Sweet As Hunny

It seems that reminiscing about our trip to Disneyland last year has put me in the Disney mood... just noticed that many of the cards I've made recently feature Disney characters... including this one I sent to my daughter for her birthday. Pooh Bear was always a big favorite at our home while she was growing up so I thought I would use him on her card to rekindle some of the warm and fuzzy feelings we all shared.

I found a coloring book image of Pooh Bear I liked and created him into a cut file using Make the Cut for the front of my card. All the pieces were cut on my Silhouette, then colored with Copic pens. Paper pieced butterfly and tufts of grass are from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Decided to do one of my new favorite fun cards...the Pop Up {Accordion} Panel style card. I always get such a kick out of watching this card open!

There are quite a few tutorials for this type of card on the web recently. Just do a search for "Pop Up Panel Card" and choose the one that suits you the best. I used a video tutorial on You Tube by Kevin Devine found here.

For my card, I changed the accordion panels to heart shaped ones by welding heart shapes together in Make the Cut. Make the Cut was also used, together with Comic Sans font to create the lettering for the sentiment on the panels. Cute bumble bees and hunny jar are from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Paper pieced Pooh and Piglet on the inside of the card are also from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Had such fun putting this card together, all the time recalling many fond memories of my daughter's childhood growing up with Pooh and his friends. Hoping this card will strike the same note in my daughter's heart too!

On Track for a Fabulous Birthday

Last year when my daughter and son in law took hubby and I to Disney's California Adventure Park to celebrate our birthdays, I found out that my son in law is a huge fan of the movie Cars. So when it was time to make his birthday card this year, I knew it had to be with a Cars theme. Had so much fun learning to make the Z-fold Pop Up card for hubby's birthday last month that I wanted to give it another try.

Here's what the  z-fold card looks like when it's opened.

A view from the top shows where struts were added inside the z-fold similar to the struts in a pop up box style card.

Here's paper pieced Lightning Mcqueen...

...and my son in law's favorite Mater.

Unfortunately I don't own the Cricut Cars cartridge, but happily, I found svg cutting files for the Disney Cars characters for sale on Etsy. The cutting files I purchased came from seller Clipartoon. The Disney Cars bundle included 30 cutting files for about $7, which I thought was a bargain considering the many many hours it would have taken me to make my own cutting files. From now on, I'll definitely have to remember to include Etsy in my searches for cutting files! 

To complete the scene of Radiator Springs' Ornament Valley, cutting files for the Cadillac Mountain range and the hood ornament rock formation were created in Make the Cut using some of my free hand drawings. The cactus is a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables. Had tons of fun putting this card together, tho once again it took me quite a while to figure out how to put together the whole "scene". Looking forward to trying this card style again, and hopefully it will start to get easier each time.

From My Ghoul Friends...

"Muahahaha...care for a treat, my sweet?"

Okay, okay, I promise this will be the last of my Halloween posts for the year. But I couldn't go without sharing all the fabulous treats I received from my creative and crafty ghoul friends, right?

These are the awesome goodies I scored at our craft club meeting in October! 

On the left, Pat M. decorated mini brown lunch bags with a giant stamped spider's web and added an adorable stamped spider tag to match. Mmmm...the best part was inside...handmade buttery pumpkin shaped cookies...so yummy! 

To the right, super cute decorated stand up cello bag featuring the new Stampin' Up Halloween Cookie Cutter stamps and punch, beautifully put together by Sharon F. Love how she added tiny little googly eyes to her images for some extra fun!

Of course no Halloween would be complete without Hello Kitty, right? Ah-Mazing Hello Kitty Halloween treat bag on the right was designed by Claire S using punches and dies. I'm afraid this photo does not do justice to all the fabulous intricate and tiny details on this treat bag IRL!

And to the right, Eve C. created a perfectly fitting gift bag with a fancy window for this super kawaii Hello Kitty Sugar Skull candy tin to peek out of.

Then on Halloween day, my dear friend Lorna stirred up a whole lot of excitement at our workplace with these sweet surprises!

I totally loved these adorable Witch Hat treat boxes! Lorna and her amazing creative prowess figured out a way to very cleverly use her Sizzix Bigz Petal Cone die to create these hat boxes. But that's not all..hat panels were embossed, and she added that neat stretchy web stuff they sell for Halloween decorating to her hats for a very cool look. Cute giant spider comes from Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge and a strip of fun Halloween paper from Doodlebug makes the hat band.

Okay, so I'm guessing not too many people got treats like this for Halloween. I'm calling them Lorna's Obake treats because at first glance they look like kokeshi dolls in black kimonos. But slide off their obi sashes and they open up to be kokeshi vampire bats! So kawaii and spooky all at the same time! Lorna's out of the box creativity at it's best!
Now that all the Halloween fun is over, guess it's full steam ahead for Christmas crafting. Are you ready? ...not me.

Vampire Fries

Back again as promised with the rest of my Halloween projects. Things were a little unusual this year because I surprisingly had all my Witches' Boot treat boxes finished early and found myself with some extra time the weekend before Halloween. LOL, I know, I know, I probably should have started thinking "Christmas" but I was such in a Halloween-y mood that I couldn't resist the urge to make these Vampire Fry Boxes instead.

I used a cutting file purchased from SVG Cutting Files to make the plain fry boxes. Then inspired by Frenchie of  Stamp and Scrap By Frenchie, I designed my vampire dress up in Make the Cut. Once I had the vampire cutting file figured out, the rest was easy and ten of these came together very quickly. Filled the fry boxes with "Vampire Fries"...actually pretzels tossed with ranch dressing mix and spices for a tasty quick snack.

In addition to the Vampire Fry Boxes, I also put together a couple of these adorable Vampire Peeker gift card holders to send to my daughter and niece. The cutting file for this also came from SVG Cutting Files...super duper quick and easy to cut and piece together!

Then for our canine friends, I decorated plain kraft gift bags with a witch-y Pochacco for their Halloween treats. I found the cute Pochacco image on Pinterest and used Make the Cut to render it into a cutting file. Used a large circle punch for the moon and an old Quickutz metal die for the bats.

I always have too much fun during Halloween...so many fun treats to make and lots of crazy costumes to torment the dog with! I have one last post of Halloween goodies to share tomorrow. Hope you'll stop by again to see all the crafty treats from my very creative ghoul friends!