Outhouse Halloween Humor....

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy....are we having fun now!

Firstly, Thank You SO much for all the very sweet comments that were left yesterday for the DIY Candy Corn Figures.  I'm so glad you enjoyed them. Your comments were so thoughtful.

Welcome again to the second day of the Halloween party hosted by the lovely Lori at Chouxchoux Paper Art. Today I'm going to show you what I did to make a funny Halloween Outhouse centerpiece.

I found all of these files at the Silhouette Design Store, but I know there are several file shops out there that you can use. I've also linked the supplies I used, to the shop I bought them at, The Funkie Junkie Boutique; which is also one of our very generous sponsors. Okay, so here's how they started out.

Next step was to paint and crackle and stain the outhouse before assembly.

The tree was done exactly the same....

Extra bit and bobs were added to complete the scenery.

A closer look at the black powder embossed street light and the folder embossed aluminum foil tape that I used to make the outhouse roof. I used a spiderweb folder and then Adirondack inked the tape.

Beware of ghosts that lurk in the trees!

And bats that swarm 'by the light of the silvery moon!'

And the horrors that befall you when you're a Mummy and the outhouse is out of paper!

And one last time all together....

There you have it, a little idea for a centerpiece on an entry table or your desk at work or even in the restroom!  You're never too old for potty humor!

I'm linking this Outhouse Humor up to the Chouxchoux Paper Art Challenge.

Here's the fun news:

Our gorgeous hostess, Lori Hairston, from Chouxchoux Paper Art will put names "in the hat" for every comment made.  So if you'd like to be eligible to win a prize or giveaway, leave a comment on each blog each day (individual blogs may have giveaways too, you never know...so don't miss out!) to get the most chances to win!!

                  Winners will be announced on September 27th!

Also, there's MORE FUN!!

We have an open challenge for ALL to enter.  All you have to do is submit a current Halloween or Fall card or project, post about it, and link it up to Chouxchoux Paper Arts Challenge #1 where you'll find the link button!  All entries must be submitted by October 3rd and the winner will be randomly selected and announced on October 4th at Chouxchoux Paper Arts.

Winner receives a $25.00 Gift Certificate from the very generous Lawn Fawn!

LASTLY, I'll be giving away a surprise gift here on my blog, so leave me a comment on my posts and I'll draw from the names.   I'll announce the winner on the 27th of September as well, here on my blog!  Best of luck to you!!

Lots of ways to win, so don't miss out

Blog List For today

                      Lisa Minckler (you are here)

Mitra Pratt

Tracey Kelly

Maria Patrick

Lori Hairston

and a HUGE thank you to our FABULOUS prize sponsors as well:

   The Funkie Junkie   $25 gift certificate

                The Cutting Café three free files of your choice

                 Lawn Fawn   pillow box and  peek-a-bat dies

Please visit us again tomorrow for the final day of our Halloween Party hosted by

  Chouxchoux Paper Art.

Hugs and Happy Crafting,

Lisa x

DIY Candy Corn Decor....

Hello, hello and Boo!  

Welcome to day one of three for the Halloween Party Blog Hop hosted by the wonderful Lori at Chouxchoux Paper Art.  For the next three days we have all kinds of fabulous tutorials, eye candy to look at and prizes to give away, so don't miss out on the fun! Okay, let's get started then with my tutorial on making fabric candy corn decor and they're cheap!

Please let me introduce you to 

Cornelia The Witch, Frankencorn and Corny The Ghost

For those of you who read my blog regularly, you'll know that I found this wonderful tablecloth at The Dollar Store and have found all kinds of ways to use the material for projects.  Here's yet another.

What do you make when you have a ping pong ball and a jiffy pot laying around in your craft room? Well, you make a body mold for fabric candy corns. Pffft,..duh! ;) I mean, isn't that what everyone does? LOL

Hot glue the ping pong to the pot and then cut enough fabric to drape over, tucking the extra material under the pot.  You'll cut the excess off later.

With a sponge brush and fairly small amount of Mod Podge Stiffy Stuff (found this at Walmart), apply over the entire surface of the material.  Next, loosely lift the material up just a a bit off the ping pong ball and then begin using your drying tool to dry the material. If you don't have a drying tool,  air drying will work fine too.   In the picture below you'll see that the shape holds very well once dry.  At this point, you can cut the extra material off to balance the base.

