Lighting the way on Halloween Night

Masked in cuteness these summertime lanterns double as glowing Halloween globes to light the way for the trick or treaters in your neighborhood. With a little time and not much effort you can make these lanterns in time for the event.

I simply printed and cut the Costume Clubhouse Masks from Lettering Delights. I choose to keep the eyes on the masks, rather than cutting out the eye holes (which are great for masks on people, but not so much on my lanterns).

I was able to get the paper lantern string of lights from Target a few weeks ago, from the summer season gardening collection. The globes are about 8" in diameter and come in an 11'3" string with ten lights. There are also red and yellow lanterns in this set, but I chose to use only the orange, green and aqua as they are the perfect colors for my Costume Clubhouse art. These lanterns also come in a smaller size with globes 3" in diameter and ten lights on the string.

Once I had the masks cut and lanterns assembled I secured each mask to a lantern with my black string. Because the lanterns have horizontal grooves, the string fits nicely around the center and the groove keeps the string in place quite well.

The only thing left to do is to hang the lanterns and let them light the way on Halloween night.

Honey, I shrunk the Costume Kids!

If you haven’t learned this about me yet, I love, love, love small things. Anything that can be teeny-tinied becomes a mini challenge for me.

Yet again I had to miniaturize these Costume Clubhouse kids, just because I could. They make charming bracelets, endearing earrings and treasured trinkets for those imps and their larger set who are special in your life.

In order to create these jolly-pockets you will need to have Shrinky Dinks that are made for computer inkjet printers, if you want to use the Costume kids from my collection. Shrinky Dink is available in some craft and online stores, but make sure you get the inkjet printer kind, as the others will not work for printing.

Choose art from the Costume Clubhouse sets on Lettering Delights. I used images from these sets: CC (Costume Clubhouse) graphic set and print cut set, and the CC cupcake pack for the cameos of the kids. The CC sweet treats set and the CC alphabet would be so cute in miniature as well. Maybe you will do those and let me see your tiny and precise handiwork.

Print and cut your images on Shrinky Dink material. I hand cut my pieces, but with a good cutter you can save your hand and time. Make sure you use a hole punch (I used the .125" punch) to cut holes for hanging the trinkets before you bake the pieces in the oven. If you do not make holes prior to baking, you will regret it, and have to drill holes through the plastic after it is baked.

Above is a photo of the pre-shrink art. The medallions (the circles only) are almost 2" in diameter and will shrink to about .75" in diameter. Prepare for shrinkage to be approximately 40% and about .0625" thick as the plastic will thicken as baked. Also note that Shrinky Dinks darken as they bake and shrink, so if you are able, you might choose to lighten the art about 30%.

Once the pieces are baked and cooled (follow Shrinky Dinks instructions) you can turn them into earrings, bracelets, key chains or just about anything you can add a little treasure to. If you do want to make key chains or backpack charms you will want to use a larger hole punch, at least a .25" or .375".

Above are samples of the little medallion charms made from the CC cupcake set.

As soon as you have your Costume Clubhouse jewelry made you can gift it to your peeps with a little tissue and box it in the matching CC Gift Boxes you can also find on LD. In fact, it would be one more bit of cuteness if you also use the CC Gift Tags also on LD to personalize the gift.

Who would not love these little costume kids in miniature but fashionable style? I do believe if I could Shrinky Dink myself, I think I might. However, until that invention has been perfected, honey, let’s just shrink these kids.

Scrap~Happy Halloween!

It’s time to take a break from party planning and donate a little time and a little memory to Halloween past. What better way to preserve the past than with a scrapbook page capturing that moment in time? I have chosen one of my all time fave photos of my daughter when she was seven years old and Halloween was just around the corner. We were at the family farm in Oklahoma and Grandma had just gotten a new kitten. It was as though this little kitten knew it was the perfect time for his arrival as the iconic black cat for Halloween, and my daughter was thrilled.

We took action while the opportunity presented itself and found a great pumpkin, wish I could say right from the pumpkin patch at the farm, but honestly it was from the local grocer. Carving began and soon a whimsical face emerged from the pumpkin ready to house the adorable new farm kitten we had named Black Jack.

