Finally!

I started an Etsy shop! Go check it out!

Change jar

Just a little project I came up with this weekend - still a work in progress, I think. I was getting irritated with all the change lying around, and had some extra jars from a Christmas project, so I thought I'd pretty one up and use it for change. I happened to find one of my wedding invitations in a box, so I took the vellum/white/silver color scheme and ran with it. The white handmade paper with silver stars was absolutely the BEST to work with for this kind of project - it has a lot of cotton fibers in it, so it's very flexible and just soaks up the Mod Podge.


I also tore a few images off the front of a Christmas card we received - they're very sweet tiny images of kids playing in the snow. I covered the top with the same white/silver paper, adhered a ribbon from Papertrey, and punched a slot in it with my Crop-a-dile. I finished off the whole thing with a top layer of sparkle Mod Podge, to give it some glitter, and some white rick-rack. I might put on some more ribbons if I find something I like, or maybe some pearls.

Guess who got a new camera!

Merry Christmas to me! I got exactly what I wanted for Christmas - a new Canon PowerShot SX10 IS. I already love it so much it's ridiculous - it has image stabilization (which I need SO much), and is a nice in-between camera - smaller and more portable than a DSLR, but with a much better zoom than your usual point-and-shoot, a flip-out viewfinder, a connection for my big flash, and enough bulk to really hold.

Anyway, I tested it out on a card I made the other day - check it out!



I left the bottom-left area blank on purpose - that way I can put an appropriate sentiment there whenever I decide to use it.

Is it just me, or is this stamp sweet but... REALLY weird? Kind of limited in use, I'd think.

Sad, sad

Unfortunately, I've managed to lose my second battery charger for the same camera, and my little point-and-shoot is broken. So I've been doing some stamping, but don't have any way right now of posting images. Hopefully I'll pick up another charger (the third - gah!) or find some other solution soon.

I couldn't go to a wrapping party today, so I took a few minutes to do some of my own... I picked up this little set of boxes and embellishments on a post-Christmas clearance rack a few years ago, and forgot about them till the move. I won't do a materials section on this, because I apparently took off the label when I got it and have no clue where it's from. It's actually a really comprehensive set... several boxes, lots of tags and ribbon and flowers, tons of stuff to dress them up. I built this box, then put patterned paper around the bottom and a ribbon at the border... the ribbon was a little short to go all the way around, so I ran a tag through my Xyron, tied another ribbon through one end, and put flowers on the other.



On this one, I pulled out a 7gypsies texturing set I picked up a while back - it's a sheet of adhesive rub-ons with sheets of gold foil, black velvet, and silver glitter that you can rub on to the adhesive. I think this one turned out really cute! The gold cording (from last week's treasure trove) works really nicely with it, and I just tied it closed with a couple of tags from the set.




Sadie says, "Hey, what's going on in here? Want to show off my new 'do?" And I do, so I did.

Treasure Trove

I went to a historic-downtown's Christmas kickoff festival this afternoon with Jenny and Mark - it was so much fun! I hadn't realized how many great little shops were there - the last time I tried to go, the whole square was under construction and it looked like everything had shut down. I'm so glad it was temporary!



One place we spent a LOT of time was at one of the many (MANY) antique malls in the square - I didn't buy much, but what I did get was fantastic. All of the items in these photos came from one big bag labeled "Misc. Craft" for $4.95. What a fantastic find! Vintage pearl trim and little pink pearls (love those!), tons of tiny silk flowers, various colors of shiny cord and rick-rack, several odd tiny crocheted bits, a big bag of fabric leaves - so much fun stuff!



And some, well... really ODD stuff...



The skull button creeps me out, so it won't be sticking around, but I think the tiny plastic flies are hilarious. I need to find something great to do with them.

One Card Two Ways

Several birthdays of family and friends were this week, so I was on a birthday-card kick this weekend. The first two I wanted to do were for two very different people, so I thought I'd challenge myself to take the same sketch and same sentiment and make it two completely unique ways. With the first, I found this purple background paper that really reminds me of the birthday girl, and came up with a scrap of coordinating purple cardstock. The "Celebrate" stamp is from one of my most versatile sets - it's just four stamps, and the others are "friendship," "thank you," and "love" - I can usually use one of them for just about anything. Since the purple is so dark, I decided not to fight it with a light color ink that might not show up, but instead emboss with one of my sparkle embossing powders. The ribbon picks up on the sparkle with a little silver thread, and the brad gives it a royal touch.

