It's a Creative World

Not so tricky treat boxes

Hello, Eleanor here. I've been looking at some amazing Halloween goody bags to give out to costumed doorbell ringers, such as Crystal's subway art treat bag, Summer's Frankenstein goodie bags and Jesiree's creative treat bags.

For mine, however, I'm keeping it simple. I started with a basic large 'Cook's matchbox' shape, idea and template from Roree for October Afternoon.

Cardstock and patterned paper in orange, green, purple and black, plus diecuts, ribbons, plastic doodads and DST, and I was done.

All that remained was to fill the boxes with sweeties, chocs and plastic rubbish, sorry, I mean toys:

Fun to make, but not too labour intensive, nor wasteful of stash, I used old scraps and tired cardstock.

That's it from me for now, don't get too scared, it'll be a hoot.

x

Lemon Drizzle Cake

This is not a Halloween post just in case there are those of you out there that don’t celebrate. 

I while ago I shared my lovely Coconut Paradise Slice recipe and thought I would share the number one request I get from friends! Lemon Drizzle cake. It comes, originally from a box set of books I’ve had for yonks. Best kept secrets of the Women’s Institute: traditional cookery and advice for the 21st century. It has 4 slim books on Cakes, soups, jams and pickles and puddings and deserts. It is great and they are by far, the stickiest books in my cookery collection – a sign of good use! I haven’t found a recipe that doesn’t work yet.

It’s a super easy recipe and I’ve tweaked it only a bit by adding more icing sugar to the Lemony topping…

175g Margarine

175g Caster sugar

2 eggs

4 tablespoons of milk

Zest of a lemon (gated or I use my zester)

175g Self raising flour

 

Juice of 1 lemon 

4 tablespoons (at least) of Icing sugar

 

Cream the margarine and sugar together, add the eggs and milk and mix (it looks wet then). Add the lemon zest. Add the flour a few tablespoons a time and fold in. 

Bake in a 2lb loaf tin (I use those fantastic loaf tin liners for easiness) for 40-50 minutes at 180 degrees.

When it’s hot mix the lemon juice and icing sugar and pour over the top of the cake.

It is a super cake and always comes out just great! The flavour is super even a few days after baking. It doesn’t last long in our house.

 

Happy Baking

 

Bev

HOW'S ABOUT A LITTLE HAND STITCHING ON LAYOUTS

Good Morning, good afternoon, good evening (deplete any that aren't applicable).  Virginia here, I hope I find you well and looking for a bit of inspiration.  As an avid scrapbooker I thought I'd talk about embellishments, I'm not good with one hit wonders I like things with a little more longevity, so discovering the pokey tool, purchasing a giant foam pin board and dragging out those bags of embroidery thread meant I could add detail and dimension to a layout with minimal supplies!  What could be easier! 

I do most of my stitching by simply punching holes without a template, but I have also been known to use a stitching template, it really is fun.  And at the end of a long day when you are feeling uber tired, but still want to do a bit of crafting, with enough holes in the paper I can sit and stitch to my hearts content whilst sat on the sofa with the rest of the family.  

For example you can add little crosses onto layouts 

like this

Or use a template to create circles and semi circles, running a thread through the circle after its done 

Up close you can see the running stitch to create the circle, then run the contrasting thread through to create this effect. 

then you can use stitching templates to create the effect with red on the left, and then create the dotted white line by eye, all good fun and really effective. 

Up close

So next time you are struggling to 'finish' a layout off why not give hand stitching a little try!

Flickering Halloween Scene

Hello, Eleanor here, with a sheet of vellum and one of black cardstock, a black, plastic, square edged, slide in file clip, and battery operated tealights (3 pack from the pound shop).

Clips look like this:

I cut some images with the cricut, glued them onto a cardstock strip, which I then glued to one end of the vellum, sliding it into the file clip. To the other end of the vellum I added another cardstock strip, rolled the vellum over, and glued it to the flat base of the file clip, with just enough width to slip in the 3 tealights, like so:

With the lights off (perched on my latest reading pile):

and with the lights on (flutter your eyelashes and you'll see how the lights flicker, not bad for £1):

I'm going to make another, a Highland winter scene, watch this space...

Cheerio for now.

x

A little bit of spice for Halloween night.

Hi back again with another idea for you.  With Halloween just around the corner I thought I would do some baking instead today.  

I don't know about you but my kids, especially the younger one still likes to visit friends homes on Halloween night to "trick or treat" dressed up, jokes in hand and a bucket shaped like a pumpkin.  I like to make something each year.  Last year I made these and filled them with goodies.

The year before I made flapjack.

This year I am thinking of doing Gingerbread men with a spooky feel to them.  I've had a look on Pinterest and there are all manor of perfect biscuits, vampires, mummies etc....all looking fabulous but it always makes me wonder are the folk that make them professionals?  

I have for you some handmade ones, that look handmade and can easily be decorated by the children to give to their friends.  My two had a go and ate them straight after I photographed them.

So here goes....the recipe....

300g or 10 oz self raising flour, pinch of salt, 3 tsp ground ginger, 100g or 4 oz caster sugar, 50g or 2oz butter, 3tbsp golden syrup and 4 tbsp milk.

