Simply Betty's Monster Mash Blog Hop

Welcome to the Simply Betty MONSTER MASH BLOG HOP!! You should have arrived here from Katya's blog and if you want to start at the beginning so you don't miss any of the awesome stops on this blog hop then you can start here at Betty's blog. 

The challenge was to create anything Halloween using any of the Simple Betty Stamps Halloween images. I chose to use two of the images from the Steampunk Halloween 2012 images A Little Arsenic Before Bed and Jack and Jill. 

I decided to try and make more of my Halloween decorations instead of being limited to what I could find in the stores. I started with two wooden $1 picture frames and painted them very bright green, then a layer of crackling medium then topped that with a layer of black paint. After that was dry, I added the ribbons and the rosettes. I have decided that these will be sitting or hanging fairly close to each other so I put the decorations on opposite corners. 

A Little Arsenic Before Bed:

Jack and Jill:

And a close up shot of both images:

Your next stop on the hop is LISA.

Supplies used: images from Simply Betty Stamps, colored with Copic markers, wooden from from Michael's, acrylic paints, Tim Holtz Rosette die, skeleton and poison bottle from Joilee's, ribbon from Michael's, background paper from Recollections, and silver beads from my stash. 

Snowman Card

Look, another Christmas card! I really am making progress on filling up my Christmas card box. I know this is a first for me. Everyone on my card list might actually get a card that I made instead of a store bought one that I would end up buying at the last minute. For this card, I used a snowman image called Welcome Home Snowman from Pholkart Blessings. Image is colored with Copics, paper from DCWV (I think) and snowflakes punched with a Martha Stewart punch.

Thanks for dropping by today, I've got to run or I will be late for work!

A Birthday Card for a Friend

Good Morning! I hope everyone had a great weekend--especially if you were off yesterday! I was off but Kip ended up working pretty much a regular day, which is one of the disadvantages of being self employed. In the first week of September I have several friends with birthdays and this is a card I made for one of them. I used a CC Designs image called Geisha Girl, colored with Copics and DP from DCWV's Far East pack of paper. For some reason, every picture that I took made that ribbon look bright red. In person, it is a much darker red and matches so much better. 

Have a great day!

Card Cupids Halloween Challenge

Oh my goodness, I can't believe that it is September 1st already. August is always one of those months that just drags by for me, but this one seems to have flown by. And since it is a new month, that means we have a new Card Cupids challenge! The challenge is a Halloween challenge and Bugaboo Stamps sponsored this challenge. For my card, I chose to use Hween Brat Witch, she is colored with Copic markers, I used paper from my Halloween stash and some buttons and baker's twine.

We would love to have you join our Halloween Challenge!!

(end of the challenge info, the rest of the post is just me musing about Halloween and memories)

~~~

Do you make Halloween cards?

Do you send them out? I don't send out Halloween cards like I send out christmas cards, but I do use a lot of my cards. If you notice, most of my cards do not have sentiments on the front of the card. One of the reasons is that I use a lot of my cards as general note cards. I try and make sure to send thinking of you or encouraging cards and lots of thank yous. So most of my Halloween cards get used that way, if I need a card for any of those reasons, I will use a card without a sentiment and write my message on the inside. Pretty much any card that goes out for any reason other than birthday during the month of October will probably be a Halloween card (although I do keep in my friends that do not celebrate Halloween for whatever reason).

~~~~

I absolutely LOVE Halloween. I probably  have more Halloween stamps, images and papers than I even do of Christmas and the other holidays combined. I love the fun of dressing up and all the fun that goes with it. I was so excited when Kip and I got married and I moved into his house because we actually had trick or treaters! This is the first place I have lived that I have had more than just a couple, I have lots of very small kids too, so I don't do scary, just fun. Another reason I love Halloween is it reminds me of my Mamaw. She loved seeing all the kids that would come to her house each year and made each child feel like they were actually the ghost, super hero or whatever they were dressed as. Doing something that she loved doing reminds me of her and how much fun I had with her. 

Oddly enough though, she passed away on Halloween and I thought I would never, ever be able to observe Halloween without being reminded of my grief. It took a couple of years, but then I realized that it would be a way for me to kind of honor her by doing something that brought her so much joy. And now instead of Halloween being a reminder of loss, it feels like a connection with her. I don't know if loved ones look down on us, or observe our lives or not, but I like to think that when I am passing out candy and admiring costumes she is with me and she is once again smiling at all the kids in their costumes. 

I always have Smarties in my bucket of things to pass out too, because so did Mamaw. She was allergic to chocolate and would make sure that was passed out first so that if she had leftovers, she could actually eat them and Smarties were a favorite of hers.

Little Red Riding Hood?

I am running late today! My computer has decided to be difficult this morning. It seems like it is working--finally! And I have another Little Red Riding Hood to show you today! The challenge on the Riley and Company blog this week is "Your Favorite Fairy Tale". Unfortunately I don't have any of the fairy tale stamps--yet! I love using my Rileys and their challenge is the one that I play most regularly so I didn't want to sit this one out. I went through all my Rileys and I couldn't come up with something that reminded me of a fairy tale.I went back through a couple of times and still couldn't come up with anything. Maybe it's because I have Little Red on my mind or what but while I was looking at Obi Moose , I decided I could make him look kind of like a fairy tale character. I colored him with a red cloak and took off the end of the light saber, keeping the handle. I drew a little basket and my Jedi Master became a fairy tale character. I decided to have Red walking through the forest on the way to Grandma's house. I used a Sizzix die, paper from my stash and some Bo Bunny star brads. 

Anyone have great weekend plans? I am going to a crop tonight at my LSS, I always have a lot of fun doing that. After that, the long weekend is going to be pretty laid back--I hope! 

