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."

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Hey All!

WOW!  What have you done to your hair????  You look amazing!  It makes you look so young!  I'm so glad to see you here!  I want to welcome those new followers too!  You pushed me to 300 followers and I couldn't be happier that you are here!  Thanks to Patti (Cherish Each Precious Day) and Mark (Deadbeat Designs) for mentioning me on their blogs.  It was great of you to do, and I appreciate it so much.

On with the post. . .Nothing too special tonight, but I can tell you that some fun new stuff is coming in the next couple of posts (videos!).  So keep tuning in.  My first card is a card that I really don't like AT ALL!  But I wanted to post it because it was one of those types of cards that we all fight with.  Take a look:

This card started with the sunflower head from Bo Bunny.  I then added a stamped stem with leaves which is actually from a poppy stamp.  That's all I had that even came close to add to the sunflower.  Totally not happy with the look, I added some Autumn colored FlowerSoft to the center.  Still not happy. . .Added the CuttleBugged frame and had the flower head stick out from it.  Ehhh. . . .Added the bee and used Stickles on t he wings. . .errrrrr.  Added the rust colored mat. . .ekkkkk. . .stamped the sentiment. . .ho hum. . . .big empty space needs something on the lower left so added orange dew drops, OK, I'm frickin sick of trying to save this damn card!  So, there you have the process, and after reliving it again, I HATE this card!  LOL

This next card uses punch art:

I made this card for some neighbors who recently lost their sweet dog Jake, but have gotten a new one since (rescue dog named Miley).  I wanted to welcome the new member of their family.  She's predominantly brown and white so I stayed with a monochromatic look.  I learned to make this punch puppy here with this great video tutorial.  It's little ears curl forward.  I created the background card stock and popped up the puppy with dimensionals.  The treat can is a recycled cashew can (I have several of these because cashews and pistachios are my favorite nuts).  I filled the can with "Pup Corn" which is a favorite treat of my boys.  The sentiment says "There is nothing better that to end a bad day covered in dog slobber."  Such a wonderful sentiment to welcome their sweet dog.

My final card (get ready Bonnie!!!) is a Halloween card:

I used one of those $1 stamps again but this time by itself.  I intend to do that with the other 3.  I wanted to get a "mummy" feel for the card, so I used masking tape all over the mat panel then used distress ink to "dirty" it and make it look like old bandages.  The "ribbon" is a used dryer sheet that I again "dirtied up" with distress ink.  Stamped the sentiment and done.

Now, I have to share a remarkable gift that one of my crafting neighbors (NINA!!!) gave me.  I was awe struck when I walked into her kitchen and it was sitting on her kitchen island lit up.  Take a look at this!

Bonnie has probably fainted right about now. . .LOL  Isn't this fabulous!?!  The eyes of both the man and the dog have lights in them so that they glow!  She said when she saw this, that with the combination of it being Halloween oriented and mentioning a dog, it had my name written all over it.  For the picture, I sat it on my mantel, but it has a permanent spot on the built-in bookcase next to the fireplace.  It looks so awesome!  Thanks again Nina!  You know me so well. . .LOL

Pic of the Week

BUG DRESSED FOR HALLOWEEN!

OK, that's it for this edition.  I'm still working my way around your blogs, so if I haven't gotten to yours yet, I'm on my way.  As you know, I use my comment section from the week before to visit all those who have left me a comment.  So I've been hitting an average of 45-50 blogs a week.  And I read EVERY word of your posts.  So it takes me some time, but I love every minute of it!

I do hope you are all well and happy and that you are having a great week.  You all are important to me and I think about you all a lot.  I don't have a big family (there are only really 4 of us) so you all have become my extended family, and I'm honored that you visit me each week.

Love you guys!


Best,


Curt O'Brien


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

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

Hey All!!!

You made it safe and sound!  Gosh it is good to see you. . .what have you been up to this past week?  As I visited your blogs this week, I saw some wonderful stuff, read some happy news, and some sad news, and just lots of stuff going on.  We are one amazing little group aren't we?  I'm certainly proud and very happy to call you my blogging family, cause that's what you feel like to me!

Have you noticed that blogger has added a great new feature when viewing blogs????  As you read through my blog, try clicking on one of my photos here in the blog.  It puts them all in a really nice photo viewing mode.  I love it!

