Paper Pumpkin

Sitting in my craft room literally waiting for paint to dry (spider earrings coming up soon!) and looking for a quickie project -  this pretty marbled paper from Stampin' Up reminds me of a squash so I whipped up a paper pumpkin that I'm going to put on my desk (and if I get out to Ronda's studio any time soon I'll make one to add to her seasonal display table!). This is a very easy, kid friendly, cute Halloween or fall decoration - cheap and quick too! That kinda makes for the perfect craft in my book.

Supplies:

•  decorative paper
• 2 brads
• small hole bunch
• scissors and ruler,  or cutting board
• 2 green pipe cleaners (chenille stems, whatever - I've always called them pipe cleaners!)
• pencil to curl the pipe cleaners
• twine
• cork
• round cardboard to give the bottom some stability

Cut 1 inch strips of paper (how long the strips are will determine the size of your finished pumpkin). My paper is 12" square and I cut 24 strips (2 pieces of paper) and that's as big a pumpkin as you're going to get with standard 12" square paper.

Hole punch both ends of each strip and thread all of one end onto a brad, then all of the other end onto a brad. Spread the strips apart evenly to form the pumpkin.

 Glue a piece of cardboard to the bottom to make it more stable and it'll help keep the strips in place.

Glue a wine cork to the top like a stem - you can paint it if you want but I wrapped twine around mine instead. I also found the cork sat better on top of the brad by carving out a little circle from the bottom of the cork - then fit the cork over the brad.

Curl both ends of the pipe cleaner around a pencil, then twist around the cork. Glue twine around the cork if you want - I like how it looks but painting the stem cork would also be cool - how about glitter paint?

10.5.17 make a mummy picture

10.5.16 m&m cookie bars
















10.5.15 squash ghosts

Heart You To (Reese's) Pieces!

Here is another cute Ronda project that I helped assemble - between the things I've made for her seasonal display table and the projects I help her with, it's shaping up to be a Ronda month! This is such a fun easy idea I had to share.

The tag is just a small oval cut or punched out of white cardstock; she has a heart and words stamp from Stampin' Up that I used but you could easily just color on a heart and print the words by hand so don't let that stop you from making these! Add a short length of matching ribbon to the tag. Then fill these little plastic test tubes with Reeses Pieces, put the cork stopper in, attach the ribbon and tag by a pushpin in the top. Done. What fun little gifts.

Today is our anniversary - married 23 years! What?! I'd love to give him one of these but the poor guy can't have Reese's (nut allergy stops him from eating all kinds of yummy things - dang, so sad!), I'd substitute m&m's but then the tag wouldn't make any sense hahaha!! Adorable little anniversary gift tho...or party favors, place setting decoration, etc.

note: I don't know where she got the 4" test tubes but I see that Amazon sells 50/$7 plus shipping, so they aren't hard to find.



two years ago: creepy cute pumpkin

Curvy Keepsake Box Turkey

Last week I made a little scarecrow out of a Stampin' Ups curvy keepsake box die cut thing, now I made a super cute (well, I think it's super cute anyway!) turkey. These boxes are only a couple-three inches big so I made it much bigger by adding a tail using scraps of Ronda's fall themed papers and some corn husks. His little face is just a piece of orange cardstock beak with a scrap of red felt underneath, and 2 googly eyes glued on top of 2 light brown circles. Put a piece of burlap ribbon thru the handle and he's done. You could make this without the box if you want, he could be more one-dimensional by making the body from a flat piece of brown cardstock and either hang him up or lay him on your table - one on each place setting would be adorable for Thanksgiving.

Scarecrow Curvy Keepsake Box

I'm new to the whole Stampin' Up paper crafting business and have just discovered this "curvy keepsake" die cut thing that works with my Big Shot. It cuts out 2 pieces that form a small box and after googling for ideas I've found so many cute ideas.  I don't own it (yet) but punched a few out while at Ronda's studio - I thought I'd try my hand at making a couple different ones for her fall seasonal display table - the first one I made is this scarecrow,  decorating it with things I have on hand: corn husk hair, a feather, googly eyes, and twine. Isn't it cute?! These would make great place card holders for Thanksgiving...hmmmm, I might have to make more....;)

Wine Cork Pumpkin

Have you seen the blogs Facebook page? Right now there is a picture across the top that says "Drink your wine. We have crafts to do" -  hahah! You know how many corks I have saved up for projects and here is a very cute fun easy one to do with a few of them.

