THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR OCTOBER 26, 2011 (ON SATURDAY)!

Hey All!

I'm so sorry for being late with this post, and to tell you the truth there is no good reason for it.  It was just a very crazy week all the way around, and I was just plain exhausted to be honest.  But thank you to all of those who sent me emails of concern.  I'll make you a promise. . .from now on, if there is something wrong I'll post to let you know. . .if not, just know that I'm just running behind.  That way, you won't have to worry.  Love you guys for that!

OK, the last of the Halloween cards (Bonnie is sighing with relief).  HOWEVER!!!!  The first card was made with a stamp set that SHE sent me as a gift for Halloween!!!!  LOL  Take a look:

This is such a cute set and so different from the ones I have.  It is by Recolections.  Love the haunted house stamp and the ghost and bat are really whimsical (thanks again Bonnie!!).  I glittered up the bat with black glitter from MS.  I chose the background paper because it reminded me of the wrought iron gating that you would find in front of a big old scary house.  I stamped the house image right onto yellow cardstock.  The card was quick and easy!

The only stamping on the next card is the sentiment:

The scrolly spider web and spider were already part of a 12 X 12 piece of paper by TCP.  I simply cut the section out, matted it, and attached it to the background paper on my card.  Stamped the sentiment and done!  The spider is all glittery and the background paper I had kinda matched the swirly patter on the image.

The next two cards are kind of made to go together.  One is for my sister and the other is for my Mom:

I've had these window beveled die cuts for over 3 years and have never used them.  I thought that it would make a fun window scene for Halloween.  Started with black cardstock and added a punched out white moon that I stamped a couple of bats on.  Stamped the tree (Cowtown) in kraft white ink and then went over it with a glitter pen.  Drew the ghost myself and cut it out.  Taped the scene to the back of the window and then attached that to the background paper.  Stamped the small "boo" and done.

Here is the companion card:

As you can see, I used the same paper as if it were from the same wall in the room of the house that the window is in from the card up above.  I "built" the shelf from wood grain paper and then popped it up with dimensional tape.  The bottles are MS Halloween stickers.  As I placed them on the shelf, the spiders on the background paper kind of lined up and looked to me like they were grabbing or coming to grab some of the bottles.  So I went with that!  LOL  Stamped the "eek" and done.

Well, that's it for this post.  Again, so sorry it was so late.  Thanks for your patience and concern.


I want to wish you all a VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  I hope it is fun and safe and filled with tons of treats and not tricks!  Here is the last Halloween related Pic of the Week:


Pic of the Week

CLASSIC BREW INGREDIENT "TOE OF TOAD"

And I'll leave you with a very old, classic Halloween Cartoon that always makes me laugh.  Enjoy!

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

Best,

Curt O'Brien

"God, please help me be the person that my dogs think I am."

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR OCTOBER 19TH, 2011

Hey All!

OMGosh where has this week gone!?!  Gosh I'm glad to see you.  It's like having family stop by and check in on me.  I love having you here!

I have some fun things to share with you tonight.  I'm going to start with a "anything but a card" project.  The idea for this project came from candy!  I thought the candy was so much fun that it deserved a box made especially for it.  Take a look. . . .

This is the top of the box.

Here is a side view. . .

As you can see now, part of the top is a tag that is pulled out of the little holder on the front.  The harlequin paper was black and white, but I used my distress inks to color it using a sponge.  I also colored the ribbon so it would match.  Now for the candy that inspired this box:

Aren't they fun!?!  LOL  Who wouldn't want to receive a nicely boxed 1/2 dozen eye balls for Halloween???  These happen to be chocolate with peanut butter filling.  I created this box from scratch including the little tray that holds the eyeballs.  If you would like the dimensions for this, I'll be glad to send them to you.  Just shoot me an email.  I had a blast working this one out, and it was exactly what I had in mind when I saw this bag of candy eyeballs.

