These are the last 2 inside pages. The page on the left is another pocket and the one on the right is a large envelope.

In the pocket are 2 candy cups that can be folded together.

The envelope contains another spinning fortune telling game and a dancing cat.

This is the back cover. One last attempt to use as many of these wonderful images that I could.

I think that this was just about the point where I realized that my 1″ snap rings weren’t going to cut it, and I switched them out for 1.5″ rings. It was fast becoming a case of ‘Some many images, so little time.’ I was still holding out hope that I’d be able to use at least all of hte ones I’d selected and printed out. That didn’t happen so plans for Book 2 are being made.

This is another party favor that would give your guests a fortune of their own. The little owl pulls up.

I actually made it as a 2 sided piece, thinking that I’d tuck it into one of the pockets. As I moved along I decided that it fit well on this page and glued it down.

More paper dolls and fortune cards tucked into a pocket. Tomorrow I’ll show you the final pages of the book.

This was a fun set to do. It was another pocket page and I stuffed it full of goodies.

These little houses are vintage party favors. The roof pulls up to reveal a fortune for your guest.

This little envelope full of fortunes had instructions to wrap each slip in a piece of waxed paper and back it in a small cake to give to your guest. The other piece is just a tiny variation of an old paper lantern.

The envelope is a copy of an old package of seals. It said that it contained 12 seals so that’s how many little witches I cut out and put into it. The little candy box is a working copy to fold up and the Halloween Puss in Boots is like a little paper doll.

The next set of pages isn’t interactive but has lots of fun images to look at.

Billie and I gave our fancy Witch hats a trial run this week. We wore them to our monthly art club meeting. Just about everyone who entered the room said, “Hats! You should have told me!” It was a last minute idea to wear them but I’m going to try and remember to bring this up in advance of next October’s meeting. I think it would be fun to look around the table and see a coven of crafty witches working away at art projects.

More fun pages that move!

It’s another work day and that means another visit with the pups.

They were snuggled on the couch with me and had been sleeping for half an hour. Just as I was going to wake them and send them to their cages, a dog barked outside. In a flash they were awake and at the back door, desperate to go check out the yard and make sure all their toys, bones, and holes in the dirt were safe. After a quick race around they darted back inside and settled in on their blanket. Just another second or two and it was right back to nap time. I sure wish I could fall asleep that fast!

Our goofey weather may not want to think it is Autumn, but I’m in full Halloween Spirit these days. Working on this book helped keep me in the old mind set when Halloween meant a chill in the air, fresh apples cider and the return of our sweater wardrobe.

Aren’t these little picks darling? I found them at Cost Plus World Market recently. They had lots of cute Halloween items in a vintage style.

I made lots of tags with some of my vintage Treat Bag images. I may not have given much thought to these bag when I was young, but I sure do enjoy them now. I’ve collected so many images that I’m giving thought to collecting the actual bags and making a book just to display them. You can find lots of them on sale at the various online resale sites, and sometimes the price is quite reasonable. But only sometimes, if you now what I mean.

This is a fun page. It is an old fortune telling game made for a Halloween party. You spin the dial to reveal a number and they read your fortune. “In your life throughout your years, there’s no sorrow and no tears.” Unfortunately, to make this fit the book I had to shrink it enough that a good magnifying glass is needed to make out the verses. It is still fun just to give the dial a spin as you leaf through the book.

A couple more sets of pages today. When I was making this book, I was also making a second copy to give to my sister as a surprise. I made a few changes to her copy so that it be a little more special. In her book the witch on the right hand page has my sister’s face.

Yesterday I learned something very important about puppies. When they roll around in, tunnel through, and eat compost, they are kind of stinky! Happy, but very stinky.

This is the next set of pages in my book. The dancing Jack-O-Lantern is the image that I most wanted to use. He is just like a decoration that my family had when I was a kid. There are a few different versions of the dancing Jack-O-Lantern, but this one will always be my favorite.

