Tiny Treat Tote ...

Getting ready for my monthly stamp class tomorrow and it's a Halloween theme. It seemed the perfect time to create a little treat bucket made from a Dixie cup ...



I saw these at convention and got a chance to make one at our quarterly stamp meeting a couple weeks ago (Thanks, Susan!). They're fund and easy to make. For this cup I used Stampin' Up!'s Creepy Crawly double-sided designer paper.

The Template: Simply (and gently) pull apart a Dixie cup to create your template. Remove the bottom circle leaving the sides of your cup. This is your template.

The Paper Cover: Use your template to trace onto designer paper (or whatever you'd like to use to cover your cup) and cut it out (paper snips or other thin-blade scissors work best).

To attach, I used Sticky Strip on both of the short ends of my piece of designer paper and, starting the seam on my new (not torn apart) cup, carefully wrapped the paper around until it overlapped the seam and the cup was completely covered. Use paper snips to trip off the extra designer paper that will be extending past the bottom of your cup.

Border & Handle: A strip of paper backed with sticky strip and wrapped around the lip of the cup makes the top border of the bucket ... another stip attached with brads is the handle.

Fill with your favorite goodie and enjoy!

More Than a Brown Box ...

One of the great things about stamping and paper crafts is the flexibility ... make cards, scrapbook pages, gifts and even home decor items. I decided to combine a couple of these ideas and covered some simple boxes with patterned designer papers and ribbons. The boxes of course make great gift packages but they also make for nice holiday decor sitting on an entry table.


Paper: For these boxes, I used papers from the new SU Holiday Harmony double-sided designer paper from the Holiday Mini Collection.

Adhesive: When covering boxes, I recommend using a glue stick on the box and smoothing the paper down with a bone folder. Then, use some sticky strip (heavy duty double-sided tape) to tack down the edges. The designer paper will have some tension so using a heavy-duty adhesive will keep your edges down.

Ribbon: The ribbons are from SU's Theater set. The ribbon not only adds a great decorative edge, it also hides the seams between the top and sides of the box lids.

Label: For the front label on the square box, I used a piece of hardware from the Hodgepodge Hardware kit in Pewter. I punched a piece of white cardstock using the large oval punch and glued it behind the label frame with a bit of liquid glue. I'll handstamp a label once I figure out who the box is going to ... or what I want the box to contain.

Card Swap ...

Yesterday was Patty's quartlery meeting - full of project tips, demos and make-n-takes. I presented some home decor ideas (will post pictures here soon) and demo'd making a 'paper pumpkin' (will teach this at my 'Halloween' stamp class on Sept 27).

Of course, it's not a meeting without card swaps. There were lots of great cards featuring stamps from SU's new Holiday Mini Collection. Here's my "quick card" swap ...



For my swap card, I used the new 'True Friend' stamp set from the Holiday Mini Collection. Cardstock colors are from the In Color series - Blue Bayou and Soft Sky (plus a small piece of Naturals White). I stamped images in Chocolate Chip ink and accented the card with a piece of 5/8" grosgrain ribbon in Chocolate Chip.

Of course, punches! I'm not a big fan of cutting things out so I love using punches. For this card, I used the new 3/16" corner rounder, the 1 3/8" circle, the 1" circle, the 1/4" circle and the Scallop circle punches. The final touch is a gold eyelet in the center of the 'flower.'

Tip: Here's a trick for centering the eyelet in the center of the flower image:

• Punch a 1" circle from Soft Sky


• Punch a 1/8" hole as close to center in the 1" circle as possible and set the eyelet.


• Punch a 1/4" hole in the center of the flower - then use dimensionals to adhere the stamped image (punched out with a 1 3/8" circle punch) over the 1" circle so that the eyelet shows through in the center of the 1/4" hole. It doesn't matter if the 1" circle isn't perfectly centered in the 1 3/8" circle because you'll never see that part.


• Use glue dots (or your favorite adhesive) on the back of the 1" circle to attach to the center of the Scallop circle.


• Voila! Everything is centered.

Thanks to the punches there was no special cutting and this card went together quickly!

Thanks ...

Thanksgiving will be here before we know it (*gasp* the year's flying by). Here's a Thanksgiving card I designed over the weekend ... I'm still having fun playing with watercolors!

For this card, I used the new SU set "Autumn Harvest" stamped in StazOn Timber Brown on watercolor paper. To color the image, I used Pumpkin Pie and Old Olive inks.

The greeting is stamped in Versamark and embossed with Very Vanilla embossing powder on designer paper.

A little ribbon to finish things off ... this was a quick & fun card to make.

Photo Galleries ...

Finally found time to create some photo galleries from the pics I took at the Stampin' Up! Convention this year. If you've ever wondered what happens at convention, take a peek and you'll get a glimpse of what goes on.

• PJ Stamp Party


• Day 1


• Day 2


• Day 3


• Last Night Entertainment

Once again, this year was full of great stamping projects & ideas!

Hello Halloween ...

I'm not sure where the Summer went - but September is indeed here and that means Fall and that means I'm starting to think about Halloween.

So, playing with some older designer paper and my new-found fascination with watercolor, I came up with these for a card drive ...



I wanted to keep the card design fairly simple in order to focus on the watercolored image. I used images from SU's 'Booglie Eyes' set stamped in StazOn black ink on watercolor paper. Then, armed with a small paint brush, cup o' water and a bit of extra ink in the lids of my ink pads I started coloring!






The 'Happy Halloween' greeting is from SU's new 'All Holidays' set. The dots were from the 'In the Spotlight' hostess set (the dots helped fill in some of the extra space on the horizontal cards)

I punched each image out with the tag punch and cut a larger tag from black cardstock.

Tip: To create the black tag matte, mount your punched tag to the black cardstock. Then trim the edges using the tag as a guide leaving a 1/8" space (more or less depending on how large you want the black tag to be). Each edge should be one cut so it should be a bit easier to keep the spacing even.

The ink colors I used: Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Lovely Lilac.






Punched a hole (using the Crop-A-Dile) and looped a bit of ribbon ...

For fun, I added some booglie eyes to the characters to finish things off.