Wow, look what I found today when I cleaned my office!  I’ve had this kit for almost 2 months I think and forgot all about it!  This would make a great gift for someone, a nice homemade touch over the hang on the wall calendar from Barnes & Noble.  

This Create a Calendar Kit found in our Winter mini-catalog comes with the calendar pages for the year 2009, some stickers and tabs for the cards and month, the outer pocket and sticker borders, and a large piece of chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon.  It requires that you purchase the triple clipboard separately, and the paper you’d like to cover the clipboard with. 

I covered left and right sides using the Old Olive dsp grid paper using a template that I made originally with our single clipboards awhile back.  I traced the template onto a new piece of sturdy confetti cream and shortened the length to 7.5" and trimmed a sliver 1/16 off each side.  With this new template created for the triple clipboard, I needed 3 sections, and traced it onto the backside of the dsp I chose.  The middle section is a piece of striped Hawaii Papaya dsp.  I added two pieces of Pumpkin Pie grosgrain over the seams and tied at the top of clipboard.  I used Chocolate Chip stitched ribbon, Riding Hood Red striped ribbon, and Old Olive 5/8” grosgrain ribbon for the tops.  I used Old Olive and Pumpkin Pie felt flowers from accents kit, with an aged build a brad in the center.  I punched the red flower with our 5 point flower punch, and placed a smaller pumpkin pie flower from the collection of die cut blooms.

On the packing, they used two sets of number stickers:  one on the clipboard, which you don’t see adhered yet, and the other on the outer calendar pouch.  Since there was only ONE set of “2009” stickers inside the kit,  I took a “2” and “9” from on board chipboard letters, and two solid circles from our other chipboard collection, on board essentials.  On the two solid circles, which were the same size as the numbers, I used the crop-a-dile to cut away at the center a little at a time. 

I used a chipboard label, also from the on board essentials, covered with Old Olive cs on the outside packing and attached the “calendar” sticker.  I covered square chipboard with dsp, attached Riding Hood Red mat, then Whisper White mat, and then “2 0 0 9” numbers sponged in Pumpkin Pie.

For my display, I included a small bag stamped with punches of flowers, and lots of arrows in coordinating colors, punched with My Way arrow punch.  I also included lots of stamped images from Calendar Cues and Fundamental Phrases (nice and small).  Calendar cues and Cute Cues would work especially nice in this project (I think). 

This may or may not be an upcoming “gift” class, because I have TOO DARN ideas already for others that I want to do!

I hope you think of the teachers and the HS and college students on your list, or make it for yourself to coordinate with your office or craft room!  Of course, everyone needs a new calendar at the beginning of the year, and this is just a really unique and special one.

See you soon!  Thanks for looking!

I’ve posted already the Decor Elements’ Special, which ends October 31st.  I would say to be safe, tomorrow would be the last day to order them and know they’ll be here in time for Halloween.

Here’s my jar from Super Target and my Spooky Spider Decor Elements, in Black, size Large.  Again, it’s HUGE!  But so is the jar!

What’s funny about this, is that we will fill this at least 20 times.  We started keeping our candy in a contractor size garbage bag.  Right now there are 17 of those JUMBO bags of candy in my wine closet, instead of wine!  :-(  We will pick up a few more by next week, just because we run out every year even though we keep adding more and more.  All of our friends don’t understand it, because they spend about $20 in candy and their lights are out by 8pm.   It’s going on all night here in our neighborhood and if it’s a weekend night like this year, it’s even worse. 

The last time the holiday fell on a weekend night, we had someone ring the doorbell after 1am.  She apologized and asked if we would take a picture with her and her mother next to our witch under the patio.  I was shocked!  She said her mom had to work and she couldn’t pass up coming back to see it with her.  Halloween is a real treat (no pun intended) because there are so many kids anticipating our decorations and coming to visit, sometimes twice.  Even the little ones come, and I’m surprised because it’s pretty creepy.  Not that some of them haven’t run down the walk way screaming!  It wasn’t me!  It was probably my husband.  He really enjoys scaring everyone in his super gory grim reaper costume, especially the teenage girls who scream so loud and schrill, it reaches my spinal column.  But they drop all their candy and my son collects it all and high fives his dad!

So this is a last reminder to give me a call by tomorrow to order the Spooky Decor Element before it’s too late!

Thanks for stopping by…. again!  Today’s been exhausting.

Wouldn’t you love to give a custom made gift to your friends and family that they would treasure for all the years to come?  Something that they had never seen in any store or other home, and wouldn’t re-gift?  Something that they could proudly display iin their home throughout the entire year because it went with any season or holiday? 

What if I could teach you how to make this gift, and that it would be that much more special because it not only came from you but was made by you? 

This project entails a total of 10 round plate adornments, each of them themed for a major holiday and an extra one for a birthday too!  There are fasteners that make it easy to change in and out every month.  Each month/holiday is unique, and heavily embellished with all kinds of Stampin’ Up! accessories from about every collection. 

Take a look at January:

I can’t tell you how great these look in person, because you can’t tell from the pictures how much some of them sparkle and just how much they are all dressed up.  This January design’s main focal point is the beautiful die made with the Big Shot, cut from white glittered felt.  It also uses our Winter Flurries rub-ons.  In addition, the other embellishments include: 3 different kinds of brads, silver cording, brushed silver cardstock, silver embossing,  In this class you will use over a dozen of my stamp sets, pearls from our Pretties Kit, Hodgepodge Hardware, several collections of Designer Series Papers, rub-ons, embossing powder, glitter, Craft pigment ink and Versamark inks, Buttons, Hemp, Ribbons, Punches and more!

I picked two plates for my display purposes, but the class will entail either a smoked brown clear plate or a regular clear glass plate.  So you’d have to choose.

Here’s a peak at the others in smaller versions:

This will be a class offered on my next 3D class:  Wednesday, November 12th, both morning and evening as usual, and Saturday the 15th which follows.  Please see the class/events tab for more information.

I made a sign for my front door with our Decor Elements.  I painted the wooden plaque with a light tan acrylic paint, and the edges on the molding with the green acrylic, and added gold over the green with a dry brush to add highlights.  I have ribbons to hang it by once I get my picture hanging hardware kit out of the garage.  I’m waiting for dh to return from his 3 state trip so he can move all the Halloween bins out of the way of my drill gun and hardware! 

The WELCOME is a Decor Element in chocolate, size LARGE.  The wood piece is 23" long, to accomodate this size.  It’s great for a set of double doors or a front patio.  I thought about the olive because it would have matched my paint nicely, but I wasn’t sure if it would be dark enough to be seen.

All of the paint is from Making Memories, used for scrapbooking, so it’s acid free believe it or not!  You definitely don’t need to use this on the wood, because Michael’s has plenty of companies of acrylic paints.  Some were on sale for 2/$1 this week.  I like Folk Art brand personally.

You can see more Decor Elements here.  The new phase II just came out.  I really love the flowers and other ways of decorating a girl’s bedroom!  Too bad I don’t have any girls.   

Spooky is coming next!