More Halloween Treats!

I honestly thought my last post would be my last Halloween project post for the year. But last night I realized I had made way too much snack mix and was left with way more snack mix than hubby and I could, or rather, should eat by ourselves. I knew I definitely needed to share that snack mix with others!

Found four empty jars in my pantry, two large, two medium sized ones...measured them and got to work on the computer with the Make the Cut program to try and figure out an easy way to dress up the bottles for Halloween. Since I already had the cut file for Chococat's head made, I decided to add a box for a body that the jars could fit in.

I welded two kitty heads together at the ears to make sort of a shaped card, then just glued them on to the box body. Not very fancy but very quick! I hastily made the cutting file last night before going to bed and did the assembling early this morning. Lol, the glue may not have been fully dried when I ran out to hand one of these kitties out to our mail delivery gal this morning! Remaining jars went to our doggie's vet and our neighbors.

Before I go, I also want to share a couple super neat Halloween treat boxes I received from my sweet friend, Kris.

Kris made this very cute window treat box to share at our last craft club meeting. Kris decorated the window with an adorable paper pieced ghost and bat, and backed with with clear acetate so you can see the yummy treats inside. But the neatest thing about her box are the pleated corners on the bottom of the box...no gluing needed! And when the lid is lifted, the bottom of the box almost seems to pop open!

Whoa!!! How COOL is this for a Halloween treat box? This gruesome little hearse treat box put together by Kris is beyond amazing! Love all the spooky details...really reminds me of those metal die cast cars made for kids.

But that's not all! The back of the hearse opens and lookie what's INSIDE!

YIKES! Don't worry... it's a coffin box filled with more yummy Halloween candy. Now isn't that so COOL? Maybe a little too morose for little ones...but fun for older ghouls! If you think you might want to make one of these (maybe for next Halloween?) the cutting file and tutorials are available at the Simply Crafty SVGs site. Have a safe and fun Halloween!!!

Evie's First Halloween

Halloween is tomorrow, and I'm happy to say I got all my treats delivered and mailed in time! This is the Halloween card I made for my granddaughter's first Halloween. She just turned 6 months old and is still too young to understand, but of course gramma just had to make her a card anyway!

Kept it simple by making a center step style card.

The svg cutting file for this cute paper pieced kitty is a retired freebie from Kadoodle Bug Designs. Used an oval stitched die behind little kitty and added an oval scalloped frame created in Make the cut.

Fancy label template is also a freebie, from Make a Wedding blog. I used DJ Doodlers font with the label template to do a print and cut, then added a shadow layer cut from Best Creations black glitter cardstock plus a couple flatback rhinestone flowers for some fun bling.

Here's our sentiment inside the card. Cute Halloween patterned paper comes from Doodlebug Designs' Halloween Parade collection.

And finally, the treats for our furbaby's doggie pals... isn't that skeleton plush toy the cutest?

Orange handled gift bags decorated with Pochacco were made to put the doggie treats in. I started with a coloring book image of Pochacco sitting to create a cut file in Make the Cut, then added the witch's hat from Designs On Cloud Nine's Halloween Kitty file, and the jack o lantern from Kadoodlebug Design's Candy Corn Witch file.

This year our little Latte got to take Halloween pictures with a new "friend", our granddaughter! Lol! So much fun trying to get the two of them to look toward the camera and smile at the same time! Happy Halloween, everyone!

Meow, Meow, Meow. Meow...

No Halloween is complete without fun treats to share with friends, right? I think I have more fun making treats for Halloween than for any other holiday. This year I was by inspired by Sue Kment's Black Cat Popcorn Box Treat Holder, on her blog, Sue's Stampin' Stuff.

Sue used a svg cutfile designed by Sweet Afton which may be purchased from the Silhouette Design Store to make her adorable popcorn box treat holders, but since I wanted to change up kitty's face, I decided to try and create my own cut file for this.

Using a freebie cutting file for a regular popcorn box shared on La Super Mamy DIY blog, I added a kitty face to look like Chococat.

Made these in two sizes for different treats...

...15 of them in a large size (about 9-1/2 inches tall and 5 inches wide at the top) to fill with a Bugles, Cheetos, Fritos, and Pretzel snack mix...

...and 6 of them about half that size to fill with Rice Krispies cookies.

I got the recipe for the snack mix I used to fill the large boxes at the Ono Kine Grindz website, found here. And the cookie recipe from the Tasty Kitchen website, here. 

The best thing about these popcorn boxes was that once the cutting file was created, it could be cut in any size, large or small...and the assembly is pretty much quick and easy!

Mini Halloween Shadowbox

Halloween is next week already so it's time to post some of the fun Halloween projects I've been working on. My turn to share at my craft club was last month, and this was the shadow box Make and Take project I came up with.
Been noticing a lot of these mini shadowboxes on the internet lately and after watching a few You Tube video tutorials and seeing how quick and easy they can be, I decided to do a Halloween themed one to share with my craft club.

The template for the shadowbox was created in Make the Cut, but simple enough to recreate without a cutting machine. The height and width of my box is 4-1/2 inches square, with a depth of 1-1/2 inches. The window is 3 inches in height and 3-1/2 inches wide cut on my Silhouette, but you could use any shaped die to cut the window. A stitched landscape die was used to make the struts, cutting them to a length of 5-1/2 inches, scoring 1/2 inch on each end for the tabs to attach them inside the box.
The cute haunted house and ghost is an image from Miss Kate's Cuttables, The purple sky, moon, and bat were added in Printshop to create a backdrop for the inside of the card. Vampire Hello Kitty and pumpkins is a freebie printable file found at the Hello Kitty Coloring Pages website found here. Images were printed, then cut on the Silhouette using Make the Cut's print and cut function.