Have a great weekend!

Card Cupids Box in the Mail

I thought I would take a minute and show you the box that I am going to be mailing to Card Cupids today. I have included some crayons, some coloring books, craft activities, bookmarks, a couple of journals and some coloring kits. I also added cards for all the children from the Current Card Requests page. I pick up things here and there as I find them and when the box is full, I send it in. Right now is a great time to pick up notebooks for journals and crayons since most stores are still having their big school supply sales. I have been hitting the sales when I can because I can get more things for my money, and hopefully bring smiles to even more children. 

I have learned though, that I don't have nearly enough boy stamps! I have mostly little girls and older boys in my life and it definitely shows in my stamp collection. If I didn't have Rileys, I don't know that I would have anything to use for boy cards. You can see Batman Riley peeking through the vellum envelope. I tend to make a lot of 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" cards and sometimes can only find the vellum ones in that size, but I kind of like that you can see the card.

Here are some of the book marks I made to include in the box:

(using some of my older sets--a couple of Hanna Stamps sets, a Basic Gray dinosaur set and the ladybugs from The Angel Company)

I have shown these journals before but since they are in the box, decided to show them again. This one uses an image from Michelle Perkett:

And this one uses an image from Clear Dollar Stamps. 

Thanks for visiting with me today. If you would like to learn more about Card Cupids, click here.

To see the current Card Requests, click here.

To learn about items Card Cupids sends in their Happy Mail packages, click here.

(I felt like a phone recording for a minute there!)

Sympathy Card

I almost never make sympathy cards, in fact this is probably only the second or third one that I have made in all the time that I have been making cards. I don't know why, but I am never quite happy with them and always end up sending store bought sympathy cards. I made this one for a friend of mine that recently lost his younger sister. Danny (my friend) was probably one of my oldest friends, literally! Our parents went to church together before either of of was born and so from the time we were in the nursery together in our Mother's arms we have known each other. In my family there are two girls then a boy; their family was the opposite, two boys then a girl. Danny and I grew up in the same Sunday School classes, the same youth group and even the same schools. Danny's Mom passed away when we were still in elementary school, she used to make me beautiful clothes for my Barbie Dolls and had the sweetest smile. So after a seven year battle with breast cancer, Danny has lost his baby sister. This is the card that I made for him. I didn't think about using this as an image for a sympathy card when I bought  it, but I do think it is perfect. The image is from Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copics. I kept the card simple since it is going through the mail and is for a guy.

I do have lots of funny memories of Danny and his family too. I remember once when we were all pretty young Danny showing me how easy it was to pick up his sister--by basically putting a choke hold on her and lifting her off the ground. I still remember her legs kicking to get down. My brother wasn't so compliant when I tried that on him! Danny could probably tell lots of stories about mischief on me as well, like I said, we grew up together. I moved away from my hometown almost 20 years ago for an adventure and don't see my old friends as often as I would like, but wanted to make sure to let him know I was thinking about him during this difficult time.

Little Red Riding Hood

Good Morning! Here is another card I made for the Card Cupids "Anything Goes" Challenge. For this challenge Milk N Coffee is our sponsor. This image is called Tiffany as Red Riding Hood. I colored the image with Copics and a little Stickles on the bow on her basket. I used a Nestability to cut out the panel behind her. I decided that just the black panel was too much behind my image on that dark paper and cutting it out in red would wash out my image. I decided to glue the black piece onto red card stock and then hand trim, leaving a red border. I was pretty happy with the way that looked.

We would love to have you join us for our current Card Cupids challenge!

Here is a list of the current card requests.

Have a great day!

Samantha's Birthday Card

Good Morning! Samantha just celebrated her 10th birthday and I wanted to show you the card that I made for her. It was funny, a couple of weeks before her birthday she told me she couldn't wait to see what her birthday card was going to look like. She mentioned it again after seeing the card I made for her sister Jenna's birthday. No pressure, right? It does make me feel good though that they look forward to their cards and know that I try and find the perfect image for them. Samantha is like me in the fact that there isn't enough yellow and nothing can be too yellow! It is so hard too to find stuff for little girls in yellow. Pink and Purple? Yes. But yellow is a little harder to find. Other than crafting together, Samantha and I really enjoy cooking together. When she is here for dinner, we usually make something that she hasn't made before and I usually try and find a recipe for something that is new to both of us.  

I had my selection narrowed down to this image and another one that showed a girl painting. I wanted something that represented something that we do together and using an image from a company that she really admires. I kept going back to this one though because that confident look on that little girl's face reminded me of Samantha and she really likes Sassy Cheryl's images. Of course I colored her with a yellow chef's hat and jacket to personalize it even more. I added some yellow paper, yellow letters and yellow flowers that I had found a while back and decided to save for a "Samantha" card.

She really liked her card!

I am linking Samantha's birthday card to the Sassy Cheryl challenge since the challenge was to make a birthday card.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Santa Card

See, more proof that I really did start my Christmas cards early enough that I might not have to buy them at the last minute! Because every year I say I am going to get them done and every year I find myself at the store buying cards. I am pretty proud of the fact that my box of handmade Christmas cards is filling up quite nicely. This is another stamp that I bought at Papertrix when I was there in June. They were having a sale on all their Christmas images so I picked up several. Of course, I liked all the ones that I bought, but I do think this one is my favorite. I love the vintagey look to this Santa. I really just like the way he looks, standing there with  his bag full of goodies. The image is from Great Impressions and was colored with Copics, the paper is Bo Bunny, there is some stickles on the magic dust coming out of Santa's hand and I added a little "Merry & Bright" sticker that I picked up at my LSS.

Have a great weekend!!