Full of delight, Shelby quickly snatched up the kitten and placed him in his temporary home while I got my manual Minolta camera ready to capture the moment, and that I did. Many snapshots were taken but the one in this framed scrapbook page is my absolute favorite.

For this memory page I used a variety of images from the Costume Clubhouse sets on LD. To give you an idea of what images were used I thought I would share those specifics with you.

The “Happy Halloween” banner is actually a scaled down version of the CC (Costume Clubhouse) Banners. I simply printed them out at about 1.75" when folded to the tip at bottom and hung them on black string with some of the little bats and ghosts from the CC Graveyard set. I did pop dot the ghosts and bats holding the banners in order for the banners to sway a bit if moved. I also used the bats and ghosts along the fence from the CC Graveyard set. I printed and cut the fence from the CC Fences and attached them to the bottom of the 16 x 16 framed format.

The photo was framed with black cardstock. The vertical band of orange and black dots with white stars is from the CC Borders, simply printed, cut and glued to the background. There is also a medallion type label reading “Trick or Treat” at the end of the border and just over the corner of the photograph. That label is from the CC Gift Tags. Again, I printed, cut and attached it to the board, using a bit of foam core to lift it from the background.

The finishing touch was the costumed owl which comes from the CC Characters. I also lifted the owl with a bit of foam core to show it visibly in front of the wrought iron fence. The only thing left to do to show off the scrap~happy halloween memory was to frame it in the black 16 x 16 frame and find the perfect place to keep it.

Now, just for fun I thought I’d share a close up of Shelby and the kitten and a few more snapshots from that happy autumn afternoon at the family farm. Enjoy and happy scrapping!

A Haunting We Will Go!

Crafting in 3-D beats movies in 3-D three to one! At least I think so. See if you agree.

The love of my creative life is designing in 3-D with my 2-D style of art. Any time I can take my characters and get them in a three dimensional setting I’m in happyland. This is what I was able to do with Lettering Delights and the Costume Clubhouse theme. We made a less than haunting house and a playful graveyard scene, complete with tree, tombstones and iron fence as well as the little clubhouse members jaunting about.

These sets are available on LD as: Costume Clubhouse Haunted House, Costume Clubhouse Graveyard, and Costume Clubhouse Fences. Each set can be used together or separately for a variety of craft ideas as well as a center piece for your party or little vignettes throughout the house, classroom, or even office for the Halloween season.

Below are some photos of the house to share a few ideas of how the scene could be set up. The house is not complicated to put together with the pieces printed, cut and assembled with a little glue or double stick tape, it’s just a little witch-craft waiting for your creative hand.

When the house is assembled it measures about 11" high and 6" x 5" at its base. The shutters can either be attaches to the house flat or as shown here with them angled in a bit to make them more three dimensional. To make the little costume kids, simply print, cut and fold at their bases to make them stand. Then embellish a bit more with ghosts and jack-o-lanterns about the house.

To make the graveyard scene simply print and cut the pieces and assemble again with glue and a little string. I did choose to use black cardstock for the tree and the fence as I wanted both sides to be black on those pieces, so no printing was done on my tree or the fence (only the fence signs were printed and then glued into place—one side of the sign reads “trick or treat,”and the other side of the sign reads “rest in peace.”

To make the scenes of tombstones with bats and ghosts simply print, cut and fold at their bases to make them stand around your tree. I always use an index stock for paper crafting that needs to stand on its own and for this I used 90lb. stock.

For the “boo” and “eek” banners, I made them as you would any banner, only in miniature with black carpet warp string. You can use any string you like. I found that craft stores have a variety of options to choose from. I also used a tiny pinhole punch (or a needle will do) to make small holes in the tree for the banner, bats, ghosts and spiders to hang from, then threaded the string and knotted for the pieces to hang. I also used a bit of glue to secure the string into place.

I printed the bats, ghosts, owls and spider medallions from a lighter 24 lb. paper because I did not want those pieces to be too heavy on the tree and also because I printed them out in mirror image and glued the string between the pieces. This is the reason you will see those characters in mirror image when you get the Costume Clubhouse Graveyard set on LD.