Materials: Paper: SU! Old Olive, unknown textured shimmery white, unknown patterned paper, Papertrey Plum Pudding; Stamp: SU! Wonderful Words; Ink: Versamark; Titanium embossing powder, Papertrey Silver Sheer Metallic Edge ribbon, brad from Creative Imaginations



For the second birthday card, I wanted to get a fun juxtaposition of serious and playful - this shimmery navy cardstock from Papertrey is just right for that feel, and the textured shimmery white scrap I found works with it nicely. The swiss-dotted ribbon from Papertrey brings in some playfulness and girliness, which I finished off with the little Prima flower.

Materials: Paper: Papertrey Night Sky Shimmer, unknown textured shimmery white, SU! Night of Navy (I think - another scrap), Papertrey white; Stamp: SU! Wonderful Words; Ink: Versamark; Papertrey Sheer Swiss Dot ribbon, Titanium embossing powder, Prima flowers, brad

Still here...

I have some posts ready to go, but they're birthday cards that haven't gotten to the recipients yet, so they'll go up once they've had a few days to get through the mail. Just thought I'd let you know I'm still here!

Shy bird

I can't seem to get a good picture of this one - partly just a light issue, since I got home after dark today and can't use natural light - and partly the glitter. Glitter is kind of hard to photograph, because it catches so much more light than anything else. This is pretty far outside my usual style, but I saw this use of the bird in a magazine and happened to have the same paper pack (Basic Gray Eva again), so I thought I'd try it out. The plastic bubbles are adhered with Stickles, so that there's a little shine around them.

Materials: Paper: Papertrey white, Basic Grey Eva; Ink: Stampin' Up Purely Pomegranate; Stamp: SU! Wonderful Words; Pink baubles from Michaels, Silver Ice Stickles

Bright Birthday

I came up with this birthday card for my cousin tonight - it's from the newest set of Basic Grey papers, Eva. I put together the stamp with my JustRite stamper and the tiniest letters they carry - I couldn't believe there were enough letters and enough space to spell out "Happy Birthday To You" twice!

Materials: Paper: Papertrey white, Basic Grey Eva; Ink: Stampin' Up! Purely Pomegranate; Stamp: JustRite stamper; Ribbon: Papertrey Silver Sheer Metallic Edge

1 glitter, 2 glitter, 3 glitter, 4...

I thought it'd be fun to see how many glittering techniques I could get on to one card - these die-cuts from the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding pack are great for glittering, so I cut out the presents from another paper in the pack and had some fun. Crackling (on the top ornament) obviously isn't glitter, but since I've been playing with it this weekend too, I figured I'd put it in there. The second ornament has small glass glitter adhered with heat-and-stick powder, and the presents are both embossed with glitter powder and doodled with a glitter pen (mostly on the ribbons and dots).

Materials: Paper: Papertrey white, Basic Grey Figgy Pudding; Stamps: Inkadinkadoo Holiday Collection, Fancy Pants Pollen Dust (it's the same flourish I used yesterday, just turned sideways to look like a tree); Ink: Stampin' Up Cranberry Crisp, SU Old Olive, Versamark; Ranger Crackle Accents, glass glitter, heat-and-stick powder, Titanium embossing powder, Versamarker, Sakura Gelly Roll glitter pen, pop dots, twine

Crafty fun night

My sister came over last night for a Christmas-craft night. The original plan was to make cinnamon-scented ornaments, but I let the dough dry out too much before we got around to working with it, so we did other things. While she cut out pieces for a little felt pig, I glittered and crackled some little ornament-shaped pieces. The crackling turned out realy cool - I used Crackle Accents from Ranger Ink on die-cuts from the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding set of papers.

Materials: Paper: Basic Grey Figgy Pudding; Ink: Versamark; Crackle Accents from Ranger Ink, glass glitter, heat gun

For the glittering, I covered an ornament with Versamark, then with heat-and-stick powder that I got from Stampin' Up. As soon as I heated that with my embossing gun, I moved the ornament to my powder/glitter tray and coated it with glass glitter - it's kind of pebbly but still tiny, and gives the finished product a really nice texture. I heated it again after that to set the glitter. This ornament just happened to coordinate really well with Papertrey's Aqua Mist ink, so I stamped a flourish from my favorite Fancy Pants set as a background. I like keeping this one really simple, since the glittered ornament is such a bold focal point.