 

Then begins the fun part of painting your candy corns.

Do you see the lumps on the candy corns face? Those are the eyes and nose that I made using a hot glue gun. Once the glue dried, I painted over them to blend.  Later I'll use paints and Copic markers to color the eyes.

Here's Frankencorn waiting for his face and neck bolts to dry and below is the paper hat that I made for Cornelia The Witch. There's also a stencil I cut out on my cameo for decorating her body later.

Oh golly, here they are all finished up.  

And lastly, here's Corny The Ghost with his paper glasses and chain. I thought it would be fun to make him look like he was actually scared.  I made his ghost costume from the same material that I used to make the candy corn body.  

There you have it! 

Three inexpensive cute little candy corns all dressed up for Trick or Treating.

I'm linking these Candy Corns up to the Chouxchoux Paper Art Challenge.

I hope you've enjoyed your visit. I know I've loved having you here.

Here's the fun news:

Our gorgeous hostess, Lori Hairston, from Chouxchoux Paper Art will put names "in the hat" for every comment made.  So if you'd like to be eligible to win a prize or giveaway, leave a comment on each blog each day (individual blogs may have giveaways too, you never know...so don't miss out!) to get the most chances to win!!

       Winners will be announced on September 27th

Also, there's MORE FUN!!

We have an open challenge for ALL to enter.  All you have to do is submit a current Halloween or Fall card or project, post about it and link it up to Chouxchoux Paper Arts Challenge #1 where you'll find the link button!  All entries must be submitted by October 3rd and the winner will be randomly selected and announced on October 4th at 
Chouxchoux Paper Arts.

Winner receives a $25.00 Gift Certificate from the very generous Lawn Fawn!

LASTLY, I'll be giving away a surprise here on my blog, so if you like something you see on my posts, please leave me a comment and you're eligible to win. I'll announce the winner on the 27th of September as well, here on my blog!  Best of luck to you!!
Lots of ways to win, so don't miss out.

Blog List For Today:

                      Lisa Minckler  (you are here)

Mitra Pratt

Tracey Kelly

Maria Patrick

Regina  Easter

Lori Hairston

 and a HUGE thank you to our FABULOUS prize sponsors as well:

             The Funkie Junkie   $25 gift certificate

                The Cutting Café three free files of your choice

                 Lawn Fawn   pillow box and  peek-a-bat dies

 

Hugs and Happy Crafting,

Lisa xx

                               See you tomorrow for day 2....                             

A REALLY Love-REALLY Hate Kinda Valentine Thing....

Hate might be too strong a word, but loath, abhor and dread are runner's up.  Now I'm not referring to love or the celebration of love, I'm referring to making tags.  If you want to see a grown woman throw a full on tantrum; sit me in a chair and tell me that I have to make a tag.  

I could admire other people's tags all freaking day long and well past the cows having come home, but making my own gives me a butt pucker of 10.

So what did I do yesterday?  I decided to combine one of my favorite things with one of my least favorite things and see how it went.  

A favorite thing - Kewpies

Step 2

Still having fun because I'm just playing with colors, inks and sticky things....

And then the (gasp) tag!  

I decided that in order to keep the hyperventilating to a minimum, I'd start from the beginning of Tim Holtz 1st book Compendium of Curiosities I and re-learn and practice the techniques. Here I used Wrinkle Free Distress (pg.33), Scribble Stain Distress (pg.34), and Double Distress- brick wall (pg.40).

And here is the finished tag.

In the end, it made me smile so I cut that very word out and now it's on my shelf for a Valentine gift to me :)

Yeah to persistence overpowering belligerence!

Hugs and Happy Facing Your Crafting Fears,

Lisa x 

Silhouette Sleigh Ride Ornament

Getting right to the chase because I'm so extremely thrilled with this challenge and I can't wait to give you the link to it, here is my DT creation for Our Creative Corner where the marvelous Marcy is hosting again this week and her challenge is to use Silhouettes! 

Originally I had a card all planned out, but then came across this free groovy template for a miniature suitcase at Mirkwood Designs and decided that a 3-dimensional setting would be more fun for a silhouette and then went one step further and turned it into an adorable little Christmas tree ornament.  I'm including all the links so that you can make one too. They are so super easy! 

