Fair Time

Hello, long time no post! Life and work have gotten in the way of my crafting and scrapping! Hopefully my next post will be sooner. 

It was just county fair time here in Sonoma County. It is always a summer must for us to visit, to see the beautiful themed flower show, the animals, carnival and fair food!

I also love to check out the Adult Fine Art and Home Art Exhibits, and also the Kids exhibits. 

There are some talented people in our county. 

Almost every year I also enter items in the Home Art Exhibits. It is fun to see my creations on display and see if I won any ribbons! 

Below are a few of my entries this year. 

I entered my smashed penny bracelet, made from my smashed pennies I gather on my travels. I added some bead accents and used my handy Crop-a-dile from my scrap tools to punch a hole in each smashed penny. 

I also entered this little sewing book I made while scrapping at my friend Narda's one weekend. I covered manila file folders with sewing themed scrapbook paper and real sewing pattern tissue. I covered chipboard for the covers and put it all together with my bind-it-all.  

 

I embroidered the little heart for the cover. The photos that will go in the album are photos of my sewing projects that I have given away or were out grown! 

I also made another paper mache figure, this time a Santa with his toy bag on a paper mache book. Santa is molded from styrofoam shapes and aluminum foil, covered in paper mache medium.  

Painted and covered with mica flakes, all set for Christmas!

I entered some cards too! 

 

And of course some scrapbook pages!



My 4th Fervor page even won a blue ribbon!

I had another 2 page scrap book lay out, but the fair crew only displayed one page! I was disappointed they only displayed one side as they were attached together? The judge wrote on my entry, "where's the journaling?"  On the half of the lay out you did not see!

My son Henry entered a Lego creation, as he does every year. He always themes his creation to the Fair theme, and wins a blue ribbon every year he has entered.

Thanks for visiting! Hopefully my next blog post comes a little bit sooner that the last! 

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! 

May your Halloween be spooky, scary, fun and full of Halloween delights! 

This photo of "Jacks" is from last year. We have pumpkins to carve this year, but with no water yesterday and today, due to pump issues, we did not yet carve our pumpkins. 

Below is the carving crew!

This is the Pumpkin diorama I made last year. My friend Jenny and I saw one on display here and could not take the class so we made our own versions. 

 

I cut a "fake" pumpkin in half and decorated the inside and out with a spooky Halloween display.
I printed a black and white clip art of a tree silhouette and glued it to the back of the pumpkin. I mounted a flying glittery witch in front of the tree. My photo is one I found in an antique store. It appears to be a photo of an adult Halloween party and all are in costume. The back of the photo dates it as 1929. I cut out the group of Halloween revelers and added some color with pens.

In front I added moss and some pumpkins and a skull. I gathered a orange and black crepe paper ruffle and glued it to the opening. I added some sequined trim and a Halloween greeting.

Some of my yearly Halloween decor is shown below. My hutch decked out for the season. The two ceramic Jack-o-lanterns came from Pier One, way back in 1978. (I never throw anything away!). After Halloween I turn them around and they stay out as pumpkins until Thanksgiving.

My plate rack gets a little decoration and the cabinet below hosts my paper mache figures and my urn decked out in white pumpkins, purple flowers and a lonely black bird.

I just made the urn decoration this year. Super simple! A black plastic flower urn from OSH, two white   fake pumpkins from Michael's, a black bird and fall flowers. Just add foam to the urn base, top with straw or filler. Pop off the stem of the bigger pumpkin (but don't toss it, you can save it for another craft project?). Place the big pumpkin on the straw, top with the second smaller pumpkin. Place a black bird on top. (His wires will stick right into the fake foam pumpkin). Add a few fall flowers and you are done! I did not use glue as this will sit in a safe place and leaves me the opportunity to change it out next year?

My paper mache collection is made of two I bought, the cat and small pumpkin headed ghost. The large squash man and ghost topped jack-o-lantern box I made. I wanted to make another paper mache figure this year, but didn't get around to it!

And finally, my Halloween tree! This is the second year of my holiday trees and I added several new ornaments and the witch hat topper this year you can see Here.

Just a couple of detail shots below.

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween. I sure miss having trick-or-treaters come by our house! Way out here in the country, no one stops by! But I always have candy, just in case :) 

Halloween Ornaments

This past week while I was visiting my sis in Oregon, I took some time out in the evenings and on Saturday to craft some more decorations for my Halloween tree. 

One of my favorites was this simple music paper rosette with a glittery witch glued to the front. 

The rosette is about 6 in. in diameter. I trimmed my 3.5" strips of music paper with my jumbo scallop scissors (a $ store find, the best buck I ever spent at Dollar Tree) and pleated the paper at every scallop. The silver glitter circle was cut from glitter paper with my new pennant die from Stampin' Up. The glittery witch came from MS crafts at Halloween last year. Why didn't I buy TWO packages?

