First Trick or Treat

Last Halloween, my son was 16 months old and was ready for his first trick or treat. Before he quite discovered what going door to door was all about, he thought Mom was just dressing him up in some dumb costume and he wasn't particularly happy about that.

He eventually warmed to the idea, however. While he never quite got the hang of carrying the plastic pumpkin, but he loved going up to the neighbor's door and getting candy. That really was a treat and he would run back so excitedly to show us his candy. I'm not sure that he even knew it was candy. He just liked the game of going to a door and getting something - anything! Oh, the joys of childhood.

Now that we're almost ready to trick or treat this year, I thought I should scrapbook the photos from last Halloween.  I had a hard time choosing my favorite photos, so I went with a collage so I could use them all.

Paper and embellishments are Echo Park. I used the Apothecary and Victoria Garden lines.

Altered Frame for Halloween

I love altering ordinary picture frames around the house, especially for the holidays. I looked around our den and spied a nice black frame in the den that holds an 8x10 family photo.  I removed the photo and ended with this.

This project was really easy to make. I started with a piece of white cardstock, cutting it down to 8x10 inches. I grabbed some of my favorite Halloween paper, Echo Park's Apothecary, adding in an orange pattern from EP’s previous Halloween release for a punch of color.  I used a square punch to make 20 squares, then moved them around in a grid with five rows across and four down, leaving a little white border between them. I also left a white border around the page so I would have some wiggle room for the image in the frame.  

I tacked the squares down lightly with adhesive, then used a sewing machine to make diagonal lines across the squares with black thread.

Here you can see the squares before I embellished them. And, yes, the project is shown upside down.  Hee! I didn’t realize that until I uploaded the photos.  I tried flipping the photo, but it looked weird. So, we’ll just go with this. J

To embellish the squares, I used element stickers from Apothecary and Happy Halloween. I backed the stickers with cardboard to give them a little dimension. You can also use pop dots but for large stickers, like the tree, I prefer to use cardboard as it gives a smoother look.

So, there you have it. A really quick, fun project that you can make for any holiday. This was my last project as guest designer for Echo Park. I uploaded this project to 2peas and was happy to look the next day to see that of 425 projects, it had made the daily top 3 most bookmarked.  

World Card Making Day

I love making cards and how perfect that there is a holiday just for people like me. World Card Making Day is the first Saturday in October.

I made a card to send to a friend whose birthday I missed.  Oops!  Hopefully, he'll forgive me once he gets this.

The outside of the card says: Blast it!

 The inside sentiment is: Can't believe I forgot your birthday!

I used October Afternoon's Rocket Age collection. Love this cute collection of space-themed papers and embellies. 

Freehand Scraps kit club is having a World Card Making Day challenge to make a card with a travel theme. You can find details on their blog here.