House Mouse and Friends Spooky, Sweet and Colourful Blog Hop!

Hello Peeps!

I hope your weekend was wonderful!  Welcome to my blog's newest followers - so glad to have you!!

Today is a fun day for me as I get to take part in my first blog hop ever!  I was over the moon when I was invited to guest design for the month of October at House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge, but never imagined that I would be invited to be on the roster for one of their fantastic blog hops!  So a huge thank you to all of the gals at HM&FMC and an extra thank you to Christine for taking the time to coordinate everything!!

Onto the challenge - this fortnight we are looking for your Spooky, Sweet and Colourful creations.  Include the colours purple, black, orange and lime green.  Your creation does not have to be for Halloween.  I hope you'll have time to join in and I am looking forward to seeing all of your creations!

For this challenge I decided to create a little Halloween decoration:

So, evidently, I am not big on orange and lime green though technically that little pumpkin stem does count :) I also don't usually make Halloween stuff - I thought I only had one Halloween stamp but the deeper I dug into my stash the more stuff I found.

Supplies:

Stamps - House Mouse Scaredy Cat (I masked the little mouse out of this one, just keeping the cat) and Hay Day (from which I cut out the little mouse wearing the pumpkin)

Paper - Assorted black card, retired Stampin' Up (blue) and gcd studios from the Sweet Surrender collection (purple), 300g hot pressed watercolour paper, white card for the banner (coloured with DI weathered wood and milled lavender, edges inked with black soot)

Punches and dies - Stampin' Up bat punch, TH tattered banners, TH Alphabetical, Cricut - Elegant Edges for the two base shapes, Ribbons & Rosettes for the fence, spider and web, and the tree is an SVG file from My Scrap Chick (Bella and Baxter Trick or Treating)

Ink/colouring - Cat stamped with jet black Archival ink and coloured with DI black soot and faded jeans, background scene painted with DI squeezed lemonade, scattered straw, black soot, weathered wood and milled lavender.  Mouse stamped with rich cocoa Momento ink and coloured with Prismas blended with Sansador because the watercolour paper is quite thick, so this made the fussy cutting less challenging.

Other - black hemp twine, black mini eyelets, skewer stick (painted black with acrylic paint), shiny black fibers glued on the spider.

Blog Hop Details:

If you are taking part in the blog hop, you should have arrived here from the talented Christine's blog.  If this happens to be your first stop, pop over to House Mouse & Friends Monday Challenge for the complete blog hop order and to start at the beginning.  

The next stop along the hop is the talented Dorte's blog.

To be in for a chance to win one of the awesome prizes, make sure to follow the blog hop and challenge rules:

- Enter the current challenge by linking up a new project following the theme and using a House Mouse, Happy Hoppers or Gruffies stamp

- Leave a comment at every stop of the blog hop and on the HM&FMC blog

- Be or become a follower of the HM&FMC blog

I would like to enter my decoration into the following fun challenges:

Alphabet Challenge - S for skeletons, spiders and anything spooky

Anything but a Card - fall or Halloween or fall colours

Crafty Catz - Halloween 

Crazy 4 Challenges - orange, black & purple

Divas by Design - something spooky

No Matter Which Challenges - Halloween creations or Halloween colours

Papertake Weekly - fright night!

Simon Says Stamp - Joy's Eerie Inspiration (photo)

Sweet Stampin' Challenge - Halloween

Thanks for taking a peek and have a great week!

Hugs, 

Dawn

Halloween at Creatalicious

Hello crafters,

I hope everyone is doing fantastic and enjoyed a great weekend.  A big hello and welcome to my new followers!

I have some exciting news to share today!  I recently applied for a design team position at Creatalicious Challenges and was invited to join the team!  I am thrilled to be working along with all the talented gals over there and hope that you will be able to come play with us!

This month's challenge is Halloween!  Easy!!??  This one was actually a bit of a struggle for me - I don't really make Halloween cards or crafts, so my supplies for this theme are limited.  However, I tore my stash apart and recycled some elements from another project I made ages ago and came up with a little treat box:

I used a template that I found on the web, and unfortunately I cannot remember where it came from and there is no logo or copyright anywhere on the file, so I cannot give proper credit.  If you recognize this box, please leave a comment so I can let everyone know where to get it.