On with the post!  Again, I've created some more Halloween cards to share with you this week.  BONNIE!!!  Stop that groaning back there!  LOL  I think you will like these.  Take a look at the first one:

Now see Bonnie, this one is kind of sweet isn't it?  LOL  I created this scene using several different stamps.  I first masked off the moon and sponged the background sky as well as the grassy area.  The cat is by Artful Inkables, the tree is by Deadbeat Designs, the pumpkins are peg stamps by Tapistry, and the bats are a Hero Arts mini stamp.  I used a dark grey colored pencil to  create the shadows behind the images and a white gel pen to give the effect of the moon reflection. I love creating scenes with a variety of different stamps.  The possibilities are endless.

I think the next card is going to end up being my most favorite of the Halloween cards I've made so far:

Again, I've combined two images to create one scene.  The witch and the cauldron are both separate images from CowTown Stamps.  I love their images and they are reasonably priced and well made.  When I saw the two images I knew immediately that they were going to be used together.  I colored them with my colored pencils and oms.  Then added glitter to the flames, stuff she is sprinkling in, and the liquid content of the cauldron.  Sponged the whole background afterwards.  The sentiment is by (I believe) Inkadinkado, and thought it perfect for the scene.  The background paper is DCWV.

My last card is a birthday card which I made for a sweet neighbor lady.  As I told you in my last post, I like to make occasion cards in the theme of the season in which they occur.  Take a look:

You gotta click on this one to see the glittery leaves. . .I stickled every dang one of them!!  LOL  It really was worth it because the whole card just sparkles.  I created the background paper using the Trendy Trees stamp set by Stampin UP.  I've had this set for quite awhile now, and have never used it.  I'm glad I did for this card.  I used a Stampamajig to position the trees as I went along so they would create the pattern.  They are stamped with several colors of distress inks.  I don't know how I lived without my distress inks!  Added the sentiment strip and the cute Fall brad and done.

OK now time for the pic of the week!  As stated in the last post, the pics I post from now through Halloween will have something to do with the holiday.  Take a look at this gorgeous guy!

This, I'm sure, is a common crow, but for all intents and purposes, this is a raven!!  LOL  Did you know these guys are super intelligent?  There is a video on YouTube of one that they used in an experiment.  They put just enough water in the bottom of a long glass tube where the Raven couldn't get to it to get a drink.  As you watch the video, the Raven goes and picks up small rocks and drops them in the tube raising the water level to the point where it can drink.  That is just amazing to me!  I love these birds!

OK, that's it for now. . .Thanks so much for stopping by to say hello!  Love that you did, and you know my blog is always open for you.  Thanks too for leaving such sweet comments!  Have a great week!  Love you guys!

Hugs,

Curt O'Brien

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

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2011

Hey All!

I've been waiting for you!  So glad you could come by and see me!  And may I say, you are looking absolutely fabulous!  Honestly, I've not seen you look better!


OK, I've got 4 cards to post tonight.  This is a good balance of regular cards and Halloween cards.  Yes Bonnie, you have a couple of non-Halloween cards you can look at!  LOL  So, let's take a look, shall we???

One of the things I love most about Halloween (and there is a ton I love) are "haunted houses".  The creepier the better.  When I was younger, I used to love to go visit the local haunted houses for a fun scare.  So, I wanted to create a card that had a haunted house.  I sponged the background first then stamped the image with Staz-On jet black.  This image is by Martha Stewart.  I then added the background papers and separated them with a MS border punch (which reminds me of an old iron fence that would be in front of a haunted mansion.  I then took a black and white striped ribbon and used distress inks on it to give it a dirty, moldy look.  The skeleton key is an actual key (plastic) that I attached with dimensionals.  Stamped, matted, and attached the greeting and done.

I wanted to use that silhouette cat stamp for a Halloween card too.  When I first saw the cat stamp, I thought that the pose of the cat reminded me of it balancing something on its nose.  So, I came up with this:

I created the background paper using a There She Goes bat stamp.  I sponged the background with distress inks then stamped the cat, pumpkin, and raven.  Stamped a few extra bats, matted the image, tied a small black bow, and done.  I really do like how this turned out.  I can imagine using this cat stamp again for a Fall card where a leaf is landing on his nose.  

OK, the next one is a thank you card I made for a sweet neighbor lady who took me out to dinner for my birthday. . .I know, it was in June, but we just got around to it last week.  LOL  Here is the card I made her:

The focal image is embossed in gold ep.  I always forget about my metallic eps.  The background paper is from (I believe) DCWV.  I don't know who the stamp is by.  It is actually a single fern stem that I stamped twice.  This was such a quick and easy card to do.  I need to make a few more of these to have on hand.

