Precious Cookie Favor Bags - Outcome!

I may not have been overjoyed with the original bag tags, but I think the final results were fantastic! I revisited the masked animals, specifically the bear I originally put in costume (see here). I decided to definitely go the costume route, so after a little brainstorming and a little help from my friends we have:

Zorro Giraffe
Supplies for all:
HA Playful Animals
trusty black ultra fine point Sharpie
Provo Craft papers
DCWV black cardstock
Dashes, Dots, & Checks orange and purple ribbons
Offray black ribbon
Orange and Magenta Stickles





Super Bear (thanks for the idea Lysa!)













Mummy Monkey

















The Original Owl - can't improve upon perfection!













Blah blah blah, inconsistent photography, blah, the ribbon is more accurately purple in the owl shot.

They were such a hit at the sale today that they sold out in the first half hour - of the five hour sale! I was pretty stoked to see they were such a success. Well I'm sure the cookies factored into the deal too. Though my boss told me that she just had to have one of each animal. Fun day!

We have a face painter among our colleagues, she was busy this morning dolling everyone in the department up for the sale. I was a zombie and I must say I looked AWESOME! I came prepared wearing the mummy screen print tee from Target, and she let me borrow from her stash of wigs. Here I am in all my stunning, zombie glory!













Yes that is a fly (fake, natch) on my face - it was my favorite part!

Precious Cookie Favor Bags?!

Remember last month how I so desperately wanted to make precious cookie favor bags as 3-day reminders for my office but changed my mind last minute due to green concerns? (Memory refresher here) Well this coming Thursday my department is having a rummage and bake type sale with proceeds going to United Way. I volunteered to make cookies for the sale and was thinking (with growing excitement) that they would probably want these cookies individually wrapped somehow. So, I went to check with the woman in charge: "If you could wrap them in sets of two or three somehow that would be really great." Great? You mean AWESOME! My dream is coming true!

Except I'm kind of a downer on the results. I don't know if my craft wave is finally over, but the ideas just aren't flowing as well as they were last week. My visions of grandeur included 4 images and two other "main" colors (green and something else) and just more stuff. Maybe some patterned paper? They were going to be simple so it wouldn't be a pain to make 12 or however many. But below is what I have, and I think they're too simple, plain even. Plus I'm beyond mad that I don't have better nesting circles. I still have a little time, so I suppose I could go back to the craft stores and check for some better paper options. I could do squares instead of circles. I was originally contemplating borrowing the masked animals for this project, and I am now re-contemplating the idea. I won't make the cookies till later this week so the "cookies" in these pictures are spools of American Crafts ribbon. I'll post updates with the finished project.

Pumpkin & Kitty

Trick or Treat!

Time for another TECC entry! No cupcakes this time, I happened to make the three little figures as I was playing around with an idea for cookie bag tags (more on that next time!) and decided to go for another Halloween card. I must say that I borrowed the super cute mask idea from 1scrappycat on the Hero Arts Flickr group. I wish beyond all wishes that I could take credit for the idea - I LOVE the owl! But alas! She won second place in the paper challenge! As you can see from her winning card, I kept the owl pretty much the same but played around a little with the bear.

Taylor's sketch:
















For my take, I flipped the sketch. This was a last minute decision because I wanted the trick or treat stamp to go this way.

Trick or Treat!
Supplies:
DCWV and Provo Craft papers
K & Co. Rhinestones
Magenta Stickles (on kitty's hat)
HA Playful Animals
Stampendous Witch Kitty
Doodlebug Halloween
Offray ribbon

With a Cupcake!

Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge # 38 take two! I already revamped my original idea from earlier today - cupcake now included! I like this one better because of the cupcake, so I'll be entering this one:

Dibs!
Supplies:
Imaginisce Penguin Dude stamp
Stampin' Up! Short & Sweet Cupcake
Colored with Prismacolor pencils
Inkssentials Glossy Accents on cherry
Offray Oatmeal Ribbon
DCWV papers
JoAnn Sew Essentials Buttons









The inside will say "The cupcakes are all yours today!"

I'm wondering if I should speak to someone regarding my apparent view that penguins are greedy...

Picky Penguin

After getting my feet wet in a few Hero Arts challenges I decided to tackle a challenge I've seen Lysa enter a few times. Taylor over at Taylored Expressions holds a weekly Cupcake Challenge! It's a sketch challenge where you make whatever you want following a given sketch. Whilst it's called the Cupcake Challenge, cupcakes are not mandatory.

This week came with an additional challenge to tell Taylor what our stamps are really saying or thinking. Here is the sketch:

















Here is what I came up with:

Popsicle Penguin
Supplies:
Imaginisce Penguin Dude stamp
Colored with Prismacolor pencils
Inkssentials Glossy Accents on popsicle
Offray Oatmeal Ribbon
DCWV papers
JoAnn Scrap Essentials Brads
Hero Arts Gemstones






I haven't created an inside for the card yet but plan on having it say "It's your special day, you deserve to take the last one!"

I did want to use a cupcake (I love cupcakes!) and considered selectively removing the popsicle and adding a cupcake instead. Hmm. I might still do that as something to play around with. I haven't entered the contest yet and have until Monday at 8am, so I now feel possessed to play around with including that darn cupcake!

