Shaped Cards for Fall with Kiwi Lane

Happy Fall, Y'all!!  Fall is definitely my favorite season and I'm happy to share some fall and Halloween themed cards with you today using my Kiwi Lane Designer Templates.  

As you may have heard, this month's featured sets are Halloween and Tiny Holiday.  These sets go hand in hand and work so well together!  I love that the Tiny Holiday template set has all the tiny versions of shapes from Christmas, Halloween and Winter.  Whether you're a card maker or a scrapbooker, these sets should be in your stash!  If you happen to be a card maker, you probably just read that and thought, "Huh?  Why do I need to have the large holiday sets?"  Well, to make your card base, of course!  Let me show you what I mean.

First off, here are the cards I made:

   Supplies: cardstock (American Crafts, Georgia-Pacific); patterned paper (Studio Calico); brad and sticker (Doodlebug); glitter glue (Ranger); ink (Ranger, Superior); enamel dots (SEI); embossing folder (Darice); jewels, button, wire, stamps (craft supply).

You'll notice they are not your typical square or rectangular cards.  They're shaped cards and so easy using your templates!  First step- grab a manilla folder and some templates from the Halloween template set.  Leaving some of the template hanging off the folded side of the manilla folder, trace your template.  It should look something like this:

Now cut out your shapes.  Leaving some of the template hanging over the edge when you trace and cut makes the shape a card, like this:

Grab the templates you used to cut your card base and start planning your card.  Layer with smaller templates and make sure the majority of the smaller templates are on top of the larger one and not hanging too far off to ensure your card layers are strong and will adhere together.  Here are my "Framed" cards:

Now trace, cut and decorate your cards and you're ready to give away some gorgeous shaped cards that were easy to do with your Kiwi Lane templates!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Crafting!!

Templates used:

Halloween 1,2,4

Tiny Holiday 2,4,5

Autumn 1

Stacked Halloween Blocks (Inspired by Pinterest)

So I've recently been put in charge of a crafting group in my area.  Which is all fine and dandy when you consider I have an extensive knowledge of paper crafting.  But this group thing is kind of throwing me for a loop.  Why?  I asked for input as to what the group wanted to make, and NOTHING was paper crafting.  It was wood... and paint... and metalwork... and other scary things!  But, I decided to jump in with both feet and branch out of my paper world.

One of the projects shared was this:

It was shared from Pinterest. This looked fairly do-able and I decided to take a shot at it.  Here's what my stacked Halloween blocks ended up looking like:

Just a bit different from the original idea, right? ;)  I had no idea what the block on the bottom was- a scarecrow? A witch?  And I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of having two green blocks, so I turned the scarecrow/witch block into a pumpkin and switched places with the monster guy.  I also wanted the eyes to have more personality, since they are the only part of the face.  I have no idea what size blocks were used for the original, so I just did what I thought would be easy- I chopped up a 4x4 into cubes.  Actually, it was a 3.5x3.5.  I had enough people sign up to do the craft that I ended up doing about 25 sets.  Lots of cutting and sanding.

So, lets go through the stack and I'll let you know what I did.

Pumpkin block:
Painted it orange, traced and cut a burlap leaf from the Kiwi Lane Designs Tiny Nature template set, painted a spool with a layer of brown followed by a layer of bright green on top, made a vine out of twine and painted eyes on the front of the pumpkin.  Hot glued the leaf, stem/spool and vine/wire to the top of the block like this:

Mummy block:
Painted a layer of white followed by a layer of cream (Why? Because 2 layers of cream looked to yellow and 2 layers of white looked too bright.), painted eyes, wrapped around a 2-3" strip of gauzy fabric and tied in a knot on the side above the eyes.

Monster block:
Painted it green, spray painted wooden push pins silver, cut hair out of paper and glued to the top of the block as hair, painted eyes and scar.  I used paper because I could not find any black felt in our town ANYWHERE!!  And I looked everywhere I could think of.  But, if you use paper, don't use hot glue!! I did and it has warped the paper and looks awful! I think I'll be replacing it with felt as soon as I can find some again.  Anyone want to send me some? ;)

I sanded the edges of all the blocks for a slightly distressed look (and to help cover up any painting mistakes- sanding makes it look messy on purpose!)  The finished product ended up being about 12" tall, including the spool/stem.

And there you have it!  My first soiree into the world of wood crafting!  Maybe not the first, but I don't think I've done anything in that department for a few decades.  Is there such a thing as a born again wood crafter?  If so, I think I'm in that category! ;)  I really liked playing with paint and blocks. I think I might even do it again!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Crafting!!