For the stand, cut a strip of paper 10″ x 1 1/2″.  Score at 1/2″, 4″, and 7 1/2″.  Fold into a triangle shape and adhere the bottom flaps together to complete the stand.  Stamp the stitched, shaped border and add to it any of the fun autumn icons in the set.  I added the oak leaf, pumpkin, and acorn.  (The little leaves make great confetti filler pieces too!)

Have some spare ribbon around?  Make these super easy coordinating napkin rings!  Takes 6 1/2″ of ribbon per napkin ring.  Just stamp the diamond border:

Stamp the stitched arglye diamond:

Overlap ends about 6″ and glue with Fabric-Tac fabric glue.  Let dry, and use for napkin rings.

I even made a pumpkin pie this weekend so I’d have the perfect “prop” to photograph it with.  Unfortunately when I went to grab the last 2 pieces to take photos with, this is what I found:

Happy Crafting,

Erin

Hope you have a fantastic weekend and don’t forget to let your heart soar!

Chocolate Surprise Cookies

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa (I used the Special Dark Cocoa.)

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup chopped pecans

48 Rolo Caramel candies

1 Tb sugar

In small bowl, combine flour, cocoa and baking soda; blend well.  In large bowl, beat 1 cup sugar, brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla and eggs; beat well.  Add flour mixture; blend well.  Stir in ½ cup pecans.

Heat oven to 375F.  For each cookie, with floured hands shape about 1 tablespoon dough around 1 caramel candy, covering completely.  (I usually make a cookie dough ball, make a thumbprint in the middle, then place the Rolo where my thumb was, and wrap the dough around to close it up completely.  If it’s a little too sticky to handle, try refrigerating it for about 20-30 minutes.)

In small bowl, combine remaining ½ cup pecans and 1 tablespoon sugar.  Press top of each ball into pecan mixture and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375F for 7-10 minutes or until set and slightly cracked.  Cook 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheets and cool completely on a wire rack.  Enjoy!  (If all that chocolate, caramel, and pecans aren’t enough for you, you can melt some vanilla chips and drizzle that on top too.  But they’re pretty darn good without it!)

To any average Joe, they look just like Chocolate Crinkle cookies, but when you bite in you’ll find a delicious caramel filling!

(This recipe comes from here:  Pillsbury: Best of the Bake-Off Cookbook.  It’s fabulous!)

They are so good, that if I didn’t give some away, I’d probably go into a chocolate induced coma so I made a little box and gave some away.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I went with something a little more fall feeling this time around.  I had a scrap of red vinyl in my scrap bag and stamped a pattern on that.  I really like how it turned out!

Want to make one?  It’s easy:

Use pinking shears to cut a 1″ strip of the vinyl.  This gives it a nice zig-zag edge.  Stamp directly onto the vinyl with a permanent ink.  I used the Memories Dye Ink pad in White with one of the border stamps from Build A Border.

Adhere the vinyl onto the notebook and trim the edges.  (I used the Crafty Power Tape from 3L Scrapbook Adhesives!  That stuff sticks to ANYTHING!!)  Add a little bling to your stamped image.

Put your sketchbook in your purse/clutch/bag and you’re ready to go!  These would make great little party favors or gifts too!

I love how they only take a very small amount of fabric (or ribbon!) so raid your scraps and see what you’ve got!  You can also use ribbon you’ve got lying around too!  (Here’s a little tip for you:  If you want to make a custom color of ribbon, try coloring a white or ivory ribbon with your Copic marker.  It’s permanent and you can make it any color you want to match a project or outfit!)

What you’ll need:

8″ x 1″ pieces of fabric strips (or ribbon)

Ring blank

Hot glue gun

Velcro

Coordinating beads

Tacky Glue

Take your ribbon and fold the end in half, then in half again.  This makes a nice little strip to make into a flower.  Lightly coil and wrap about 1/2″, then glue to the side of your coil.  Continue coiling and gluing until you have the size you want.  Even with the 8″ I found that I stopped with about 1″ – 1 1/2″ left.  When you’re about finished coiling, wrap the remainder underneath your finished flower and glue.