Materials: Paper: Basic Grey Figgy Pudding, Papertrey white; Ink: Versamark, Papertrey Aqua Mist; Stamps: Fancy Pants Pollen Dust; Ribbon: Papertrey Silver Sheer Metallic Edge; glass glitter


I also played around with some beading - I might make these into little hairpins to give someone as a stocking-stuffer.

Materials: Seed beads, pearl beads, wire




This isn't Christmasy, but I just had to do something with the Sassafras Lass papers and chipboard elements I picked up yesterday. They're so adorable! It took for-freaking-ever to weave the background for this card - I used to help my mom weave raw silk for these fancy-pants jackets and stuff, and it's actually not much easier to do it for a teeny tiny card front than it is for yards and yards of silk. I think it's a cute background for this little bunny, though. The set has a really interesting dichotomous theme of cute animals and office-y images like graph paper, bits of accounting books, and notebook-paper-style lines, so I picked up on the more utilitarian side and mounted the chipboard frame on plain notebook paper. This way, once I decide what occasion to use it for, I can just write in the sentiment.

Materials: Paper: Sassafras Lass "My Dearest," Papertrey white; Accents: notebook paper, Sassafras Lass chipboard sticker shapes

Another golden oldie

I've been so wrapped up in work this week, I haven't had much time to stamp. Happily, I'm taking tomorrow off, and I plan to get all of the necessary errands out of the way early so I can spend the rest of the day on crafts. I was looking through my Splitcoast gallery for inspiration (I usually look at other people's galleries for inspiration, but sometimes I like to look through my own stuff to find good concepts that were executed badly, to see if I can improve on them) and found this card I'm particularly proud of.

One reason I love it is that it reminds me of the wallpaper in my bedroom when I was little - I know that sounds weird, but I loved the tiny floral print on that wallpaper, and the twill makes me think of the molding around the walls of that room. I might dig back into this paper set tomorrow - I love how tiny and dainty the design is, and how well it works with the coordinating cardstock.

Materials: Stamps: Papertrey Butterfly Kisses; Paper: Papertrey Berry Sorbet, Sweet Blush and white, Papertrey Pink Patterns, Papertrey Everyday Blessings; Ink: Chocolate Chip; Accessories: Chipboard letter, brads, tiny primas, Berry Sorbet twill tape

Lady Bookplates

My sister wants some bookplates, so I thought I'd come up with a cute new design for her. I love this "Little Lady" from Papertrey Ink... there are two sizes of wings and bodies to choose from, and I used the small one on these, along with the dotted trail.




I used the same JustRite border, and sticky-ed up the backs with my Xyron. That's just such a great tool.

Materials: Stamps: Little Lady from Papertrey Ink, JustRite stamper; Ink: Palette Noir, Pure Poppy from Papertrey Ink, Versamark; Cardstock: Kraft from Papertrey; Black embossing powder from Joann, embossing gun, Xyron

Getting Started on the Holidays

So I picked up the Martha Stewart Holiday magazine today at Barnes & Noble, and I'm totally inspired. It's full of stuff I feel like I could actually do, stuff that's fresher than the old pinecone-birdfeeder crafts. So I got started on a Christmas gift that I thought of yesterday when I picked up some new JustRite borders with my garage sale credit. The borders read "From the Library of:", "From the Kitchen of:", and "From the Desk of:".

I also got inspired today while I was playing working with the big industrial Xyron at work... I had been trying to think of something big to get with the rest of my credit, and went over to the store to see the little Xyrons. Turns out they weren't even really that expensive, so I got one, and made these bookplates tonight. I think I'm going to do writing paper as well... it'll make a nice little gift set!

Materials: Lemon Tart cardstock, Pure Poppy ink, Palette noir ink, Remember stamp set (all Papertrey); Versamark, Stampin' Up! silver embossing powder, heat gun, Xyron create-a-sticker

(I'm going to start adding this "Materials" section to all my posts, because even though I try to mention everything within the post, I frequently forget, like I did this time, and end up overlooking mentioning something like Remember, which is the one flower set I'd have if I could only have one flower set.)

"To-go" Christmas cards

Each year, I make one design of Christmas cards to send out myself, and a second design for others who'd like handmade cards to send out. This is my "to-go" design this year. It's a watercolored design on Basic Grey "Figgy Pudding" paper. I used this design a few years ago, when I was just starting out, for my own Christmas cards, and I think I've improved on it this time. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the original design - it was really something.