Thinking of Fall

Can I just say that Photoshop is amazing? I've been editing the balances on my pictures with free software that came with my camera. I was finally fed up with the results enough to decide to borrow some time with dad's Photoshop program on his computer. What a difference! Deep down in my heart I knew this would be the case, but I wasn't ready to admit just yet that my cheapo program could be inferior. The results still aren't as magnificent as if I had started with the midday sun light source, but they're acceptable enough for me that I entered this card and Live, Laugh, Love from my previous post into the Hero Arts contest last night.

I have two stacks of Making Memories papers, Live, Laugh, Love was complied from one of the stacks, so I wanted to give equal opportunity to the other. This second stack didn't seem to coordinate as well as the first, IMHO, so I only ended up using one sheet out of it. I also wanted to push myself some more with color. It's not a huge leap but I normally avoid orange! I was even surprised when I realized I had orange buttons, I only bought them because they were on clearance for $0.97, and look how well that worked out! Lesson learned, always impulse buy clearance items. The orange and browns feel super autumnal and even a bit Coldwater Creek. I almost did go completely fall inspired when I remembered I had a sentiment stamp "have a bountiful season" and a pumpkin stamp that isn't cartoony and cutesty. That was feeling too far out of my style though and I came up with the below instead.

Thinking of You

Supplies:
Making Memories Funky Vintage - Lizzie Collection
HA Playful Animals













I entered a few others into this weeks challenge too: A Day Sprinkled With Fun, Welcome Little One, and Thank Yous Two and Four. The winners of the masucline flair challenge were announced today - no win or honorable mention for me. With over 200 entries I wasn't really expecting to win, but it's fun to try anyways!

There is Love

Don't tell, but I forgot a third October holiday. My parent's anniversary - shame on me! It is the 23rd so luckily I remembered with time to spare. I was also very interested in this week's Hero Arts contest: Patterned Paper. I'm no stranger to patterned paper but I wanted to do something more patterny than normal. Push my pattern boundaries, if you will. I must say that I love what came out of that! It is definitely more "loud" than anything I've ever made before, but that is actually what I love about it. This is also the first anniversary card I've made that I don't mostly hate.

Live, Laugh, Love
Supplies:
HA Clear Design L
Making Memories Embellishment Paper - Funky Vintage, Ruby Collection














I have yet to find a light source for my photography that I like as much as the midday sun. Unfortunately, during the week I don't get much midday sun (it would ruin my lovely complexion of 'office pale'), but by this weekend hopefully I'll get a shot of the card in the lighting that I prefer. I'm waiting till then to enter this one in the contest.

I want Sprinkles

A little back story on this first: Sometime in August a vendor I occasionally work with cleverly figured out that sending me 2 Sprinkles Cupcakes would be an easy way to expedite setting up a meeting with me. Now I had never had these delicate morsels of heaven before this time and boy can I say my life was incomplete before! I have made two trips of my own to our new store in town since then and I keep thinking up reasons why I need to go. What's even better is I've gotten my parents hooked! So now that we all dream in Sprinkles I wanted to Sprinkle a card. As you can see from pictures on their website they have a trademark dot that they use as a cupcake topper (made out of gum paste, not so tasty). They have different color combinations to signify each flavor. I wanted to make a birthday card option for dad using his favorite flavor's colors, brown with blue in the center (coconut!). This is also what started my quest to find every size circle punch ever made.

This card failed the original intent for three reasons. First, the dots just aren't the right size. I did measure a dot from our last set of cupcakes and I thought what I had would be close enough. I just don't like how they look. I only used one on this card, what the sentiment is hanging on, so you can see. Second, the coconut cupcakes aren't served with dots on them. They have coconut on them so something may have been lost in translation. Third, dad doesn't need 4 birthday cards! Mom has a birthday coming up in December so out of all fairness while I'm still riding a crafting wave I should be making her some birthday options too. So I'll retry this again, but using 3/4" and 1/2" circles. Her favorite flavors are actually served with the dots so it won't be as much of a stretch. Although I say this failed the original intent, I don't mean it failed completely. I really like it a lot! So it'll go into my general card pool and the next time someone deserves a day sprinkled with fun I'll already be ready already.

A Day Sprinkled With Fun
Stamp:
HA Clear Design Cupcakes















In looking through some past entries right now I just happened to realize how amazingly similar this looks to Thank You 2 from my 5 Thank Yous post. I CASEd myself! (CASE = Copy And Selectively Edit)

Manly!

My intentions behind this card were two-fold. Fold 1: I wanted to take another crack at a birthday card for dad. I liked the theory behind the original October circle with the 14 in another color to indicate his special day, though now I have a circle punch. Actually, now I have several circle punches, but that's a story for another day. Anyhow, I wanted to use my 2" circle punch with the October stamp. I must say I think it looks much better this way! Fold 2: I decided to finally make a card specifically to enter a Hero Arts contest! This week's contest is cards with a masculine flair. I went for a slightly distressed and thrown together look because aren't all men slightly distressed and thrown together? Maybe it isn't screaming "MANLY!" but it definitely isn't girly! This also happens to be my first 3" x 6" card, if I keep this up I'm going to have to purchase the appropriate envelopes.

Dad Birthday Option
Supplies:
HA October Month set
Spiral Punch - Yahoo!














I entered a few other previously made cards as well, the original Many Many Thanks, Brother's Father's Day Card, and 3-Day Woof. I'll let you know if I end up winning anything.