Kitties, a Dragon, and a Unicorn

Don't know why but it took me longer than usual to get excited about Halloween this year. Couldn't get the creative juju going so I ended up having to fall back on good ol'  reliable cuteness of Hello Kitty on a fry box. 

I used the template for the Elf Fry Box from SVG Cutting Files which makes a fry box large enough to hold more than half a dozen cookies or a dozen pretzels. Paper pieced Hello Kitties were created in Make the Cut Design program and sized to fit on the front of the boxes.
 

Cut file for the spider was created from freebie icon clip art and the bats cut from glitter cardstock using a very old Quickutz die. "Happy Halloween" and the back inset was done as a print and cut using Henny Penny font. Hello Kitty skeleton boxes were filled with Furikake Pretzel sticks.

Cutting files for both Hello Kitties were rendered from coloring book images. I filled the Jack o Lantern Hello Kitty boxes with butter cookies generously sprinkled with orange sanding sugar. Being that I was running late it was nice that a dozen of each box were finished in a week. Hello Kitty saves the day!

Perhaps part of the reason I was so late in getting started on Halloween treat boxes may have been this card. This is the card I made to send to our granddaughter for Halloween.

 I wasted so much time trying to find the perfect paper for the back drop for this card, and in the end I decided to try and make my own. This gave me the chance to finally try the Bokeh Background technique using distress and white inks together with circle stencils. I started by randomly brushing on 3 colors of distress ink onto white cardstock. I used my Silhouette to cut different sized circles onto a piece of sturdy cardstock to use as a stencil. Then I brushed white pigment ink from an inkpad over the distress inked background using my homemade stencil to create the bokeh effect. I was quite pleased with the result and am looking forward trying this technique again soon with different colors of distress inks.

I completed the scene on the front of the card by adding glittery die cut bats cut from an old Quickutz die and a spooky haunted house border using a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables.

I thought it would be fun to do another Popping Flap style card. As the inner panel is pulled out of its outer "pocket"...

"Sisu" the water dragon from Disney's "Raya and the Last Dragon" pops out and up from inside!

Yes! You are absolutely correct if you guessed that our granddaughter chose to be "Sisu" the dragon for Halloween this year.

SVG cut file for Sisu was acquired from One Creative Market on Etsy. I used pearlescent and glitter cardstock to cut and piece Sisu together and added glittery Stickles accents to her mane. 

As mentioned earlier, this card took way too much time to create, but that's okay because I had so much fun putting it together!

And finally, here's the Unicorn... she's the newest member of our family, our furbaby "Polah" dressed up for her very first Halloween! Thanks for dropping by today. Happy Trick or Treating!

"FaBOOlous" Halloween Treats!

I have a trio of  fun and "Fa-BOO-lous" Halloween treats from my creative friends to share today. 

Caution! Cuteness Overload Alert!!! This Halloween bento box of goodies put together by our dear friend Heather is almost too cute to eat. Heather worked her magic in the kitchen baking and decorating these adorable cookies and making mochi in Halloween colors. There's orange chichi mochi, and mochi filled with peanut butter and Resses peanut butter cup... so yum!

My crafty friend Kris created this amazing haunted house treat box filled with treats and even a  little coffin box. I think the flying ghosts outside the house and the spider on the coffin are just too cute!

I love that this treat box is nice and large; it stands about 7 inches high and is approximately 3 inches in depth... so plenty of  room inside for lots of treats! SVG cutting file for this "Haunted Ghost House" comes from Simply Crafty Svgs.

The third of my trio of Halloween goodies was put together by creative friend Lori. This has got to be the cutest tombstone treat box ever! Sturdy tombstone shaped box is from Stampin' Up and Lori did an amazing job of dressing them up using an adorable print and cut Halloween teddy by Kristi W. Designs together with spooky tree, fence and sparkly star die cuts. The glitter glue accents she added gives everything a fun, almost magical feel.

Halloween falls on Sunday this year which means we can enjoy celebrating all weekend long...stay safe and have fun!

Popping Flap Gift Card Holders

Today I'm sharing two "Popping Flap Gift Card Holders". The one on the right with the adorable tear bear was a birthday gift last year from my dear friend Kris; which was the inspiration for the card I made on the left.

But first this card... I just love, Love, LOVE the super CUTE tear bears Kris puts together! Each adorable teddy is meticulously pieced together from many tiny pieces of layered felt which have been fluffed up to create teddy's furry texture.  Kris gave teddy a satin bow, a bouquet of sunflowers, and the cutest little face to make her tear bear absolutely irresistible!

Then she added the tear bear to the front of this fun "Popping Flap Gift Card Holder". When pulling down on the center panel...

...a card pulls out and pops open with a gift card and birthday greeting!

Loved that card so much, and Kris sent me this link to the video tutorial on You Tube by Srushti Patil .While you're there, be sure to take a peek at the list of all  the videos on her channel; as you'll likely find five or more  other amazing paper creations you'll want to try as well!

So for my version of the "Popping Flap Card", I kept the front of my card super simple, adding only a die cut word "celebrate" cut from glitter cardstock using a die from MFT Die-Namics. I had to increase the overall size of my card just a bit...

... to accomodate the paper pieced  Hello Kitty and Pochacco that pull out and pop up from inside. The inspiration for the character add on to this card comes from the amazing cards created by Anita Chang. You can  check out her Instagram here. For this card, I trimmed off the top of the inner pop up card close to the center fold and glued the paper pieced Pochacco and Hello Kitty to it.

I added a pocket for a gift card to the inside of the pop out card and embellished with a simple die cut "happy birthday", cut using Lawn Fawn's "Happy Birthday Line Border" die.