My ghost is an old Making Memories chipboard shape I have had for years. The "paper" is real birch bark I found on the ground at my sis's house, from birch logs she got when someone cut down their beautiful birch trees! More black sparkly glitter paper is glued on the back for his eyes and mouth.

My little "boo" owl is punched from Stampin" Up punch and he sits on an orange paper rosette made from a new Tim Holtz Sizzix die. It makes two sizes and makes making "rosettes" a snap! The black circle is from my new package of sewing pins. Too cool to toss, so it was saved and re purposed into this fun ornament. I even added a MM Halloween pin. 

 The new tree topper for my Halloween tree this year will be this paper mache hat form I covered with old book paper and stained with a "black wash". 

I made some roses from black crepe paper to trim the hat, along with my glitter polka dot ribbon from Michael"s. To get the ribbon to lie flat to the brim, I pulled the top ribbon wire until it gathered to fit the hat brim. A little black bird and a big bow top it off!

My last ornaments are from a design I saw at Vintageimagecraft and is a free download and tutorial. 

They are too cute.  

I need to find an online source for the "bumpy" chenille as I can only find it locally at JoAnn's and you have to buy a pack with 10 different colors. And since you need 2 stems per color, you need to buy 2 packages. Good thing I plan to make some Santa's at Christmas to use the red and green. 

I hope to put up my "Halloween Tree" tomorrow and add all the new ornaments I made and decorate the rest of my house. Why did the weather have to hit the upper 90's this week? It does not feel like fall! May be my fall decorations will cool us off? 

Crafty Weekend

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend crafting and since work has been no fun at all lately I decided to take advantage of the chance to play. A wonderful lady who loves to craft and scrap hosts a weekend "retreat" 4 times a year in one of the conference rooms where she works. We can scrap or craft Friday from 5:30 to midnight. Saturday 9am to midnight and Sunday 9am to 5pm. We have use of the tables and chairs and "kitchen", so we can bring in our meals to heat up or go out and grab a bite.
Once we set up Friday, we can leave our stuff "out" until we leave on Sunday. Just go home and sleep in your own bed each night. We can just scrap one day, 2 days or all three. I was on a roll and scrapped all three days this time :)
And did I mention, this is all FREE!

One of my crafty projects started out with this little foam pig I found here for just .50 cents.

After decoupaging the "P" section of an old dictionary to the little pig I ended up with this.

And there are some very appropriate placements of certain words.

Since we bring in our own food or go out to eat I stopped at the deli counter on Friday night for my dinner. I added this container of Pringles to my purchase and enjoyed the chips on Sat as a snack. I did not toss the container right away so it sat on my table for a day. On Sunday afternoon I had a strip of pattern paper I had cut, but did not use on a scrapbook page, that was just the height of the Pringles can.

I could not just pass the opportunity up so I cleaned out the can, grabbed my adhesive and altered the can that would have been garbage, into a container for storage, or treats or however you could find a use for it!

I had scrapped about 5 layouts also and was going through all my "kits" and page plans I have been carrying around from crop to crop and decided to finish this little mini album I started almost two years ago!

And I am so glad I did as I really like how it turned out.

I don't know why it took me so long to get it made? I guess the "mojo" just wasn't there and waited all this time to show up until this past Saturday?

I also completed about 5 layouts this weekend and will post those later this week.

A very successful crafty weekend! And a fun time to share ideas and laughter with some of my scrapping cohorts!

Thanks for looking!

Berta

Chocolate Bunny Basket

The other day I posted this photo as inspiration for a basket I wanted to make to use my old, battered, white paper mache bunny. I loved the greenery and the old basket with the hints of old green paint. The inspiration basket is from Martha Stewart, where everything is always so beautiful. The paper mache bunny will last so much longer at my house. A real chocolate bunny would last about 5 minutes.

This is my version below. My basket started out as a bright green Easter basket. It was St Patty's day bright. I gave it a dip in a bleach/water mixture to take off some of the color. After it was dry, I gave the basket a chocolate brown wash with acrylic paint and rubbed most of it off. Then I went over the basket with some green paint and rubbed most of that off too. I still wanted to see the basket underneath.

I lined the basket with floral foam and covered that with moss. I found this pretty green fern to fill around the rim, and added several spring flowers. Bright mossy green ribbons and some colorful eggs fill up the basket.

My bunny got a new coat of chocolate paint and a blue bow. I was originally thinking of covering the bunny with brown glitter, but I liked the chocolate paint, so decided I can always add the glitter later if I

change my mind.

My basket is a different look from my inspiration basket. I could not find a beautiful basket with a tall enough handle to fit my bunny, or one that I could afford. And I strayed from the all green color tones and added more color with my flowers and eggs. But I love color so it fits my style more and will make a great centerpiece for my Easter table.