The template, as is, will make this little box which measures 2.5"x 2", it's the perfect ornament size! I just used white cardstock and wood embossed the parts.  Coloring it in with Bordering Blue and Bliss Blue ink then aging it with distress inks in Antique Linen and Vintage Photo.  The pine cones are made from one TH Tattered Pine cones die and cut into three parts. The ivy, leaves and tree as well as pine cones were then painted with Gesso.  Three cotton balls pulled and glued to the bottom of the suitcase where I've mounted the cute little boy and girl silhouette having a wintry sleigh ride together. I've spritzed the cotton balls with a water and glue mixture and then topped with fine glitter.  All in all this took me about 30 minutes to make.  How cute to have these covering your tree?

This silhouette is a custom made stamp, but there are so many wonderful silhouette images for free at the Graphics Fairy and Free Vintage Digital Stamps.

 

Please stop in to Our Creative Corner

and feast your eyes on the other wonderful silhouette makes by my teammates.

 

I thank you with all my heart for the most wonderful comments and visits.

Your time, friendship, and encouragement is so very much appreciated.

Have a wonderful day!

Lisa xx



You've Been Boo'ed and Tutorialed Too...

Do you Boo in your neighborhood? It's one of our favorite activities during the Halloween season.  If you've never boo'ed before, here is a link with 16 different excellent ideas for booing! Just remember you need to be stealthy and not get pulled over by the cops like we did...LOL! 

  Since October is just around the corner, I thought I'd get the "secret" gifts ready early.  Thanks to Shape EZ's templates, the task was easy and fun.  Here I've used the EZ Roll Bag and added some handmade decorations.  This will look adorable filled with candy as a centerpiece inside a $1 General bowl filled with MORE candy and instructions for them to BOO too!  I think it's a terrific way to package some food for a fun holiday and we'd really love to see what creative ideas you have for packaging food too. 

Some come on over to Top Tip Tuesday for our current challenge

GOOD WITH FOOD!

We have tutorials from our outstandingly creative Elaine (you HAVE to see these) and our sponsors Whimsy Stamps, Crimson Cloud, Shape EZ, and The Crafty Pad, all have prizes they're anxious to give away to our winners. So come on down! Bring your appetite and creative ideas and join in the fun!

For those of you who would like to stay and read my tutorial on how to combine digital paper, templates and decorative digital images together, as seen on this project, (only if you want to), I've included it below.  For those of you who have to mosey along now...thank you so much for your visit!

Hugs n' Happy Crafting to all,

Lisa xx

 

TUTORIAL

Using Microsoft Office Word

It seems like a lot of steps and I don't mean to belittle anyone's intelligence at ALL, I'm just crossing T's and dotting I's to make sure I show all the steps. It's actually quite easy. Don't let the pictures intimidate you if you haven't tried this before. ;)

 

Step 1

Open Microsoft Office Word

Select "Insert" then select "Picture"

 Step 2

Open up the folder where you store your favorite digital papers and select your desired color and pattern.

 Step 3

Here it is! Now enlarge the size to your desired needs.

 Step 4

By selecting "Square" you are allowing the image to move freely and "share" the page with the other images you insert. If you skip this step, you'll bump the other images off the page.

First place your cursor on the paper and click it to "highlight" that your next command is directed just for the paper. ;)

 Step 5

Now we are going to add a template of a box shape to the paper..just like my project.

Again, select "Insert" and then "Picture"

 Step 6

Computer will guide you to your folders where you'll select the template you wish to use.

 Step 7

Again, take your cursor, click on the box template to "highlight" that the next command is for the template, then see picture for further directions.

 Step 8

You'll notice that your template has a vibrant white background..ICKY! You don't want this. You want it to use the pretty paper you selected.  Here's the easy steps to do that.

Under the "Picture Tools" Tab select "Recolor"...

 Step 9

 Step 10

 Step 11

You can change the size of your image to fit better at this stage too.

 Step 12

 Step 13

Final step!

Congratulations! You've made it through my verbocious (one who is extremely wordy, but not annoyingly so..LOL!) tutorial.  I hope this has helped you work smarter, not harder and given you a little extra time for more crafts!!

 

Take care and have a great day,

Lisa xx