I saw online that was for sale and saved the image. These routinely go for $40 or more so I wasn’t going to be getting my own any time soon. I decided to do the next best thing and using the image I’d saved, I drew in all the missing parts to create my own miniature version.

These are some of the old Trick or Treat Bag images that I’ve collected. I even found some vintage candy bar wrappers to print out and put inside them.

When we were young my mother always filled these little treat bags with popcorn and a small piece of candy. Back then no one worried about home made goodies being handed out. I was always more of a chocolate kind of gal, but I can remember some of the kids being excitied about getting a bag of popcorn.

We lived in a large neighborhood. I want to say there were about 400 homes. Somehow we managed to stop at each and every one of them before Halloween night was over. As we got a little older we even managed to hit up the apartment complexes on the outer edges of our neighborhood. I can still remember the excitement of coming home and dumping out my loot in one big pile on the floor. That’s when the real fun began, the trades with my two sisters. Luckily our tastes were just enough different that no one had to end up with many pieces of candy that they didn’t care for.

I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working on this Halloween Book. I’ve been looking at tons of old Halloween images on the internet lately, and that gave my sagging sense of creativity the boost it needed. I have over 1000 images in my Halloween folder so the hardest part of this project was deciding which images to work with.

I started with a couple of children’s books from the dollar store. They were the type with hard pages. I cut the pages apart and used them for the base of my new book.

Part way through the project I decided to take apart another child’s board book and switch to larger rings. It was just too hard to limit the images, or to think of my fun coming to an end. As it was, I added several pockets on the pages so that I could cram in extra goodies.

I’m going to spread this out over several days to keep the posts shorter, and prolong my fun. I’m enjoying sharing this almost as much as I enjoyed making it.

Happy October! It seems like there should be a chill in the air but we are still feeling summer’s warmth here in Phoenix. We hit the triple digits this afternoon. Cooler days are not far away though, the weather report is calling for upper 70s and low 80s by the end of the week. I’m more than ready for it. It is time to open the windows and let some fresh air in.

October is also a great time for being creative and playful. I’m planning a girl’s night out with 3 of my friends and we decided to make it a Witches dinner date. That meant a trip to the Dollar Spot at Target for a pointy black hat, and to Micheal’s for some purple ribbon. The hat was terrific, only $2.50 and it had a veil on it. It also had a couple of grey roses made from ribbon, but they were a bit wimpy and I ripped them off. I had other things in mind. After picking up a couple of new do-dads at M’s and getting my box of odds and ends down from the closet, I have a pretty sweet hat for my big night out.

It is hard to see in the photo, but I cut the veil into points. I liked the more wispy look that it gave.

I wish I had been thinking about blogging when I started the project. It would be cool to share a before and after shot with those old grey roses. You will just have to take my word for it, these purple roses are way better.

I made sure to add decorations all the way around. The skeletons  and the raven were left over from last year’s run to the dollar store. The bat and owl were new from M’s.

I’ll be sure to get a picture of the group in our hats to show to you later. In my next post I’ll show you the Halloween bracelet/necklace that I made.

This is another one of the fun projects I’ve done with my monthly stamping group. It was called the “Favorites and Newest Tag Book.” Dodie was the mastermind behind this project. She made up a list of themes and wrote them down in a numbered list. Each of us then drew a random number to find out what we would be making as our contribution to the book. Based on your theme, you were to make an example of your newest or most favorite way of doing it. We each had to make 11 copies of our page and attach a smaller tag to the end with our name on it. When the pages were all done we passed them around and everyone was able to bind a complete book to take home.

The themes represented are Stamp (Kris), Technique (Chia), Color (Susan), Paper (Kim), Punches and Paper Edgers (Jamie), Holiday (Patricia), Background Techniques (Doug), Embossing Powder (Betty), Distressing Technique (Billie), Recycled Item (Dodie), and Texture Folder (Cheri).

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