BFF Open House Link Party # 75 and Exciting News!

75 parties! WOW.  If it's your first time linking up, Welcome. If you're a regular, thanks for making this party so much fun.

I'm so excited to be able to share some fun news with you. Die Cuts With A View had a call for design team members for Blue Moon Beads ( one of their other great brands in addition to their glorious paper). Yours truly applied and was notified this week that I am on the Design Team! I screamed out loud. Did you hear me? I am so excited and will be posting 3 projects each month . This was truly a dream come true and I can't wait to get started so check back.

I never would have had the confidence to do this without the brilliant and supportive bloggers behind  Crafterminds. If you are a creative blogger, I cannot urge you strongly enough to visit the Crafterminds blog and if you can, participate in the weekly Twitter chats each week on Monday at 4 Eastern. Doesn't matter if you have 1 Follower or 1000, you'll learn something and make some new bloggy friends.


 Now, let’s see what everyone’s been up to this week. Only two more weeks until Halloween. What tricks and treats are up your sleeves?

Everyone's A Card Maker With David Tutera Celebrate

You might remember a few weeks ago when I posted a video about the new David Tutera Celebrate line that’s available (exclusively)  at Jo Ann’s? I’m so excited to post today about what I made with products from this fun new line of cardmaking and paper products.

This line is perfect for the novice or seasoned cardmaker. It requires no tools beyond adhesive and your imagination and takes no time at all to whip up a card that looks like it took hours and cost a fortune.

The Celebrate line is literally as easy as 1, 2, 3 which is how each of the components are labeled.

1.) The Card. Cards come in 4 x 5.5 or 5x7 and come in everything from plain white to metallic to natural and several colors.
2.) Layers sized to match you card. These are wonderful for those who may not have a fancy die cutting or embossing machine because the work is already done for you.
3.) Accents. These include borders, tags, layered sentiment stickers, rhinestones and smaller diecuts.

For the birthday card above I used a metallic silver 5x7 card  (Step 1), a grey layer with scrolled edges and a center cutout, along with a white embossed layer underneath ( Step 2) , some borders, birthday sentiment, and small diecuts ( Step 3).  1.2.3.

One of the things included in my package was this sanding block . His line uses papers by Core’dinations, one of my favorite papers to use in cards and other projects. When you sand the papers you reveal some of the color underneath and it completely changes the texture and appearance of your piece.

I love the shabbied up look after sanding and my supplies also  included a wonderful rag that wipes up all of the dust without affecting the paper.

I cut two of the  borders the width of the grey layer and adhered with a glue dots runner.

The borders are already textured for you so you there’s no dry embossing required.

I chose one of the layered birthday sentiment stickers, and placed it in the window of the grey layer and then finished off with a coordinating layered flower:

This card took me 10 minutes or less to make. Seriously. I think you’ll take longer deciding which combination of card, layers, and embellishments to use than to actually make the card. It’s so easy.

I had so much fun with it, I whipped up a Thank You card as well.

Again, 1. Card 2. Layers 3. Embellishments.

I don’t ever want to hear from anyone that they can’t make a card. Thanks to this line I’ll have to call fibs on you.

Now for even more excitement. You can enter to win $300,  yes $300 worth of David Tutera Celebrate products of your very own! How awesome is that?

Three lucky winners will receive a $300 grand prize pack of supplies fromDavid Tutera’s Celebrate cardmaking line AND a personally signed book from David! 20 additional winners will receive a $50 Celebrate prize pack.

Sign up here for a chance to win:  http://pages.exacttarget.com/tutera-optin-blog/.

You can also visit the David Tutera Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/DavidTuteraCelebrate

And follow along on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TuteraCelebrate

BFF Open House Link Party #74 Wrap Up and Features

Thanks once again for a wonderful party. I love seeing what everyone’s been up to and you all have been as busy as ever. Here are just a few fun ideas I wanted to highlight.

How about we start with this batty-licious headband from Bev over at Flamingo Toes? How cute is this and what a fun and stylish way to dress up for Halloween?

