Halloween makes

Tomorrow is Halloween, if you hadn’t noticed! I’ve been busy making lots of pumpkins again, both for us here at home and to sell.

I’ve used the same basic pattern for all of them, just sizing up /down my needles depending on the yarn I was using. This year, I’ve experimented a bit more, using a variety of yarn thicknesses. I’ve also doubled up some of the yarns and tried a few variegated yarns too. The chenille yarns are particularly lovely to work with and the finished results are very soft and cuddly to the touch.

I have also made some more tassel ghosts. I made a few last year and they were very popular for hanging decorations and with the kids. I’ve used white DK yarns and made the eyes by die-cutting tiny circles from black felt.

My local sandwich shop – Food Foundry – asked if I would like to make a basket of pumpkins and some ghosts for them to sell in the shop. So they currently have a selection adorning their till area. Fingers crossed they sell them all too!

Well I must get everything ready for the Trick or Treater’s tomorrow and I still have my pumpkin to carve!

Hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween.

Happy crafting

K x

Summer’s Over, Box cards and painting

Well Summer is over, half term finished here and it’s Halloween this week! Where has the last three months gone? I hope everyone had a lovely time and is keeping well now the dark nights are back.

So what have I been up to I hear you ask? I know lots has gone on and I have certainly been crafting when I can. It’s been a particularly busy few months for pop-up box cards, so I thought I’d share a few with you.

I was asked to make a special one for a favourite teacher retiring at the end of the last school year, so I thought I’d have a go using some of the stamps I got in a craft haul from FB Marketplace. These are a set of Hunkydory For the Love of Stamps , part of their Nature Watch collection. The other stamp set has large binoculars on but there are to big for a box card.

I chose to do some watercolouring and using my Prism brushmarkers are perfect for this. I don’t have the full range of them yet, but I am slowly building up the collection.

I always get confused over which ink pads to stamp with when using different colouring mediums, so heaven only knows whether I used memento or Stayz-on for these! But the colours didn’t seem to run, so whichever it was, it seems to have worked. (NB: Use the opposite base for the ink to the colouring medium – water-based inkpad with alcohol markers and vice-versa)

I was quite pleased with the finished results here as I haven’t painted for a very long time. It was fun to do and the Premier Craft-Tools Messy Mat was perfect for using as a pallet and to stop me getting water all over the office desk!

Whilst the paintings were drying, I put together my box card. I used kraft card for the box base and a piece of vintage map card from a collection from Hunkydory. I always use red-liner tape for putting these together as they do get some use folding flat and popping up again and this tape holds the box together brilliantly.

Once everything was dry, I cut out the painted images using a circle nesting die and also added some die-cut leaves. Then it was time to put them all together, using some thin strips of acetate for some of the smaller images so they look like they are exploding out of the box. The recipient also has a penchant for pigs, so I found a little pig stamp and added them on to the side panels.

So there you have my retirement box card. It was one of many boxes I’ve made over the last few months.

I’ll be back with a couple of craft hauls in the next few days, so in the meantime,

Happy crafting

x

(I have been back at Parkrun and I have managed to equal my PB of 44:25 twice!)