Supplies:

Purple and black card from my stash

Spellbinders Decorative Labels 8

Tim Holtz fence embossing folder, I embossed the black card and cut it out to make the rickety fence

Tim Holtz Typeset die for the letters

Glittery black cat was a gift from a friend and has been sitting patiently in my stash for a really long time

Transparency, toxic was just printed from Word

Stampin' Up Spooky stamp and Stampin' Up bat (punch) recycled from an old card I made in a workshop

Stampin' Up "treats for boo" stamp is from the Mixed Medley set

The bat and letters were embossed with black and then embossed again with Stampin' Up iridescent ice embossing powder.  I love the effect this created.

Black hemp twine to hold the box closed.

We have a fantastic sponsor this month:  Sassy Studio Designs is offering the winner their choice of 4 digi images!  

If you are looking for some inspiration and great Halloween ideas, pop on over to the Creatalicious Challenge blog and check out the amazing projects the team have created.  I hope you'll be able to join in and am looking forward to visiting and seeing what you make!

I would like to enter this project in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp - dies and or punches

Anything but a card - fall or Halloween or fall colours

Crazy 4 Challenges - Sweet Treat

One Stop Craft Challenge - heat embossing (the bat and letters were heat embossed)
Papertake Weekly - all creatures great and small

Thanks for stopping by and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love having the chance to visit you back!

Have a great week!  Hugs,

Dawn

ATC Turn About at House Mouse & Friends

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a great weekend and had a chance to get creative and make a card or two to celebrate World Card Making Day!

I am very excited about today's post as I get to play guest designer over at House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge!!!  Thank you so much to all the gals at HM&FMC for inviting me to guest design!  The challenge this fortnight is 'ATC turn about' - include an ATC on your card.  Just in case you are not familiar, ATC stands for artist's trading card and is basically just a little piece of art that measures 2.5 by 3.5 inches.

I can honestly say that I had never even considered making an ATC before - I find the name quite scary.  But that is the great thing about a challenge, so I put on my artsy hat and started playing.  Here is what I came up with:

I used Feeder Friends, which is a gigantic stamp, and masked out all of the branches and flowers so that only the mouse and birds at the feeder were left.  I coloured the image with distress inks using almost every shade of brown available along with black soot, scattered straw and wild honey.  I then used the masking technique again to stamp the background with a wood grain pattern.  I wanted to give the glass a shiny glassy look, but remembered (after bleeding it a little - oops!) that Timber brown Stazon does not hold up to anything except water.  So, I cut out a transparency film in the shape of the glass and covered it with Goosebumps spray, which has a beautiful shimmer and dries nice and shiny.  Once it was completely dry, I peeled it off of the film and pressed it down on the image.  It has just enough stick to stay put, but will peel off if you try to lift it.  This photo captures a little of that shimmer and shine.

To finish off my card, I framed the ATC with twigs.  Picking twigs was a great fun to do with my two year old - he loved it!  I printed a computer generated sentiment onto a TH banner, added some twine, a wood grain button, and some feathers.  The top corner felt empty so I grunged it up with a couple of stamps and added some pearls.

Be sure to pop on over to the House Mouse and Friends Challenge to be inspired by their talented design team.  I hope you will be able to play along and am looking forward to seeing all of your creations!

I would also like to enter my card in the following fun challenges:

Charisma Cardz Challenge - Badda Bing (bling/shiny)
Divas by Design - use some texture
Totally Gorjuss - anything goes
Anything Goes Challenge - Animals

Thanks for visiting and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love having the chance to visit you back.

Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating today!   Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn

September

Hello everyone,

I hope you have all been well!  I have fallen a just a little wee bit behind on my mother's House Mouse calendar, but I'm not throwing in the towel just yet.   The current challenge at House Mouse and Friends is autumn and/or harvest, which was just the little nudge I needed to get another page completed.

How cute is this image!  Really fun to colour too.  As with all the other months, this calender is reusable - the calendar part just slides out of the little pocket and the new year is inserted.

Supplies:

Paper - Want 2 Scrap chipboard base, Imaginisce Apple Cider DP and Bazzill card.  The little apples and leaves were cut out from the DP

Image - HM Big Apple-tite coloured with Prismas and blended with Sansodor

Other - edges were all inked with DI walnut stain, calendar was computer generated.

I would like to enter my project in the following challenges:

House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge - Autumn and/or harvest

Papertake Weekly - Anything goes and a blog hop in celebration of turning 5!  Congratulations!!

Crazy 4 Challenges - leaves

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and visiting you too!

Hugs,

Dawn