The last card for tonight is also a thank you card:

I don't know about you, but I like to do my note cards, thank you cards, and other cards in the spirit of the season.  Since it is now Fall (in my mind anyway!) all occasion cards will carry that theme.  Again, a very simple and quick card.  Don't know who the stamp is by (it's from a set I got when I first started).  I stamped the same image on 3 panels in 3 different colors of distress inks.  Matted them and tied some twine to the end panels and then stamped the simple thanks sentiment on the middle panel.  Popped up the panels on foam squares and done.  This is also for a very sweet neighbor who fixed Jay and me a wonderful dinner.  She made us Italian Beef in the crock pot and it was to die for.  One of the best meals I've had in a long time.  Thanks Nina!  It was so nice of you to do.  You'll probably see this card here before you get it! LOL

OK, now for the pic of the week.  Because Halloween is coming, the picture of the week will reflect a Halloween theme from this post forward through Halloween.  The picture will show scary looking things, or things that remind me of Halloween, or things that have Halloween colors, etc.  So here is the first of the series.

PIC OF THE WEEK

This is kinda creepy eh? This photo was not altered at all.  It was a cloudy day and the faint light was just enough to highlight the strands of this wonderful web against the blackish grey of the tree line in the distance.  Great Halloween pic huh?

Thanks for coming by.  You know how much I love having you here.  I'm off to take a look at what you have all been up to.  Can't wait to see.  And welcome to my new followers!  Thanks so much for thinking my blog is worthy to follow.  That means a lot to me!  Glad to have you here.

Love you guys!


Hugs,


Curt


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

THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2011

Hey All!

Welcome to another Wednesday Post and also to my most favorite time of year!  As you can see, my blog is all decked out for Fall, got my Halloween counter up and running there to the right, and the boys are all dressed for the season.  Yeah, I know I'm a couple of weeks early, but who's counting?  LOL  The weather here is "Fallish" and has been for the last couple of days and I'm more than ready!

A couple of fun things happened this week that I want to share with you.  My blogging buddy Jocelyn informed me that my "cat card" from last week's post was highlighted on the "wall" of Splitcoast Stamper's Facebook page!  I didn't even know they had one!  LOL  Thanks Jocelyn for letting me know!  Also, my blog counter turned over 50,000 hits!  Can you believe it?  I am still amazed that so many people come to see my silly stuff!  Speaking of. . .

I know Bonnie, turn your head away for the rest of the post!  LOL  I'm having a blast making my Halloween cards this year.  Every year it gets to be more fun because I've learned new techniques and feel more confident in trying new stuff.  This stamp set is a Martha Stewart set.  I wanted something that represented a haunted house motif so I thought these were all things you would find in a scary haunted house.  I created the background paper by stamping on my work surface with some distress inks then wiping my cardstock over it.  Once dry, I stamped the images, distress inked and distressed the edges of each panel, then matted them.  The circular one is a new set of Nesties that I got a couple of weeks ago on CLEARANCE from JoAnne Fabrics for - are you ready?  $2.97!!!!!  Whole set of 5!  Can you believe it????

I love how this turned out.  This is a total case of a card I saw on SCS but with my own touches.  You can see the inspiration card here.  I wanted to add a pop of color so I used this cool orange and black ribbon I got in the dollar bin at Michaels.   The spiders are from There She Goes and I'm not sure who the sentiment is by.  But I think the spiders dropping down from the ribbon was such a cute idea, I had to make one.  Actually, I'm going to make a lot of these because I made this card in about 15 minutes. 


OK, we've gone from spooky, to whimsical, to how about just plain cute?

My very sweet neighbor Pat left this for me with a note that said "I was at Archiver's and this stamp said to take me to Curt."  She is so sweet!  She is also a card maker too and does beautiful work.  This is a Penny Black stamp and it is colored with my colored pencils and oms.  I added the shadowing at the bottom of each character for some depth.  This is a large stamp, so it doesn't leave much room for embellishing, so I let the image do all the work.  Thanks again Pat!  It was so nice of  you.


Pic of the Week

Scary huh?  LOL  I looked up while sitting on a chair swing at the park with the boys and saw this shell of a cicada clinging above me.  I thought the almost silhouette look was cool as well as the angle it was on.   I know, I take pictures of weird things sometimes, but this kind of struck me as "artsy".  LOL 


OK, that's it for this week's post.  Hope you enjoyed your stay as much as I enjoy your visiting me.  Thanks for all the wonderful comments last week.  I love reading what you have to say about my "stuff".  Thank you for that.  It means the world to me.


Hope you are all well and happy.  I think about you guys a lot, especially when I come see your blogs.  I'm still hopping, so if I haven't seen you yet this week, I'm on my way!


Hugs to all of you!


Best,


Curt O'Brien


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