Try to find a bunch that are the same length, for this size pumpkin I used 25. Paint one end orange (or whatever color you want your pumpkin, you could even just leave it unpainted and have it be natural cork color) and let them dry. Lay out what your pattern is going to be to create the pumpkin shape, I did 4 on the bottom, then row of 5, row of 6, row of 5, and the top row 4. One cork is them stem, I didn't bother painting that one. Hot glue the corks together, I found it easier to glue it while face down, that way the front of the pumpkin stayed completely straight - versus trying to build the pumpkin from the bottom up (make sense? see the pics). After the 5 rows are glued together, stand it up and decorate the top - I cut out a couple leaves from leftover patterned paper from Ronda and Stampin' Up and glued them under the stem cork. Tie a piece of twine, burlap, or ribbon around the stem. So cute! You could also use this as a trivet if you lay the pumpkin down - click here to see a different version of a cork trivet that I made last December.

Wine and Design - Corn Husk Wreaths

Candy and I took another "wine and design" class at our local nursery - although this project required full use of both hands  all time so there was not much opportunity for drinking anything! Oh well, it was still fun - but more difficult than I thought it'd be! Not hard, just awkward - and it took some muscle.

Starting with a grapevine wreath and a bunch of freshly cut corn husks (when we signed up I assumed we would be working with dried husks - but they're fresh). Using 2 or 3 husks, bend and gather them into about 6-8" bunches then place them on the wreath and wire them on using a paddle of thin easily bendable wire - this is where the muscle comes in, you want to pull the wire quite tight so things don't shift and the husks get dislodged.

The rule of thumb is to wire 2 bunches on the outside, one on the inside, and one on the top and then shift down a couple inches and repeat. Pay attention to your placement and spacing trying to keep things similar all the way around, if your bunches get longer or fuller/less full it will change the symmetry of the wreath. When you get done run the wire over and under a couple places in the back to secure it.


















One tip or word of caution - don't leave these in the back of the car when you get home or your car will smell pretty bad the next day and you'll get grief from your husband about it. You want to leave them to air out. Don't ask me how I know.

our instructor made this one, we used it as an example. He
suggested added bows, branches of bittersweet, or maybe
small gourds, indian corn, etc. to change it up thru the season.

Leaf Lanterns

Saw this on BHG, had my doubts since I've never seen this done before but since I have everything on hand decided to try it. Look how cute it turned out :)

Click here for full details and video, I'll summarize what I did:

cut 4 wax sheets 12" x 8",  arranged dried leaves on one half of each sheet,  folded them in half  (so I had 4 leaf packets of 6" x 8"), placed an old white t-shirt over top and ironed until the wax paper stuck together.











Then I trimmed each one to 7.5" x 5.75" so they were all exactly the same. Taped together all 4 edges using washi tape in a coordinating color forming a 4-sided lantern. Put around a votive.





 You could make this any size you want, if you can find small leaves it would be cute to have a bunch of little lanterns. I would make sure the paper isn't too close to the flame though, I have no idea how flammable this is? Use good judgement and keep an eye on them just in case (or use flameless candles)!

Thanksgiving Tree

Made this Thanksgiving tree as part of our Thanksmas decorations, saw the idea in a magazine but as usual I can't remember where..

I found a piece of wood in the yard that the tree trimmers must have missed and drilled a small hole in it to fit a branch that I collected on one of our dog walks. Cut some leaf shapes out of  plain and patterned scrapbook paper, wrote a few things that I'm thankful for on the plain ones. Hot glue the leaves to the branch and it's a Thanksgiving tree!

This is how I organize my scrapbook paper - works good for me. In a hanging file holder I have all the paper in different sections (cardstock, 12x12, patterned, smaller sized paper...) and in an expandable folder I keep scraps of paper - I find that I need a small piece of paper for lots of projects so I keep the leftover scraps to use so I don't have to waste a whole sheet when I just need a little. Then I have the paper standing on a shelf in my craft closet along with other types of paper organized in a standing file holder.