October lay-outs

These are some of my favorite reasons that October is my favorite month. So much color and so many sweet smells in the air.

The leaves above are cut from brown paper bags. The old leaf look is from holding them over a flame until the layer of tacky glue I spread over them bubbles. This funny technique I did with my neighbor friend Susan.









The scarecrow and corn husk are some fun paper crafts. These pages are two years old now and I never posted them. Time is flying. I'm off to celebrate another beautiful October by doing some crafts with my kids today.

Envelopes

This flower has been inked and I added my faux clay seal to the center. It's also part of this weeks tag challenge . I use envelopes as gift tags to hold extra gifts or pictures on a package. The envelope was also handcrafted by me. Winter envelopes you can see here .








Some fun embellishments I made last fall but never posted. I love the look of seals so made some with stamping clay or putting an embellishment in the center then inking or painting the seal. These envelopes are for holding pictures, journaling or other memories on scrapbook pages or for gift giving on packages.

Mini Board Book

My blogger friend Sherry sent my little girls these beautiful little pictures of birds and nests. So we altered one of their smallest board books to celebrate these beautiful creatures. My 4yr old painted her book 2 colors then together, we decided where the pictures and fun treasures should be glued. Some of the pictures, of course, have glue on them which adds to the memories of making it together. My 6yr old and I still need to put hers together.




We added brown craft grassy "stuff", ribbons, thin pieces of cedar bark and feathers, brown for the robins and blue for the blue jay eggs. So we will call this her science lesson for the week!
Thanks Sherry!!!






Helix Craft Table

Something pretty cool I want to share. I recieved this fun Craft Table for free from the Home Arts Magazine. It came with 4 templates for embossing. I used it to make different types of envelopes and boxes then wrote a review for the magazine. This is the second review I was able to do and the best part is I get to keep the product. I'm just not sure which month it will be in. It's alot of fun but I need to purchase the interactive CD for more project ideas. The original directions don't explain all the uses. Check out the web-site above for more details. It would be great especially for those who really like making home-made greeting cards.

http://sweetoldvintage.blogspot.com/2008/09/hosting-give-way.html

Please check out this wonderful give-a-way on Merietta's blog. Beautiful vintage style paper dolls and ornaments with charming details.

Gift Bags

I put together thank you gift packages for a couple of wonderful friends. Two paper bags are held together and decorated on the front. Shown on the front is a homemade tag that swings open from a brad to hold my thank you message. Inside the homemade faux clay seals I stamped their (first name) initials. Inside the 2 pockets of the 2 bags holds many goodies including the few tags and paper clips pictured below. I also included a couple more tags and a decorated envelopes not shown. I hope they enjoy using the tags for gifts or scrapbooking as much as Ienjoyed putting them together.

I love making these paper clips. I changed the silver color with alcohol inks. The wooden shapes are held on with epoxy. (The shoe on the right has a flower behind it).

The metal paper clips were colored using alcohol ink.

Party Questions

My friend Sherry has some great small talk questions to help us to get to know each other better. Visit her site to see her great art and see her answers. It's a blogiversary party.
Questions:
What type of job do you have? House Mommy. Hope to get back into personal training and lifestyles and weight management programs in the future. I love nutrition and physical therapy. Where do you live? Bowdoinham Maine. About 2hours north of the N.H. border. The coast is beautiful. Where do you do your crafts/art work? I have a corner of the house in the daylight basement. My get-a-way cave!! What is your favorite daytime beverage? Flavored coffee. I drink it all day. What is your favorite dessert? Chocolate and peanut butter. Do you watch soap opera's and if you do what's your favorite? No. Right now I love "America's Got Talent "and I'm a "Lost" finatic. What's the last movie you saw in a movie theatre? Wow, good question. I don't know if I remember. Must have been the last Star Wars trilogy when we how Darth Vador came to be. No, wait the first Pirates of the Carribean. Yeah!!! Love that movie.

Clay/Goldleaf Minibook

I finally finished this book that I have been wanted to make for about a year. It took me a couple weeks of stealing tiny bits of time for myself but...here it is. The goldleaf is actually baked right into the clay after pressing this design into it.

There are two 5x3 1/2 inch sheets of metallic blue clay to make the front and back. Leather cord are thread through drilled holes for loops. The front loops have buttons slipped through the cord. Here you can see the back loop fits over the button on the front panel when the book is closed.

This accordian book has three small tags. The idea came from the book "Creative Stamping in Polymer Clay" by B. Mcguire. I started off making faux seals then really had to have this book to learn more techniques using clay.

Finding tiny bits of time to myself

I haven't posted in a couple weeks but I have been surfing my favorite blogs. I'm working on another really fun clay minibook. It's taking a while to finish along with a little bit of scrapbooking in between. Please leave a quick comment if you come along to my tiny corner of the world.