My next card is a card is a thank you card for dinner.  We have been so blessed with people here in the neighborhood making us dinner and looking out for us, that I needed to come up with a card to say thanks.  I wanted the front of the card to resemble a place setting at a table.  Here is what I came up with:

The silverware stamp is another one of those wonderful $1 stamps I picked up at Michael's a few weeks ago.  I stamped it in Versamark then embossed it with silver ep.  I made the plate by first using my Nestie circle dies.  I cut out the "plate" then, I cut out a smaller circle out of chipboard.  I placed the small chipboard circle in the center of the white circle then put that onto my rubber embossing mat.  Ran it through the CB and it made an impression for dimension on the plate.  I used a grey colored pencil and oms to shade it a little more so that it stood out.  Then I created my own "china pattern" by using a tiny little leaf stamp.  I ran the green cardstock through the CB with an embossing folder from SU because it makes it look like fabric to me.  I did the edges with a MS punch to give it a lacy look like a place mat.  The "napkin" is actually made from a corner of a paper towel with a ribbon around it to look like a napkin ring.  To give even more dimension I popped the plate up with dimensional tape.  After making this card, I started visiting blogs and low and behold, my sweet blogging friend Sharli made one too!!!  Great minds huh Sharli???  LOL

My last card for the post is a birthday card that I made for my Aunt:

As most of you know, I love the red/white/black combo.  I wanted the sentiment to read "Celebrate You", which I thought I had, but I didn't.  So I went to a standard Happy Birthday sentiment.  You can't really tell in the photo, but there are 18 punched out butterflies there.  Each butterfly is sitting on another butterfly.  The upper one is glued to the top and the wings of each stand up.

Pic of the Week

This is a pumpkin I carved a few years ago.  I liked the photo effect I got on this one.

OK, that's it for another Wednesday post.  Hope you enjoyed yourselves while you were here.  I know I sure enjoy you visiting.  I hope this post finds you all well and happy and safe.  Thanks to those who have sent me cards!  I am so very honored and I love your creations.  I'm one lucky guy!

Love you guys!


Curt


"God, please help me be the person my dogs think I am."

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR OCTOBER 13, 2011

Hey All!

I want to start with an apology to all of my Canadian blogging friends!  I didn't realize until yesterday that it was your Thanksgiving this past Monday.  I'm so sorry that I didn't even mention that in my last post.  I do hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that you got to spend it with friends and family.  Please also accept my apologies for being late with this post and for not getting to everyone's blogs yet.  I have been working on a couple of very special projects, and I wanted to get one of them finished for this post.  I was up until 2:30 AM this morning putting on the finishing touches.  So, I hope this post was worth the wait.  There are a ton of pictures!

Here is the project:

And what is this you ask???  It is a Halloween Haunted House recipe box!!!  Keep looking. . .

This is a side view.

The back.

This is the box open. . .

Here is one of the recipe cards. . .

The box holds 12 of these recipe cards.  I used 2 each of 6 designs of paper (I'm sorry, I did not note the papers I used) to cover the front of the 3.5 X 6 cards.  Here are the other 3 designs:

And here is what one of the recipe card backs look like:

8 of the cards contains fun Halloween recipes for things like "black punch" to "pumpkin fudge".  4 of the cards are blank to add your own favorite recipes.  I scoured the internet for fun, unique Halloween themed recipes for this collection.  I made this for my friend/neighbor Nina as a thank you for her thoughtfulness of not only giving me that great Halloween gift (picture with glowing eyes), but she has cooked us a couple of amazing meals to help out because Jay was in the hospital.  She has been wonderful. . .Thanks Nina!  For a video tutorial of this project click HERE.  This box would be great to make for Christmas recipes (video shows a Christmas one).  It is relatively easy to make, just very time consuming until you get one under your belt.

I also have a couple of cards to share as well:

My Mom asked me to make a pet sympathy card for her dentist who lost one of his little dogs.  This is what I made.  I really love this sentiment stamp by Northwoods.  I always try to keep pet sympathy cards low key and simple to convey the sentiment.