The only thing still missing from this card, which I plan to add to the finished version, is some glimmer mist I'll be picking up this week. I think it'll add a nice subtle shine to the main image and give a little emphasis to the lamplight. This photo isn't the best of the main image, but I wanted to show what I did with the inside - I wanted to dress up the sentiment by illuminating the first letter. Little tip of the day: When I'm doing an inside sentiment on a card, I always stamp it before I mount anything to the front. That way if it's messed up or crooked (because it's almost guaranteed to be if I've already put the front on), I can just fold the base the other way and cover up the mistake with the card-front.

Getting there

You'll recall the wretched mess I was dealing with a few days ago. We got on the stick last night and cleared up the whole apartment - moved unpacked boxes to one location, stacked nicely, organized things to make it easier to unpack. I've spent today unpacking stamping stuff and figuring out my organization scheme. I went by the Scrapbook Barn garage sale, just to see how things were going, and was excited to pick up a brand new set of IKEA organization baskets - 4 for $10. I'd actually been planning on getting the same baskets when we make a big IKEA run for furniture, so I was glad to find them. The smaller ones hang perfectly on the shelving that's already built into the closet.

I set up my stamps on this small shelf - I still need to hang my ink pad holders, but I forgot to bring a hammer and nails over from the old place. I did get my paper organizer set up, though, so everything's pretty much at hand. I put up one of my favorite organizational tools in the closet - an over-the-door shoe holder. I use one in the pantry for spices, one in the coat closet for sundries like screwdrivers, batteries, and tape measures, and now one in my craft room for punches and other small items. Everything's coming together really nicely!

Catching up

I would love to be able to tell you that I've been stamping too much to update, but truthfully, I got engrossed in a book the other night and did nothing but sit around and read. And last night, I was pricing items for my local scrapbook store's garage sale this weekend. So I haven't done anything, but I thought I'd show you one of my favorite "useful" projects.

This is a little book that someone sent me last year - they'd decorated it for Christmas, with a cute Santa on the cover. Unfortunately, it came on about the 23rd, so it wasn't much use for Christmas, but I thought I'd make a new cover for it to use at work.

I don't have a Bind-It-All, so I just cut the purple cardstock to the size of the book, and attached it to the top page after I took off the old cover - the two thicknesses together made it just fine for a new cover - and cut inside each hole with my little Fiskars finger knife. The PTI Guidelines patterned paper made a cute bottom half for my cover, and I was working on watercoloring techniques that week, so I watercolored this little butterfly from my Stampin' Up! Merci set. I outlined some of the butterfly with a glitter pen to make him stand out, and popped up the punched-out image on Pop Dots. Once I put the cover back on the book, I cut several pieces of black velvet ribbon and PTI's twill (my favorite ribbon EVER, in any color) in Lavender Moon and Plum Pudding. I tied those around the wires, and voila! A cute little book to take notes in at work. I love being surrounded by fun things I've made while I'm at work - it gives me inspiration to think up new things to make once I get home. One of my favorite for-work projects is a pencil cup shown here and here - I keep the template for the insert at home and re-do it every once in a while, just for fun.

Homey owl

I wanted to make something a little different and special for my mom's birthday, so I made a Joy Fold Card. I think these are such a nice use of pretty coordinating paper, because you can use quite a few different designs on the various pieces, and none of them really get hidden (like they sometimes do when I'm putting a lot of layers on a standard A2 card). These Cosmo Cricket papers make me think of my mom, because they're so warm and homey, like fabrics you would use in a quilt. They're perfect for this time of year, too, because they make you think of hot cocoa and a warm blanket in front of the fire.

It's been too long since I've used my favorite PaperTrey Wise Owl set, so I had to use it here. The quarter-circle I used to hold the flap closed is actually something I started making for the aborted wedding card I started earlier in the weekend - it's a Stampin' Up! rub-on on PTI Dark Chocolate cardstock, and I distressed it a bit with Ranger Distress Ink (I don't remember which color) so it wouldn't be such a bright white.

Wedding tag

I had a whole concept in mind for this wedding card, right up until I started to make it. It just wasn't coming together, but as I was looking for the right paper to use, I came across this pretty bird and tree on French script. Fortunately, the same pattern was used on the largest tag on the sheet of die cuts that comes with the paper (that's one thing I love about Basic Grey papers - they all come with a sheet of coordinating die-cut shapes and a sheet of coordinating alphabet letters).


