Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 2

Years ago, when I went to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh with my friend Dayna, I picked up these super cool paper ribbons with Warhol quotes on them in the gift shop, knowing that they would be great for scrapbooking. And the quote "Everyone is rich, everyone is interesting," seemed to rather perfectly sum up these photos of Katie, our friend Eric, Circleville's famous "Pumpkin Man", and a complete stranger in an awesome deer-head jacket.

To gather ribbon like I did with the orange one, just stitch a line right down the middle of it (by machine or by hand), and pull the thread to scrunch it up.

And how 'bout that cute felt pumpkin? I'm pretty sure I found those in the Target Dollar Spot last fall. Theme-scrapper that I am, I collect pumpkin-themed stuff whenever I find it and toss it into my Pumpkin Show supply stash. It's always fun to pull out a plastic container full of forgotten orange and green treasures when I sit down each year to scrap the event.

Monday's post gets into the really good part of Pumpkin Show -- the food!

Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, DCWV
Letter Stickers, Basic Grey, EK Success
Ribbon: American Crafts, KI Memories
Stickers: Me and My Big Ideas
Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 1

I'm not gonna lie. Summer doesn't do much for me. And scrappin' these photos from last year's Circleville Pumpkin Show made me totally yearn for fall to hurry up and get here. There's nothing like crisp-but-not-quite-cold weather, the most delicious fair food ever, and visits from Katie.

It's become a tradition for me to scrapbook a bunch of Pumpkin Show layouts every year and put them in albums devoted entirely to the event. After filling the last book (a bright orange number from Kolo) with pages from 2005-2009, this layout is now the very first page in my new Pumpkin Show book, this pretty binder from Basic Grey. Pumpkin Show 2010 ended up with 11 layouts, and since I finally took the time to photograph them before stuffing them into their plastic inserts, I can actually share them here and use this blog what it was originally meant for!

Patterned Paper: Reminisce, My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, Pink Paislee, Doodlebug
Pumpkin Die Cut: QuicKutz
Punches: Fiskars
Date Stamp: Becky Higgins (Project Life)
Striped Twine: My Mind's Eye
Photo Corners: Scrapbook Adhesives

"Hoppy Easter"

Easter has never really meant cards to me, and pastels aren't usually my thing, but when I found this Candy Bunny die from Lifestyle Crafts, I needed to snatch it up and make something. Luckily, I had exactly one Easter stamp and a few pieces of pastel orange, yellow, pink, and blue in my stash, so I could get my Easter-craft fix without buying any supplies.

My mouth was watering for Peeps the whole time I was tiling those bunnies onto the paper.

Here's a peek at the inside. My stamp was so tiny, I decided to make a little paper "ribbon" to help it stand out.

As soon as I stop being too lazy to take, upload, and crop photos of them, I've got tons of scrapbook pages to share. Stay tuned!

Typewriter Stamp Roundup

Sharing Dan's anniversary card yesterday got me thinking about how many typewriter stamps I've been seeing lately.

There's the one I used, which is from We R Memory Keepers:

There's this new wood-mount lovely from Hero Arts:

Hero Arts also has this useful cling set where you can change out the words on the typing paper:

Or, you can get their background stamp with typewriters and typewriter keys flying around all over the place (I'm not so sure about this one.):

Also in the change-out-the-sentiment family are these sets from the new stamping company Lawn Fawn:

And there are tons of super vintagey typewriter stamps, like this one from Technique Tuesday:

And this one by October Afternoon:

So, what do you think of this trend? I mostly just like thinking about the crafters of the future who will be using all sorts of vintage Kindle and i-Pad-themed products on their projects.

2-Year Anniversary

One of my favorite stamping techniques is to stamp the same image on different papers and then cut them apart in order to piece them together, but I almost never remember to try it. It happened by accident on this card, because after I stamped this little typewriter directly on the book paper, it looked all wrong, and the sentiment wasn't clear enough. Then, I stamped it on the deep red paper and cut it out, but it still didn't seem to look right. THEN, I realized that of COURSE typewriter paper isn't the same color as the typewriter! So I stamped the whole thing again on cream paper and cut out just the paper part. To make it look even more dimensional, I stuck the typing paper image directly to the paper, and I adhered the typewriter image with Pop Dots.


The best part about this card is that it wasn't until I took this detail shot that I noticed something funny about the particular circle of dictionary paper I had randomly punched out:

It says "SEXUAL INTERCOURSE"! On my anniversary card to my husband! Do you think he'll notice?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Excuse the harsh shadows in the picture. I just snapped a quick shot before giving this card to my mom this afternoon.

I didn't have any St. Patrick's Day stamps or supplies, so I went with a generic sentiment and die cut four hearts out of green paper to make the shamrock. It looked a little bare, so I made a little flower out of paper scraps to go on top. To learn how to make flowers like this one, check out this tutorial at the Hambly blog.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Quick Birthday Calendar

You know you're too caught up in crafting when you start letting your products dictate your projects instead of the other way around. After I got this beautiful 7 Gypsies stamp set of month titles, I decided to put together a quick and easy birthday calendar to keep track of important dates throughout the year.

I found this Conrad Ring Book from Creative Imaginations at my local scrapbook store, thinking its 6 chipboard pages would be just right for a 12-month calendar. Then, I chose papers from My Mind's Eye new Stella and Rose collection for each month, took it all home, and went to work.

Instructions:
1. Use a paper trimmer to cut patterned papers to the size of the chipboard pages, and round the corners with a corner rounder.

2. Punch holes in the top of the pages to match the holes in the chipboard pages. (If you use a Crop-a-Dile, you can punch all the pages at once.)

3. Stamp month titles on the top of each page with black ink.

4. Format lists of date numbers in word processor and print on printable transparencies. You'll need 7 lists of 31, 4 lists of 30, and 1 list of 29 for February (to go ahead and factor in the leap year). Trim apart the lists and attach to the patterned paper pages with staples. (You could avoid the stapled look by printing right on the pages, fussing with a clear adhesive, or trying to hide the adhesive with embellishments, but I was going for quick and easy.)

5. Adhere the patterned paper pages to the chipboard pages. Sand the edges if paper hangs off the sides. Assemble the pages and secure them with jump rings. I assembled mine so that January through June all face forward, and you can turn the whole calendar around to flip July through December.

6. Write in all your important dates!

I had to scour Facebook to collect a bunch of birthdays I didn't already know, and I still need to do a little detective work to find the rest, but once I'm done, I'll no longer have to rely on my memory (or my husband's) to be prepared for family events.

I'll probably eventually embellish this a little. I'm sure I'll at least tie some ribbons on the jump rings in between the pages. But for now, I like the simplicity. The stamps and papers feel ornate enough as they are.