1.  Heat the oven to 160c, 325f or gas 3.  Grease a baking tray.

2.  Place flour, salt and ginger in a bowl.

3.  Warm sugar, butter and syrup in a pan. Add to bowl and mix well.

4.  Add milk and mix to a firm ball like so....

5.  Roll out and cut into shapes and place onto baking tray.

6.  Bake for around 15 minutes, mine were on stoneware to I allowed an extra 5 minutes.

7.  Allow to cool for a short while then remove to cooling tray.

8.  Decorate once cooled.

We've gone for ginger mummies, but I think we will need to polish up our decorating, not that it matters as they didn't last long and the kids had fun doing them.  These biscuits are perfect for children and they are not too spicy.

I think they'd be fab bagged up for their friends come Halloween night and we've had fun in the process too.

Thanks for popping by this Sunday and I'll catch you again soon.  It only remains for me to wish you an early "Happy Halloween" to all big and little kids out there, have a spooky time!

Happy crafting, hugs Erika.

A Hand-Bag?

Leanne here - Happy Saturday!

Ok, so this post is more about the importance of being organised, rather than Earnest, but I hope you still find it useful :)

A couple of years ago, whilst rediscovering my passion for knitting, I was growing frustrated with my ball of yarn getting mucky, getting pulled by other needles and hooks in my bag, being chased by the cat, or tangling around someone's foot. I decided that a pair of bamboo bag handles (free with a magazine!) would sit nicely on my wrist, and found an intarsia pattern to use up scraps of dk and two-ply, along wth some unbleached cotton for a lining... Here it is in use with a lovely lace shawl (more on that another day...!):

What do you think? I can carry it around with me by folding it into a handbag, and knit standing, sitting, anywhere, with my stitch markers conveniently to hand and my pattern safe inside! I'll link to my Ravelry project here, for you to see.

Sometimes the best little inventions are borne of necessity, so have a think about a gap in your practical life that needs filling, and post us a pic or link when you're done-'We would love to see how our efforts free inspire you :)

That's all from me- Thanks for stopping by, and please do check out the other weekend posts for even more inspiration!

Leanne xxx

www.beautifulimpressions.co.uk

www.craftaholicleanie.co.uk

 

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Nevermore

Happy Haunting, crafters!  Lisa here to share another fall-themed card with you.  Can you believe Halloween is just thirteen days away?  To celebrate, I've created a spooky raven card this weekend.  I love this stamp 'cause it features "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.

I'm really excited by how it came out.  The Raven himself is actually three layers, the background, the owl popped up, and the hat popped up a second time.  It was a lot of fussy-cutting but I like doing it.  Remember to use a dark marker (I usually use black, that's what I used here) to color the white-cut edge of your fussy-cut images, it'll really make them pop.  For the background, I used inking techniques I learned in a recent class from Tim Holtz and I think that has improved my end results tenfold.  Thanks so much for looking and happy crafting.  Happy Halloween!  --Lisa Bedigian

Pantry/Wedding Shower

Happy Sunday!

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  This is Felicia here to bring you some inspiration this weekend.  I have been to so many weddings in the last few months.  With attending the weddings, I have also been involved with many showers before the weddings.  I have been to bridal showers, personal (lingerie) showers, and a pantry shower.  For the pantry shower, I created a banner and some tags for the appetizer table.  

 

I used the Cricut cartridge Storybook to cut the letters and tags I used for the banner.  With the tags, I just enlarged them to about 5 1/2 inches.  I then cut out the letters at about 4 inches.  The wedding colors were mint and coral.  I really wish I could tell you the brand of patterned paper I used, but I actually am away from home and didn't write it down.  

Here is a photo of the tags; but they actually look like place cards.  These were all over the table that had our appetizers on it.  They turned out really cute.  I love the colors I used and the banner.  It was fun to create!  

 

Hope this gave you some inspiration for the weekend, and we would love to see what you created.

Felicia  

Haunted Mansion Card

Hi everyone!  Lisa here with a happy Halloween card made using Pan Pastels!

I haven't worked with them before, but I can tell that I'm going to be a fan.  If you're unfamiliar with them, Pan Pastels come in a little round plastic dish and look like they might be chalk, but they're a lot softer and more opaque than a chalk would be.  I used a makeup sponge to blend them around.

You can kind of see where I used two colors on the moon and two dolors on the sky. The Pan Pastels blend together really well without water or alcohol.

I'm definitely going to do more with the Pan Pastels in the future.  Hope that you check them out, too.  Thanks so much for looking.  Happy crafting and happy Halloween!  --Lisa Bedigian

Crafty coffee stirrers

I'm doing another one of my " what else can I do with this?" posts! The object in question being coffee stirrers! When I am forced to participate in a processed fast food visit I always cheekily grab a handful of stirrers! Aside from general uses in seedling pots and childrens projects, I use them for a lot of crafty pursuits.

1) Great when I lose my proper stick for rub ons!

2)Makes a very handy disposable glue stick!

3) Perfect for cute little picket fences.

4) or posts for tying bunting to.

5) Little wooden sign posts.

6) and my favourite- making it all grungy and drift woody for seasidey pages and cards. I break and trim them with a blade and add plenty of ink. On this page I used them for frames.

So next time you are indulging- grab a handful and get busy!

Love Laura xx