I'm usually too lazy to draw up templates, but since this was a Make and Take share project, I did make one this time. Each square represents 1/2 an inch, solid lines are cutting lines, red dashed lines are scorelines.

Here's a top view of the card to show the placement of the struts. I placed my struts 1/2 an inch apart. The video tutorials I've noted on the template screenshot above show the easy assembly of this card.

And since the intent of this card was for giving  treats to my "kids at heart" friends, I added a pocket to the backside to slip in a gift card. Using gift cards for Mickey D's or Wendy's makes this a great non-candy alternative for real kids too!

Nicest thing about this card is that it folds flat and fits into an A6 size envelope. Stay tuned for more Halloween projects to be posted soon!

Coffee Shop Splurge!

I have another fun Triple Slider Card to share this week. This one was made for my sweet friend Heather who also had a birthday last month. Wanted to do a coffee themed card to go with the Starbucks gift card I had planned on giving her.

My paper pieced "walking" bear is from Marjorie Ann Designs "Lemonade Bear" svg cutting file and his yummy frappuccino is a cutting file from Kadoodle Bug Designs "Oh Frap Bear". Coffee Shop backdrop is a free clip art found on Pinterest.

Here's the best part of the card: pull on the ribbon on the right side of the card and see teddy bear walk past the coffee shop with his frappuccio. At the same time, a panel with the sentiment pulls out to the right, and another panel with the gift card appears on the left! The concept and design for this super fun Triple Slider Card style was designed by Anita Chang of Island's Creative Escape in Los Gatos, CA. This might just be my new most favorite interactive card to make!

Here's a top view of my card which shows the slight change I made on the design of the original card. I changed the original sleeve which houses the sliding mechanism of this card to an open ended box and adhered it to a cardstock backing about 1/4 - 1/2 inch larger all around, to make it just a little easier  for the recipient to slide "open" the card.
Having so much fun playing with this card style... lookout, I'm on a roll! LOL!

Birthday Slider Card

I'm back to making "cutesy" cards again...YAY! This slider card was made for my mother in law who celebrated her birthday last month.

Still lovin' my stamps from Sister Stamps! I chose to use Mei Lin with her pinwheel on the front of this card, colored with Copics and added a few glittery Stickles accents.

Make the Cut design program was used to create the gold shadow for Mei Lin, as well as the Asian corners and "celebrate" sentiment. Corners were made by welding square shapes together, and I used Ballerina font to make the cutting file for "celebrate".

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the double slider type card. Pull the ribbon on one side of the card and...surprise!... another panel slides out from the the other side. But this card is just a little bit different. Did you notice that little Mei Lin slid to the right side of the card at the same time too? Neat, huh! This "Triple Slider Card" style was designed by the super talented and creative Anita Chang who teaches classes at Island's Creative Escape in Los Gatos, CA. You can see more of Anita's amazing interactive card creations on her Instagram account here.

I added our sentiment to the right sliding element,

and a little red envelope with our gift to the left sliding element.

Usually I shy away from making slider type cards because many of the people I give my cards to are non-crafty family and friends who have difficulty figuring out how to "open" their card if I'm not there to show them how. But I so totally fell in love with the concept of Anita's triple slider card that I was determined to try and figure out a way to change that.
One thing I noticed is that many people (myself included) will tend to grasp a card like this with their fingers, pinching the bottom of the card while trying to pull on the ribbon. Unfortunately this immobilizes the sliding mechanism inside, making it nearly impossible for the slider to work. Double and triple slider cards like this one should be held in the palm of one's hand with fingers gently grasping the top of the card while pulling on the ribbon. But of course I'm usually not around to tell people that when they get their cards!
To remedy the problem, I changed the outer sleeve of my card to an open ended "box-like" sleeve, and adhered it to a slightly larger (about 1/4" all around) back panel. This way, even if the card recipient grasps the bottom of the card, their fingers tend to sit on the edge of the box, allowing the mechanism inside to still slide freely. Tested this on hubby (like I do all my interactive cards) and it really works!

Adirondack Retirement Card

I have another "non-cutesy" card to share this week, a retirement card for a friend. I do believe this is the first retirement card I've ever made...LOL, and I guess it shows! I began by first searching for inspiration on Pinterest and found pins for a lot of really nice cards I liked featuring the Adirondack die from Stampin' Up. Only problem is that I  felt the die is quite pricey, and besides, I needed this card in a hurry.

So instead I searched and found an image for an Adirondack chair and some palm trees I liked and converted them into a cutting files using Make the Cut design program. The tall cool drink is a svg cutting file from Cre8ive Cutz. Adhered everything to the front of my card, which is actually a sleeve with an oval window backed with clear acetate.Used Copics to color in some sand and pounced some blue ink on the top with a makeup sponge for the sky.

Pulling on the ribbon at the side of the card pulls a gift card holder out and reveals a message printed on the inside of the sleeve. I used water color digital patterned paper for beach scene on the front of the gift card holder which shows through the window.

On the inside I added a pocket to hold a gift card and my sentiment. Sigh, unfortunately this card didn't quite turn out how I had imagined in my head...I had such high expectations, but I think I need much more practice with retirement cards. The good news is that since many of my friends are soon approaching that retirement age, I guess I'll have many more chances to practice!