I like that this is a fun, yet easy pop up card which can be assembled pretty quickly. There are many versions  and different names for this fun pop up mechanism on the internet, a few which I hope to try out soon. If metrics are a challenge for you (as they are for me) Tamara Houk has a video tutorial for this converted into inches. Hope you give this a try!

Bridge Fold Birthday Card

While rummaging through my craft room in hopes of coming up with ideas  for a birthday card for my mother in law, I came across a very old Hero Arts wood mounted stamp set called "Asian Dolls". This set  (which was released by Hero Arts in 2009) was still in it's original packaging, never opened. I decided it was finally time to get these stamps inked up and put to use!

 

After being kept tightly shut in it's original packaging for over a decade seemed to have caused the foam backing on the stamps to wear down unevenly so I had to remove the stamps from their wood blocks and discard the foam backing. Luckily the red rubber had remained supple so I was actually able to get a pretty decent image using the Tim Holtz Stamp Platform. I chose two of the Chinese girl images for my card, using Copic markers to color them in.

I decided to make a bridge style card, using cardstock from Michael's Recollections "Cherry Blossom" Paper Pad for the back panels. Cherry blossom embellishments were fussy cut from cardstock from the same pad. Bridge die is from Lala Land Crafts. Border die cuts in the background are from Amy Designs' Chinese Landscape and Lala Land's Asian Landscape dies.

I added our sentiment to the backside of the card using the print and cut function and added a oval shadow layer cut in gold foil.

Welcome Fur Baby

Today's card is one I created and sent to my dear niece who recently brought a new puppy into her home. To add a personalized touch, I added the puppy's name, "Kinako" to the paper pieced dog tag I made for the front of the card.
 

I used the Three Dots embossing folder from Sizzix Textured Impressions Birthday Set #2 on the rounded square panel behind the collar and dog tag. I really wanted to use a pawprint patterned paper for my card so I made my own by randomly scattering pink pawprints on a page in Print Shop publishing program. "Welcome Fur Baby" sentiment was done as a print and cut in Make the Cut.

On the inside, I added a sweet paper pieced puppy sitting on a hexagon pop up. Dog bowl, bones and tennis ball cutting files were created using freebie icon clipart found online. Hexagon pop up stage was put together using the bottom cake layer from Karen Burniston's Cake Pop Up die.

The little puppy was put together using Eline's Puppy dies from Marianne Design. Loving all the cute pups one can create using this fun die set! 

Here's a photo of little "Kinako"... isn't she precious? Just for fun, I tried to make my paper pieced doggie look like the photo my niece had sent of her adorable puppy. How did I do? Lol, well at least I got her white paws right!

Here's a view of the hexagon pop up from the side...

... and a view from the top. Video tutorial by Karen Burniston on how to use her Cake Pop Up die set to make this hexagon pop up stage can be found here. This has quickly become one of my favorite pop up card styles to do.

Then on the backside of the card, I made a simple pocket using the Pocket Border die from Pretty Pink Posh to fit a  giftcard.  I enlarged the same pawprint clipart I had used to make my patterned paper to also make a pawprint cut file to add to the front of the giftcard holder.

Double Flip Frame Pop Up Card

This is a very simple card I came up with to use as a Make and Take sample for a couple crafty friends. It had to be quick to prep and easy to assemble since we were short on time.  While trying to think of ideas, I reached for my Mama Elephant Lucky Cat stamp set because the images are so cute and they're super easy to color up..

I created a front panel with two rounded square windows cut on my Silhouette. Distress inks were blended onto a piece of cardstock and added behind the windows. I heat embossed and colored the two largest lucky cats and the daruma cat stamped images for the front. The word "lucky" was created using Doodle Cursive font, cut three times and stacked for dimension.

On the inside, I added two pop up mechanisms from Karen Burniston's Flip Frame Pop Up Die set to the center fold of the card.

 A pair of lucky cats were glued on to each mechanism. so as the card is opened, the kitties pop upright to be perpendicular to the page. 

Loving that this pop up mechanism is so simple and quick and easy to install. And that is the very reason that I've already decided that I'll be using this mechanism in my Christmas cards this year. Hope it all goes as planned!

Puppy Double Pop Up Card

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for dogs and puppies, so I got very excited when I saw crafters sharing cards and crafts adorned with the sweetest little paper pieced pups created using Marianne Designs "Eline's Puppies" die set. 

Without question I had to purchase one too. But I have to admit, after seeing all the tiny little dies in the set I began to wonder if buying the die set was a mistake.  Happily I found Eline's video tutorial on  You Tube where she quickly pieces together 12 different dog breeds from this one set. I was hooked!

I pieced together the 12 breeds demonstrated by Eline to keep as my reference samples and even made up some of my own... so fun!

For my card I placed one of my puppers into a polaroid style frame with a sentiment, cut using the print and cut function. Then for the grey pup, I designed a "husky-like" face mask using Make the Cut Design program and sizing it to fit onto the Eline's Puppy die cut dog head. 

On the inside, I wanted to try a fun "Double Pop Up" mechanism which I had recently seen several tutorials for on You Tube.

All the tutorials I viewed were excellent but I found the one by Samantha Calcott  of Mixed Up Crafts easiest for me to follow since all her measurements were in inches rather than metric centimeters.

I added two more pups pieced together using the Eline's Puppies dies onto the pop up "cards" inside the card

Sentiments were computer generated and I sprinkled the flowers cut from Karen Burniston's Pop Up Frame die kit throughout the card to embellish.

I had so much fun putting this fun card together; playing with the adorable puppy dies and adding them to a new (for me) pop up card.