May Arts Halloween challenge entry

May Arts has been holding some themed challenges lately.  Bethney posts a theme and several types of ribbon you can use for it.  You submit an idea for a project and she selects 20 participants to receive 2yds of their ribbon choices and make their projects.  I was lucky enough to have my witch's hat idea selected this month for the Halloween challenge.  She had some delicious ribbons available and I selected 3 of them (you HAVE to use what you select so you don't want to say you want them all unless you know how to use them!)

I loved the ribbons I selected- the spider webbing on the orange tulle-ish ribbon was unexpectedly velvety.  It was fabulous!  The orange satin/black pom-pom ribbon had a great, firm but flexible wire in it and was stinkin' cute.  The black was a bit looser than I expected but made gorgeous flowers.

I picked the hat up at Joann's last year- I absolutely loved the tulle hanging from it.  It originally had 2 silver satin flowers attached to it but I cut them off in order to decorate it with the May Arts ribbons.  First I wrapped the spider web ribbon around the base of the hat.  I considered trying to somehow attach the top edge of the ribbon to the hat so that it followed the conical shape but in the end, I liked it pulled away a bit at the top.  I doubled this ribbon over, matching the pattern, so that the orange was a bit brighter against the black of the hat- I really wanted it to stand out.  There was enough left over that I was able to make a bow with hanging ends.

I used the orange pom-pom ribbon to make a gathered flower and a twisted rose.  The gathered flower is large enough that I put a spider I glittered into it.  I also glittered the edge of the black ribbon with some sticky strip tape and fine orange glitter.  There was enough of the ribbon that I was able to make two of each of the gathered flowers and roses.  On the gathered flowers, I pulled the ribbon a bit differently and you can see the two different results in the large black flowers.  I'm happy to say that I used all of the ribbon in its entirety.

I hot glued everything to the hat and added two more spiders and a crow to finish the look.  Yes, the crow is attached.  The wire in his feet was actually enough to punch through the hat and keeps him upright.

 

I'm looking forward to wearing this on Thursday to the Halloween party over at our Taekwando school!

To see all of the entries, head over to the May Arts blog. 

Viewtainers winner!

Rhonda, come on down!  You're the next winner on Jen's Sporadic Giveaways!!!

Shoot me an email with your address to jgerwigdively@hotmail.com and I'll get it over to Viewtainers.  Congrats!  And thanks to everyone for entering and spreading the word! 

Funky cool storage containers + GIVEAWAY

Have you seen these cool storage containers from Viewtainer?

I've been following them on Facebook for a while now and they look really useful.  They come with a squeezy top so you can get the goods out without having to actually open the lid each and every time.  

They're all cylinders and while most seem to range from 2x4" to 2.75x12", you can also get non-squeezy lids and custom order longer tubes.  And, if you can't tell from the photos here, they come in scads of colors!

They're great for storing pretty much anything you can think of.  I imagine I'd have to duke it out with my hubby since he'd want to use them to store screws, bolts, nails and every other little tool bit floating around our garage..  And I KNOW my 6yr old would want some.  He LOVES containers.  I can only imagine the things he'd want to do with them- pretend mailboxes, dropping in counting items and magnetic letters, etc.  I'd like to see him use them to keep his craft supplies and toys in- buttons, pom poms, foam pieces, little Legos, dinosaurs and and and.  Personally, I'd like them for MY craft room- eyelets, brads, buttons, small flowers, Scrabble tiles and dominos, colored pencils whose box was destroyed... yeah, and, and and.  Oh yeah.  And my candy stash.  LOL!

I've also seen some used as travel containers (travel sized lotions and such!), pet snack storage, and emergency medical kits- great for Bandaids!

Of course, don't forget you can decorate the Viewtainers too.  There's this blinged out one posted on Viewtainer's site by Dawn.  Fun!

So.  Have you seen these?  Tried them?  You can now get them at Scrapbook.com and Amazon.com.  Some Home Depots and Sears also stock them though you'll need to check. Unfortunately, neither of those stores in my area has them at this time.