This, by the way, is from the Blush collection. Such pretty colors! Since the paper is so pretty by itself, I didn't want to do much to it, but I had these tiny pink flowers that coordinate beautifully with the flowers in the design. I stuck them on with ultra-thin Glue Dots (what did I ever do without those) and added Stickle centers to make them pop. Super easy and quick, but I think it's pretty adorable.

Postscript: Aaaand... I was FIVE AND A HALF HOURS LATE for the wedding. Five and a half hours! I am the lamest person in the history of lame. This is what happens when you "save the date" in Google Calendar and forget to ever go back and put in the real time once the invitation comes. Crap!

Work in progress

So this is where everything stands right now - boxes, boxes, and more boxes. All of my books (20ish boxes) ended up in my study, and all of my craft boxes, and all of my study furniture. I'm working through the books to get them all catalogued before we get bookshelves, so I can use Delicious Library to tell me where everything needs to go.








I figured instead of trying to box up my drawer-unit full of tiny things, I'd wrap it in the movers' plastic wrap - it worked pretty well, except when I tilted it backwards and lost a bunch of little plastic things.



This drawer unit and ribbon box got moved pretty much as-is... I keep my ribbon spools on rods hung in the box, and all of the smaller pieces just go in the bottom. Easy move! I picked up the top fabric box at Container Store for my 8 1/2" x 11" paper.









Isn't this a great little Reisenthal box? Once I get everything set up, I'm probably going to keep it on my desk to hold all of those little things that I like to have at hand and that don't fit in my craft tote - adhesives, button jars, stuff like that.


The view from the doorway - see my great windows? I get such wonderful light in here. You can also see the card spinner (well, sort of spinner... it's more of a stand. I haven't figured out how to make it spin yet, if it does) my sister got me for Christmas. Very cool! I'm going to get another desk - glass tabletop and trestle legs - from IKEA, and put it on the right, making an L with the current one. That way I'll have plenty of workspace for my stamping and my quilting, and a permanent spot for my sewing machine.


How cute is this guy, peeking out from behind the door? This is such a great bag - I carry all my various "stuff" to work in it - lunches, books, cards to put in my for-sale box, stuff like that. Thanks, Emily!

Windy birthday card

This was a fun card to do - I found it in a magazine from several months ago and had the right paper to copy it (with some changes). I love this Cosmo Cricket Dutch Girl paper, and have been trying to find ways to use it since I got it. They pick such wonderful colors! I also have the Cosmo Cricket Gretel collection, and I'd really like to pick up Hey Sugar and Oh Joy. Be Good is really pretty, too... oh, who am I kidding... I love their vintage colors and designs as much as I love Basic Grey's papers, and the only reason I have more Basic Grey is that Hobby Lobby carries more of their sets and has them on sale so often.

I substituted some stickers I had for the rub-ons in the original I was working from - forgot completely that I had an alphabet stamp set that would have been small enough, but oh well. The stickers worked out fine, I think. The purple X is a cool little tool - it's a Xyron product that lets you make small items into stickers. I don't use it that often, but it's fantastic for tiny little things that you can't use the Duck roller or double-stick tape on.

This is the inside - I don't usually do much with insides of cards, but I love how this layout made use of both designs on the double-sided paper - I may have to do this more often! (Although, on a tangent related to using both sides and not wasting the nice paper, it would have been nice if the instructions in the magazine had said either to cut an 8"x8" piece of paper and fold it in half, or to cut paper for a finished size of 4"x8" - I wasn't paying enough attention to the photo at first and cut according to the directions: "Cut your paper 4"x8"" and wasted my last piece of the blue-front paper I was supposed to use. Oh well, I'll repurpose it for something else.)

Packing purgatory

I'm right in the middle of packing up all my craft stuff, so I don't have anything to share.

Well, actually, I do, because I made a SUPER-cute card for my mother-in-law's birthday the other day, but she doesn't have it yet, so I don't want to post it. If I'm making a card for someone in particular, I like to wait till they see it for themselves before I put it up here.

So, once she gets her card, you'll get to see it... and until then, maybe I'll get some photos as I'm setting up my new! improved! craft room. We picked up the keys last night, and the apartment is so great (well, except for the living room wall - I showed the apartment person the yellow I was thinking of, and she was like, "Oh, we have one already just like that, so you don't have to buy any paint" - um, yeah... not really. It's like the brightest crayon-y yellow ever. So I picked up a paler, sunny yellow last night and they're re-doing it today) - I'm so excited to get moved in.