Here are a few tips I want to share on assembling the fence that could help when putting it together. As you will see when you get the file for the fence, the fence comes with a .75" base that is intended to be folded at that location where the fence posts meet the base to hold the fence upright. If you want to use the fence for a two dimensional design, simply cut the base off about .125" from the posts, or right where the posts meet the base.

Because I wanted my fence to circle around the tree and house I also used a simple snipping technique on the base. I used a green cardstock for the grass and adhered that to a piece of poster board cut to the same size. I chose a 13.5" diameter circle for that base. Then after I cut the fence out with my Silhouette (but did not print, as I used black paper to have it black on both sides), I simply snipped the base every half inch so that the fence would curve around the circular green base when glued underneath to stand. See the sample below for explanation. I also used an 18 gauge wire to secure the sign post and stablize it when standing. I simply cut the wire to the length of the “Trick or Treat” sign/post and then glued, or it can be taped, to the inside of the post. It isn’t even visible when assembled. Okay, well, I did spray the wire black, sure, but that was easy and a quick fix. :)

Now it’s your turn to 3-D your creative self with these Halloween sets and let me know if you don’t agree that 3-D crafting is more fun than 3-D movies! Just click on over to the LD site and snatch up these 3-D aka: three-delightful sets and get the party started.

Good, Clean Fun for Funday Freebies!

This time of year the tissues are a must, so they must get wrapped into the spirit of the season. They can also have a more enjoyable purpose when turned into cute ghost covered lollipops for the trick or treaters. All of those sweet little hands will be ready for some cleaning when the candy stash has been collected and what better way to encourage the cleaning than with “Creepy Crawler Cleaner” known by us moms as hand sanitizer. If you like these labels and you like clean kids, and you like free things you will want to download my ghost tissue label and creepy crawler label and start having some good clean fun.

For the lollipop ghosts, I simply covered Tootsie Roll Pops with tissues from the oval Kleenex box, tied black string around the neck (stick) and glued eyes on to keep with the look and style of my Costume Clubhouse ghosts. I used a couple of sizes of hole punches with bright colored and black paper. I was able to punch a .25" hole out of a .5" dot~colored piece of paper (like a doughnut or letter “O”) to get the white part in the middle of the eye. Then I used a .125" punch for the tiny black parts of the eye and glued them on the tissue where eyes might go. You can make it easier on yourself if you like this look but not the work by using colorful reinforcement labels in pink, green and yellow. They are the little stickers that look like Fruitloops by Avery or a generic brand. Then for the black part of the eyes you can use a Sharpy pen to dot the eyeballs if you don’t want to hassle with tiny hole punch dots.


Next you will want to get the travel size hand sanitizer (I used the Target brand 2 oz. bottles) to give your little goblins their own sample size. Take off the existing label on the bottle and replace with the 2-cute-2-scare labels I have provided as a download at my U-Pick button. There are 20 labels that will print on an 8.5 x 11 sheet. You can use sticker label paper to save yourself the gluing or taping time. Simply cut the labels outside of the orange edge, center and stick on the bottles and hand out to the hands that need some sanitizing.

I know I’ve given out a few other oval, holiday tissue labels, but if you want to keep the theme of the silly string, silly bands and silliness you can use this label for another oval Kleenex tissue box. There are two labels on an 8.5" x 11" format and you will need both to cover the box. Simply print it, cut each out along the edges, and tape one to each side of the oval box. I use double-stick tape, as it won’t show on the sides.

Below are the samples of the tissue labels and goblin hand sanitizer. Here is where you can find the freebie Silly Spirits tissue label and the Goblin Sanitizer label or click on the U-Pick button on the right side of my blog to see these and other free Halloween treats you can use for holiday decorating and parties.

While you are getting in the spirit of Halloween don’t forget to see the stash of creative treats now available in the new Costume Clubhouse print and cut collection at Lettering Delights. There are some three dimensional projects I can’t wait to show you next week and they are almost as simple and easy as these label projects, just as good, just as clean and lots of fun. Happy Funday!