Would you LIKE to try them?  Viewtainer has offered to send one of my readers a 3-pack of Viewtainers!  Yay!  Because of shipping costs, this giveaway is limited to the US. To enter, please leave me a comment telling me how you've either used Viewtainers or how you'd like to... or both!  :)  The giveaway will close at midnight EST, Thur. Oct. 24 and I'll announce a winner soon thereafter.  Promise!  I hate entering giveaways and having to check back for weeks to see if I won- I definitely won't do that to you!

I'd also suggest you like Viewtainer on Facebook- it's not uncommon to find a giveaway happening over there!

For more great ideas on how to use these, check out Viewtainer's Facebook page, blog and especially, their Pinterest site.
Viewtainer sponsored this post and I'm receiving compensation for it.  However, all opinions are 100% my own.

Christmas Tags

I've been wanting to make some tags for Christmas for some time so when I got the Kraftin' Kimmie "Build Your Own [Christmas] Trinkets" and "Sleigh Mail," I knew it was time.  When Kraftin' Kimmie ran a WCMD challenge of "Tags," I stopped putting it off.  Obviously these are uber-simple but I wanted something that I could spend a bit of time stamping and trimming out layers for and then could quickly mass produce with a bit of variety.

It's a bit hard to see but all of the tags have faux stitching around the edges to finish them off a bit more.  I realized looking at this photo that I forgot to add bling to some of them.  Oh well, next time.  And there will be a next time- I definitely need more of these little cuties!

Ingredients:
Stamps: (Sleigh Mail, Build Your Own Trinkets): Kraftin' Kimmie, (Holiday Tag Team: To/From): Stampin' Up
Coloring: (Distress Markers): Tim Holtz, (White gel pen): Uni-ball, (Gold gel pen): Unknown
Embossing Powder: Clearsnap & Stampendous
All ink, papers: Stampin' Up

Challenges:
Kraftin' Kimmie: Tags 
Paper Girls: Stitching

Halloween tag

I picked up a fabulous set of Close to My Heart Halloween label stamps at the Stamp, Scrap & Art Tour this summer and last year I found a must-have pack of K&Co. shaker stickers at Michaels.  It's one of those things you desperately want to hoard and never let go of because they're just so darn cool but then what's the point?  I stamped the 3 images twice each, rubbed them with walnut ink, stacked them and used SU's Crystal Effects on the top layers.  Unsurprisingly, the stamped labels bled out a bit but I don't mind it too much with this tag- it just makes them look a bit older and blurrier.  I rubbed the distress inks into the ribbons and the kraft tag.

Ingredients:
Stamps: Close to My Heart. Hampton Arts
Paper: Kraft (tag) & brown (reinforcement circle): Stampin' Up
Ink: (Peeled Paint, Walnut Brown, Marmalade Orange): Tim Holtz, (Black Momento): Tsukineko, (Pumpkin Pie, Garden Green, Chocolate Chip): Stampin' Up
Ribbons: Unknown white & black striped, twill seam binding (both colored w/ the TH Distress inks)
Misc: (Sticker): K&Company, (Rub-ons): Creative Imaginations

Challenges: 
Pumpkin Spice: Brown & Green
The Stamping Boutique: Halloween 
The Corrosive Challenge: Cute and Creepy
Ribbon Carousel: Halloween
The Kraft Journal: Sketch: I went VERY loose on this but the circle and the pointed piece are the Elixir and Potion pieces and the bottle and Owl Cream pieces make up the rectangle.

Kraftin' Kimmie Halloween Card

Happy World Card Making Day all!!!

Kraftin' Kimmie's weekly challenge this time around is "Spooky Sweet."  While I don't have any KK Halloween stamps per se, Charlotte is tweeky enough to do the job nicely.

Ingredients:
Stamps: Kraftin' Kimmie
Papers: CS: Stampin' Up, Designer: Pebbles (Thirty One)
Coloring: Watercolor pencils (Derwent, Staedtler), Copics

Challenges:
Kraftin' Kimmie: Spooky Sweet
Sarah Hurley: Halloween 
The Stamping Boutique: Halloween
The Corrosive Challenge: Cute and Creepy