Now if you want, use some of Aleene’s Tacky glue to add a few beads to the flower center.  Just add a drop or two of the glue and place your coordinating beads right on.  When it’s dry, glue half of the velcro to your flower, and the other half to your ring blank.

Now make as many flowers as you want and when you change up outfits, just pull off one flower and stick on another one!

Don’t want to make a ring?  Try making a larger strip that’s about 10″-12″ x 1 1/2″ and making a brooch or an embellished napkin ring.  Need earrings?  Try a smaller strip instead.

Remember how I said that you could make your own with Copic markers?  Here’s how I did it:

Start out with a 8″ length of ribbon.

Color it.  I used two similar colors of my Copic markers to do it.  Don’t worry if it looks streaked at first, while it’s drying, the color runs some and I’ve never ended up with them being streaky!  Follow the directions above to make your flower.

Here’s a flower embellishment I made for a card.  I just stamped the Branch from the Boughs set, then added my flower embellishments.

Happy Crafting!

(I used this tutorial as a basis for mine, but made some adjustments as I saw fit.)

Inside this little house folder is an entire packet of information to welcome your new neighbor!  It’s got 5 illustrated pages of information that you can customize to your specific town or city!  There’s places to put your local grocery stores, favorite craft stores and places for important information such as the nearest hospital, closest library, and trash day!  You don’t need any specific software to type in your custom text, just Adobe Reader (which is free).

Love Copics?  Want to color your own?  I also have a B&W version!  (This is also a great one to get your children involved with!  Just print and have them color to their hearts content!)

You can find the downloads in the shop.  The fully colored and illustrated one is here and the B&W version is here.  The project sheets are $5 each.  You can use them as many different times as you’d like and save so once you take the time to fill it out once, it’s ready for the next neighbor as well!  Happy Crafting!

I have a confession: I always say I’m not a scrapbooker, but I made a layout yesterday.  I remembered why I don’t scrapbook as much.  Because this one layout took me about 4 hours.  I loved detailed layouts with hidden journaling, lots of teeny tiny embellishments, and just the right papers!  I think I might actually frame it in a shadow box because I LOVE how it turned out!  (The little awning is my favorite, it lifts up for hidden journaling!)

This layout would not have been possible without some amazing adhesive!  I used up about two full sheets of foam squares (the entire shoppe is lifted up from the background with 2 layers of squares) and the tiny layered details of the sweets on the counter were EASY to adhere with the transfer tape from 3L.  (I did tell you I was on the DT for Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L, right?!?)

Well, I got to see some new adhesives they’ll be releasing at CHA, and let me tell you they are amazing, but that’s all I can tell you for now!  Want to find out about their new adhesive before everyone else at CHA?  If you do, be sure you’ve signed up at www.theshapetocome.com.  If you register your email address there before July 25th, you’ll get a special pre-show announcement!  (You’ll also be entered to win $50 worth of Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L products (winner announced on their blog August 2nd.!)

**How about this?  Let’s do a giveaway here too!  Leave a comment here on my blog and I’ll draw a winner for $25 of Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L products on July 25th!**

Erin

Download the PDF here.  It includes the Strawberry boxes in a light and dark pink, 2 different cards, and the blank template if you want to use your own patterned paper to make the boxes!  (Have a Cricut and the SCAL software?  You can download the box template here and the leaf template here to let the Cricut cut it out for you!)

Instructions:

Print the entire PDF out onto white cardstock.  There are 2 cards on the page, cut in half so you’ve got two pieces that are 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″.

Score at 4 1/4″, and fold.  Your cards are done!

To fold the box see the video below.  (It was going to be a little tricky to show you in pictures so I made a quick video instead!)