You could wear that while whipping up some of these scary Halloween jars like the ones Carolyn at homework shows us how to make:

What’s Halloween without candy corn? Doreen from Altered Artworks shows us how to make these sweet candy corn themed terra cotta pots ( filled with even more goodies) :

You could make some of these and use as a way to present some of these decadent caramel Oreo pops from Hailey over at The Morris Mojo:

Or, you could tuck some of these incredible Mocha Shortbread bites into some of these pots as great neighbor gifts. Assuming there are any left after you make them. Visit Lemons For Lulu for the recipe:

This week I have a special feature. My BFF’s daughter is becoming quite the cook and crafter. I’ve dubbed myself her Fairy Craftmother since her mom runs from Michaels as fast as I run to Michaels. I was so proud of her for her first big crafting project, I just had to feature it!

“Boo” has been recovering from getting her wisdom teeth out, and here’s what she’s been up to:

Banana “muffins” with cream cheese frosting. Yum. I think someone may need to start a blog.

Thanks again to everyone who linked up. Make it a creative week!

Fangtastic Treat Bags

I still can’t believe College Boy is a Sophomore but he is. And if I’ve learned one thing as a parent of a college student, even though they’re all “grown up” they still love to get treats from home.

At my son’s college, freshmen are assigned to small groups of 12-14 called Sponsor Groups based on their housing forms which puts them as closely together with people who share similar interests etc. He loved this so much as a freshman, that he applied and was accepted to be a Sponsor this year.He and his “Co-Spo”  have a group of 14 freshmen they help get acclimated, used to college life, are a resource for questions etc.

Last year I decided that I could still have fun with the kinds of things I used to do before he left for college and sent goodies to his “Spiblings” as they’re called. So why should this year be any different?

It’s also mid-term time for them so I included some things to lighten the intense mood and remind them to be silly. Jumping frogs and glow in the dark Vampire fangs.

I made the graphic for these labels in PicMonkey, imported to my graphics program,  and printed them on card stock.

Got some double chocolate and salted caramel hot cocoa packets.

And of course candy…all chocolate of course. I used black and white polka dot paper bags by Whisker Graphics, placed one of each thing in the bag and sealed with red and white dotted Washi tape.

Finished off each bag with one of the tags and off to school! Here’s the card I made to go along with the goody bags,  also using my label :

I used some red crepe paper to make a ribbon for the card, mounted the label on red glittered cardstock and went over the letters with red Stickles glitter glue.

BFF Open House Link Party #74

Another week, another party! If it's your first time linking up, Welcome. If you're a regular, thanks for making this party so much fun. Let’s see what everyone’s been up to this week. Will the craft world ever run out of amazing Halloween and Fall ideas? I think not.

Vampire Coffin Boxes

I know a couple of people who love all things Vampire. Even though I’m not that into them, Vampires do give me an excuse to play with my signature colors: black and white. And what’s a Vampire without a little red?

Started with one of these from Michaels. Painted the sides with Martha Stewart red craft paint, over which I painted Martha's  red glitter paint.

Mod Podged a black and white patterned paper to the top and bottom and then went around the edges with some black and white washi tape.

Do your family members send you random things when they clean out their junk drawers? Mine do. The Mumster sent me a bag of keys. I don’t know that Vampires use keys but they seemed to fit. I also used some keyholes from a pack by Tim Holtz . 

Embellished the top with red rhinestones and black pearls. Vampires have to be glam right?

Since they sleep during the day, do they say “day day” instead of “night night”?

Sharing At: 

BFF Open House Link Party #73 Wrap Up and Features

How is it Monday again already? Thanks to everyone for making Friday’s party another fantastic one. As always, so many amazing ideas that it’s hard to highlight just a few but here we go:

Carolyn at homework shared this elegant cornhusk pumpkin. Gorgeous!  Definitely something to display now through Thanksgiving.

Speaking of which, who wouldn’t look like the hostess with the mostest wearing this incredible Anthropologie knockoff cuff by Bev at Flamingo Toes?

But before we get to Thanksgiving, we still have Halloween ! Megan from Polish The Stars shared this fun printable:

Which would go perfectly with this fun pumpkin from Fonda at Southern Scraps:

Houndstooth Duck Tape! How cool is that?

Finally, this week’s chocolate feature is so appropriately named I felt my blood sugar go up just looking at it:

Butter Toffee Fudge {a.k.a. Badonk-a-donk fudge} because if you eat too much of the former, you will definitely have the latter,  but  all things in moderation right? You can thank Lori Ann over at Lori Ann’s Food and Fam for this one!

Thanks to all who linked up and can’t wait to see what you’re up to this week. Make it a creative one!