbook Rack. If you’ve never done one of their webinars you ought to give it a try. You can sign up for a shorter challenge in November. Here is the link to signup.  The Scrap Rack Challenge
There are plenty of helpful ideas for organizing your scrapbooking supplies and photos even if you don’t have a ScrapRack. Best of all, IT’S FREE!

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Haunted Houses



I got a bee in my bonnet (or maybe I should say a bat in my belfry) a couple weeks ago to make a haunted house. I didn’t have the funds to buy another cartridge to make the house so I used my Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge instead. I figured a haunted house is just a house that’s spooky looking, right?   I didn’t think that regular cardstock would be sturdy enough for a house so I bought a couple pieces of poster board. I found some that was black on one side and orange on the other at our local grocery store. I used the orange side for the inside house and the black for the exterior.  Since I was feeling ambitious I decided on the 2 story house with dormers. Using my 12” x 24” cutting mat, I cut the house out at width 23.43 and height 10.23 setting the depth on 6, speed on 3 and pressure on 5. I cut it twice. I used some brown cardstock I had on hand for the roof. I ran it through my Texture Boutique with a Sizzix embossing card I thought looked vaguely like a roof pattern. I used a Cuttlebug embossing card that looked like wood for the door. 
The roof of the Two Story House


Even using the directions for building the houses in the back of the Winter Woodland booklet it was a little confusing to put together, especially the dormers and the stoop. But I just kept going back to the pictures and experimenting until it made sense.
*TIPS*: Use Aileen’s Tacky Glue. It holds better than Tacky Tape; don’t permanently attach the roof until after you get the dormers on.

I really like the way the orange sort of glows through the windows, but it still needed some character.
I used the Pumpkin Carving Cricut cartridge to cut some ghoulish embellishments. The ones I wanted to use all had circles around them so I just snipped the circles off after cutting. In a few instances I had to do a little free hand cutting to keep the shape. 


I liked the look of the first house so much I decided to make another one. This time I chose the single story house with the round window in front. I used the same materials and cut it at 19.77” x 6.20”. The door was too small at this size and I had to re-size it to 9.93 x 7.15. The hinge goes on the inside, but I glued the hinge outside so the door could open and you could see the giant cat. I also had to cut the door off at the bottom so it would open over the step.  Using Pumpkin Carving once again, I cut out the bats and the ghost, using it as smoke coming from the chimney.
One Story Haunted House
Won't they make great table decor for our Halloween Party?
 I am going to enter these in some of my favorite challenges! Stop by and see all the great projects everyone is doing.  StuckOnUSketches Creepy Crawly DieCut Challenge
                            Decorate to Celebrate Halloween Challenge
                            Just-a-scrappin Halloween 3-D Special Challenge
                            MCC-Challenge #1-Halloween