Card for Alyson

I thought I'd try this month's Dirty Dozen sketch on Splitcoast for a card for Alyson Kathleen. I think these baby girl papers from Nana's Nursery are so sweet - some of them have glitter and dimension, and they all work really well together. With a sketch and paper decided on, it was pretty simple to put together! I decided to change it to a 5.5" square card, since the papers are so pretty - I wanted to be able to show more of them.

I layered the criss-crossing strips on coordinating paper, and scalloped the edges of the pink piece with a cutter I got for Christmas. The little sentiment is from Papertrey's Bitty Baby Blessings set, and is mounted on a scalloped circle and popped up from the card on Pop Dots.

Catchup post

Between packing to move and some health issues, I haven't had time/energy to stamp lately, so I thought I'd show off one of my favorite projects. We took a trip to London and Paris in the summer of 2007 and I was really proud of the scrapbook I made of our photos. I started out by deciding to use only three colors throughout: red, black, and white. I ended up switching from bright red (SU's Real Red) to cranberry (SU's retired Cranberry Crisp) halfway through, in the Paris part - I don't think it messed up the concept, though. On this first page, the title is laid out on Chili's coasters covered with patterned paper - I like the depth and interest that gave the page.

The envelope is one of many I used throughout the book - this one holds our plane ticket stubs, and the rest of the little envelopes each have the day's date on them and contain my journal pages from that day. I decided to just include my actual journal, since I did it on small paper, rather than write out journaling directly on the pages.

It took me some time to get used to our hotel room - it was TINY. Just enough room for the bed, really. We had to crawl up from the foot of the bed to even lay on it - no room to walk on either side. It was stiflingly hot the first night we were there, and we got a fan from the front desk to set up in the window. I loved the view, though - I felt like Wendy, about to think my happy thought and fly out over the rooftops. Which was appropriate, since it turned out our hotel was on the same street as J.M. Barrie's house (the author of the Peter Pan books), and we were right down the road from Hyde Park/Kensington Park, where he got his inspiration for the books.

This adorable Doodlebug Designs paper was my inspiration for the black/white/red theme - I just thought it was so cute. I think all of the black and white patterned paper I used throughout was from the same few sheets of Doodlebug paper.

I picked up the little cross-stitch design in the Tower of London gift shop - it was supposed to be a card to mail, but I thought it'd be a nice handmade remembrance of the trip, and it adds some great color to the scrapbook.


We took a Duck tour while we were there - it was really fun. London is the perfect place for it, because so much of the city is centered around the Thames, and when you're just walking around, you tend to forget how vital the river was to the original functioning of the city. It's also very cool to be driving down what looks like a little alley between buildings and suddenly (well, after a switch from driver to captain) be on the water.

My sister picked up these cute travel-themed stamps from Love Elsie, and they were perfect for a travel-themed background. This little pop-out London map was a lifesaver - folds down to pocket-size, but shows pretty much everything you could want to see in London. I kept meaning to get one for Paris, and for some reason never did. They're so great, though.

I like this page from Paris a lot - I didn't include many of the Paris pages in this post, mostly because I don't think I did as good a job with the pages themselves as I did with London. This one, though, I like - the hardware is a great way to showcase the Eiffel Tower ticket stub, and this photo of Sacre Coeur cathedral from the top of the Tower, lit with a beam of light shining out of the overcast sky, is one of my favorites that we took on the trip. If you'd like to see the whole book, I have photos of it starting here.

Belated World Cardmaking Day

Due to anniversary and pre-move activities, World Cardmaking Day had to take a backseat to dinner, packing, and selling stuff on Craigslist (anybody want a fish tank, patio furniture, coffee table, or end table, by the way?). I did get a start on this card, and then kind of got stuck at this stage. A friend at work brought me this cute Halloween paper, and I had the stickers from my haunted house. I tore the edges of the paper put the owl on... and then really liked it. I was feeling like it needed something else, but I really liked how simple it was.

So I slept on it, and this morning I busted out my sadly underused Crop-O-Dile. It's a fun little tool for hole-punching, eyelet-setting, and snap fixing that is SO much easier (and quieter) than hammers and other various tools I've used for those purposes before. And it has pink handles and is in a pink case - can't go wrong there. I set these three jumbo eyelets (almost went for the black-black ones, but I thought this dark grey was nicer), and decided it was done. The inside will have my favorite Halloween-y verse from Macbeth: "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, something wicked this way comes!" (You're welcome for the earworm, Harry Potter fans.)