Autumn Fairy House

I love autumn and all the fall colors.  When I saw Bo Bunny's Autumn Song paper I just knew I had to have it - the colors are so vibrant.

And then Laura Denison of Following the Paper Trail decided to showcase her Autumn Fairy house pattern with this paper collection.   When Laura previewed the house on her blog (lauradenisondesigns.com) I was just blown away, and couldn't wait to make it.

The house itself is fun with its curlicue dormers and rolled shingles.  But the stump and the tree that it is built into - what a fantastic idea!  I do so love her designs.

I added a couple of my own touches - the wraparound curved balcony with the twig railing and a couple of extra staircases.

Fairy House Tunnel Book

I decided that I would make something to go on the inside of the green Summer Fairy House (you remember the Fairy Houses - the post about them is here).

It had been awhile since I made a tunnel book, and with all the cute fairies on the Prima Fairy Rhymes paper it seemed like just the thing.

I kept the size to 6" x 6" since that was the size of the paper pads and that would make it much simpler to make each panel.  I used Prima Fairy Whispers and Nature's Garden papers.

The book has five panels plus the back.

In this closeup of the left side you can see the fairies on the second and fourth panels.

The short grass is attached to the back of the first panel and the tall, darker grass is attached to the second panel.

Happy Halloween !!

My birthday came a little early this year - my niece made me this wonderful decorative Halloween witch's hat.

It's a tall piece - it stands about 14" tall and looks wonderful as the centerpiece on the dining room table.

She made it by starting with some papier mache items from the craft store - a cone and a round box.

After painting a base coat of black on the outside, she covered the hat pieces with decorative Halloween paper.  I think she did a super job selecting the paper to have a great contrast between all the elements of the hat.

But wait!  It's not just pretty to look... there's so much more!

The top of the hat has a countdown calendar!


In this photo you can see that the card says "It's Halloween".  I think you can make out the opening on the tag holder on the right.  There are cards that start the countdown 10 days before Halloween, and you just reach in and change the cards as the days count down.

... and there's CANDY!

The top of the cone is hinged to add little treats.  The treats dispense at the bottom of the cone.

The trick-or-treaters are actually a door.  See the long green nose on the character on the left?  It's longer than it looks and the tip is holding the door closed.  If you move it, you can get some candy (there's an orange piece on the left).


The interactive elements are so much fun I had to make a movie...check it out, and have a Happy Halloween!

Baking and Crafting - A Perfect Day

My niece had no school today so we spent the day together.  We had a plan - I had just received the new We R Memory Keepers Gift Bag punch and we decided to make treat bags and fill them with home baked cookies.

So we dug out the sugar cookie recipe and baked some pumpkins, cats and ghosts.  While they were cooling, Sarah figured out how to use the punch. Then some decorating - aren't the cookies cute?  I especially like the whiskers on the cats and the ghosts with mouths like an "O".

Back to the workroom again to work on the treat bags.  We used the Martha Stewart spider web border punch to make a decorative border on the top of the bag.  Sarah then put the bags together and found some cool "Halloween-y" fibers that she braided to make the handles.  We die cut spider webs and spiders and a cat out of grunge board to hang as a charm.

Everyone got one of each of the cookies in their treat bag, and a there were some extras to share. The "great pumpkin" cookie was made from all the leftover dough at the end of rolling.  The cookies were yummy, and thanks to the great new punch, the treat bags were a fun, quick project to make.