Fail

I hate to admit it but I failed to meet my goal for the weekend. It wasn't of epic proportions, and I knew going in to it that I had set my sights a little high so I'm not completely disappointed. So if I failed, then why am I posting? Because I made the rule and I can break it if I want to. Plus, what I did manage to get done is worth blogging about I think.
Saturday I was doing good but my momentum was gone by today. I also ran in to problems with supplies. There are a few things I needed and didn't want to make the trip to the store. One last obstacle was drying time. I'm still waiting on a few things to dry before everything can be put together.
I have lots of parts and it's just a matter of final assembly. Oh well, I'll catch myself up. I always do.

I made 5 sets of each of these flowers. So that was 15 quilled flowers and 15 accordion folded flowers. They still need leaves and then they will be going in to pots.

I made 5 quilled pumpkins, 5 trees and 5 fences made with my cricut. These will be going on to the wooden bases like I did with the dogs and cats.

And there are 10 pots waiting to be filled. Did I ever tell you how cheap I am? I'm sure that I did. But anyway, have you ever seen how expensive Styrofoam is? Well I have 10 pots and getting enough for each of them could have gotten pricey. Instead I bought a cheap can of the spray foam insulation and filled the pots 1/2 full with them. These are one of the things I'm waiting on to dry. 

The original goal for the weekend
15 accordion flowers (done)
15 quilled flowers (done)
5 pumpkins (done)
5 trees (done)
assemble all (fail)
All in all I would say it was still a very successful weekend.

Back to paper crafts

I have another block to share with you. I didn't do any quilling on this one. Instead I enlisted the help of my Cricut machine and my stash of odds and ends.

The reindeer was my favorite part on this one and there were even reindeer in the patterned paper for the background.

Post it

Today I thought I would do a post about post it's. More specifically a project I did for a post it note holder. I found several different tutorials on line for these and each seemed to have different measurements but not exactly what I was looking for. In the end I came up with my own design for it.

With the little frosty fellow adorning the cover of these you could call them snotes (snow notes) or not. I used my cricut to cut out the snowmen and the scalloped circles. I used my cuttlebug to emboss the white scallop circle with the snowflakes. Added a little glitter, but I may have had more on me than on the snowflakes.
Now I'm trying to decide what my next project will be. So many choices.

Greetings

I'm not a fan of seeing Christmas in the stores before the Halloween candy has been passed out but when it comes to crafting it's never to early to get started. Especially if you are as slow as I am sometimes at finishing projects.
With that being said, I started working on Christmas cards. Between the quilling and the cricut there are just so many possibilities, it's hard to decide what to do. Then of course picking the paper is another hard decision for me. I like this one, but that one's nice, oh and look at that one. I think I do better when my choices are limited. Maybe buying that big paper stack on sale wasn't such a good idea but I couldn't resist.
Enough of the chatter, on to the cards. I'm going to show you two today and save the third for another day because I'm also going to enter these in the Take a quill pill  challenge. If anyone else does quilling, the challenge is open until November 20th so there's still plenty of time to get your entries in.

This is the first one that I'm entering in the challenge. 

 This one is pretty simple. Just cut some letters out with the cricut and made some squiggly lines with a metallic marker. Hopefully no one will notice the marker smudge smack dab in the middle of the card. It's highly unlikely that it will go unnoticed though since it sticks out like a sore thumb. That's what happens when you aren't paying attention to where your hand is.

It's just not working

There are some of my card/craft projects that turn out good and then there are some that I really don't like at all. I attempted to make a couple more Thanksgiving cards and the first wasn't so bad but the second goes right into the FAIL category. But, since the blog posts must go on I'm going to show them both to you anyway.
I grabbed a few graphics from The Graphics Fairy attempting to make something different.
This is the one that I'm not completely dissatisfied with

This one on the other hand, like I said FAIL!!!!  The graphic is black and white, the color choices were just plain drab (although so were pilgrims I suppose) and the turkey I made with my Cricut just looks hideous.

I have another idea that I'm going to work on and if that turns out as bad as these then I'm skipping right on to Christmas.
I do have a question for anyone that makes cards or does scrapbooking though. I seem to be having a slight problem with adhesives. I mainly use a tape runner for attaching the layers but they don't always seem to stick very well. The one I have now is an Elmer's permanent tape runner. I've tried other brands and get the same results. I think I have it adhered well but then a day later I have layers falling off. What the heck am I doing wrong?

A new card

No more ideas for Halloween cards so it was time to move on to Thanksgiving. I've only done one so far and then my ideas sort of fizzled out.
I was pretty pleased with this one though

I got the idea for the ripped and curled frames around the leaves from a book I have called  The Ultimate Paper Crafts Collection.
The pattern for the quilled leaves came from a blog by the same name as it's author Molly Smith. Her profile describes her as "Designer, author and instructor for the craft and hobby industry." She generously shared this pattern on her blog. I also used the leaves on another card I made HERE.
Of course my Cricut machine came into play on this one also. I used it to cut out the letters.

A little project

My crafty stash had all the ingredients I needed to put together a little something for Halloween. I just knew there was a reason why I hung on to some of this stuff. You just never know when you're going to need it.

With the little help from my Cricut machine I now have a cute little decoration for my table. Other supplies that I used and already had on hand were:
clay pot
meat skewers
ribbon
spanish moss
and of course paper

I made another one of those spiders that I used on one of my cards. This time for his eyes I used green sequins with a white seed bead glued to it. I attached him to a piece of string and hung him from one of the accordion  folded flowers.
I also cut out a pumpkin with my Cricut and made a ghost with a piece of white fabric and fabric stiffener but I thought they were a bit much when I tried to fit them in. I'll just have to save those for another project.

Ghost

I'm running out of ideas for Halloween cards but I did make one more.

I cut the trick or treat bag using my cricut machine. The ghost I just cut by hand. I cut the arms separate then taped them to the back. Then I took a gray colored pencil to highlight the edges, the bottom and around the eyes and mouth. I added the cute little rosy cheeks with a colored pencil too. I just used a regular hole punch to make the eyes and mouth and then glued them on.
I'm betting that some of the more serious card makers would cringe at some of my methods but no matter, I have fun. Isn't that what it's all about?

Is it too Early?

Certainly by retail standards it's not too early to start preparing for Halloween. Some of the stores have already condensed the Halloween stock to make room for Christmas, which totally drives me crazy. That's most likely the reason for the decline in my enthusiasm for the holidays. Don't get me wrong, I still love them, I just hate the way the stores seem to push it out there earlier and earlier all the time.
When it comes to crafting, I don't think it's ever too early to get started on holiday projects. With that being said, I've been on a roll with a few Halloween cards.

 My Cricut has been getting quite a work out the past few days. I did cheat on one of them however. The card with the haunted house and the ghosts I used store bought die cut stickers. I left them on the original backing and covered the edges with strips of paper. That way the recipient of the card can use the stickers in their own Halloween project.
So do any of you have any Halloween projects in the works?

The boss's birthday

The owner of the store I work at is 74 today. He's pretty much turned over running the store to his son but he still comes in every day and takes care of the produce department. Whenever I have a question or a problem I usually go to him first. Sometimes it's just to see if I'm overreacting to something or not but 9 times out of 10 he agrees with my opinion.
No one had started passing around a birthday card yet for him so I took in one that I had made for everyone to sign. Nothing fancy but I don't think he'll mind.

I used my cricut to cut out the cupcake. I'm really enjoying that machine and I think I might finally be starting to figure out how to use it.