Speaking of my Mom, her birthday was the 10TH and I made her this card:

This is my version of a Joy Fold card.  It looks so much better IRL.  The butterfly is really sparkly and the black/white/yellow combo is really striking.  I added that little metal "thingy" to keep it closed.  Here's what it looks like open:

I also wanted to share a picture of the one and only tree I have in my backyard:

Isn't it beautiful?  What I love about this tree (it is an American Ash) is that the inner leaves are a beautiful yellow and the outside is a wonderful red.  When the sun hits it, it looks like it glows from the inside.


Pic of the Week

THE BIRDS

OK, there you go.  Another post under my belt.  I do hope it was worth the wait.  Again, I'm so sorry I haven't gotten to all of you yet, but I'm working on it.  I'm going to go take a little nap now and see if I can get a little more revived.


Love you guys!


Curt O'Brien


"God, please help me be the person that my dogs think I am."

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR OCTOBER 5, 2011

Hey All!

There you are!!!  I was just sitting around waiting for you to come by.  Boy am I glad to see you!  I'm really excited about this post because I have posted TWO NEW VIDEOS OF SHOTSY AND GUNTHER DOING A COUPLE OF AMAZING THINGS!  Would you mind taking a minute or two and watching the videos right over there on the right sidebar?  I'd love to know what you think of what they are doing.  I so appreciate you indulging me with my boys and their brand new videos.  I'm so anxious for you to see them.

Tonight's post actually is a themed post.  Yes Bonnie, it is all about Halloween!  However, the actual theme is that I made three very distinctively different cards but used the same color combo on each one of them.  I consider Orange, Black, and White the traditional colors of Halloween, so that is what I used on my cards.  I also wanted to keep them simple and pretty clean.  Here is the first:

This card is a play off of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven".  I never found that story scary at all, but I always love to hear it and watch it performed by the late Vincent Price.  You can watch him perform it HERE.   I stamped multiple bird cages to create the background but I don't know who the stamps are by. . .they are from different sets.  The "Never More" I created using an old Martha Stewart letter stamp set I bought a couple of years ago.  The raven is also by Martha Stewart.  Very simple and clean and based on a classic.

My second uses the same color scheme:

Again, simple and clean.  This spider stamp was part of some stamps that were gifted to me by the ever popular and multi-talented Mark from Deadbeat Designs.  What a fun spider he created.  The webbing was created using a Martha Stewart punch, then I went over it with a silver glitter pen for some sparkle.  The eyes of the spider are done in orange Stickles.

My last card using the same color scheme:

Again, this one was created with gifted stamps from Mark.  They are so appreciated Mark!  You are so talented.  I really love your stamps!  I didn't even do matting on this card!  That is a rarity for me.  I LOVE these skeleton hands.  I stamped both the left and the right hands randomly, then the little skulls, then the bones.  I added googly eyes on the skull (Mark did the same thing on his HERE where I got my inspiration).  I also added orange Stickles to the little skull eyes for some sparkle.  Inside I'm going to add the sentiment "No Bones About It. . .Have A Happy Halloween!"  Corny, but goes with the card front.

So there are the cards for this week.  Believe it or not, BONNIE (who does not "do" Halloween) sent me the most awesome Halloween card that she made along with a Halloween stamp set!  I will be featuring a card next week using the set she sent me.  It was wonderful of you to do that Bonnie!  It meant even more because of how you feel about Halloween!

Pic of the Week

SPOOKY MOON

OK, that's it for this post.  I hope you enjoyed it and I sure hope you watched the videos of "my boys".  I think the two videos shows you some of the many reasons they have stolen my heart and why I love them so much.  Thanks for taking the time to see them.

I hope you are all well and doing fine.  I think I got to all of you that left comments last week, and I will do the same this week as usual to all who leave me a comment.  I love reading what you have to say, and you are so valued.

Hugs to all of you!


Best,


Curt O'Brien


"God, please help me be the person that my dogs think I am."