See, it is pretty easy!

If you are using your Cricut and SCAL, or the blank template to use your own patterned paper, just cut the base out of a strawberry colored paper, and the leaves out of a leaf colored paper.

Layer and glue the leaves onto the base.

Fold according to the instructions in the video above.

Let me know if you enjoyed this and Happy Crafting!

Erin

P.S.  Have you registered for CraftyCon yet?  It’s going to be awesome!  There’s even a special code right now for an additional $50 off of registration!

Be sure to check out the speakers too!  There’s lots of great crafty business minded people and we’re adding more almost daily!  Hope to see you there!

This project actually has two separate parts to it.  First off we’re going to make a shrinky dink ruler.  Trust me, this will make ALL your shrinky dink projects easier from here on out!  This is how you’re going to know for sure how much your plastic will shrink!  It always says 1/3 …but who wants to do the exact math on that?!?  Not me!

Tools for the first part of the project:

1 sheet Shrinky Dinks-Frosted Rough and Ready

1 ruler

Embossing Heat Tool

various colored pencils

Cut a piece of shrinky dink out that’s 10″ long and 1/2″ wide.  Next you’ll want to line it up next to your regular ruler and transfer all the measurements onto your piece of shrink dink.  I used blue for all the 1″ lines, green for all the 1/2″ lines and black for the 1/4″ lines.  Using a colored pencil works well, the sharper you have it, the finer your line and the more accurate your “ruler” will be.  If you think it will be easier for you, don’t be afraid to write in the numbers below the marks too!

After that, just shrink it!  I use my Embossing Heat Tool for the shrinking process instead of the oven.  Faster results, and you don’t have to heat up your entire oven for a few little plastic pieces!  Here’s what it will look like finished:

See how all the different colors make it easy to spot each 1″, 1/2″, and 1/4″ measurements?  Now we’ll use this to determine how big our piece needs to be cut so that it shrinks to the right size for our project.

For the earrings you’ll need:

Shrinky Dinks-Frosted

Pigment Stamp Ink

Silver stickers

Basic jewelry making supplies (wire, pliers, coordinating bead, earring hooks)

For our earrings I wanted something that shrunk to be 5/8″ x 1 3/4″.  I drew a box on some scratch paper that was actually 5/8″ x 1 3/4″ then “measured” is with my shrinky dink scale.

You can see that the 5/8″ piece actually measures 1 1/2″ according to the shrinky scale.  (Remember the blue is 1″ and the green is 1/2″.)

And the longer 1 3/4″ side actually measures 4″ with the shrinky scale.

Now we’ve got our measurements for the shrinky dink piece: 1 1/2″ x 4″!  Go ahead and cut out two pieces to this measurement:

Now stamp away!  Use your permanent pigment ink and stamp a pattern onto your shrinky dink pieces.  I used one shape from the Outside The Box stamp set and one shape from the Build A Border set.

Don’t worry about the colors not being too bright, when they shrink they will be more saturated and noticeable!  (Tip: Punch your holes to attach these to your earring hooks now, before you shrink them!  I didn’t do that and it made it a little harder to punch the holes…my Crop-A-Dile had to come to the rescue for that one!  Punch your holes in the middle near the top!)

Now shrink!  It’s really easy!  I even did a little video so you can see how fast it works with your embossing gun!  It can get a little out of control and sometimes it won’t flatten as soon as it’s done, so you’ll see in the video I used an empty acrylic mounting block to flatten it as soon as I turned off the heat gun.  (There’s no sound…I muted out all the embossing gun noise!)

Here’s a shrunken one and a non-shrunken one.  See how the color is more saturated?

Shrink your other one and punch the holes if you forgot to do that before your shrunk it.

Now add your little silver stickers:

We’re almost done!  Just a little bit of wire work and we’ll be all done!  Make a small loop in your bendable wire like so:

Then add your coordinating bead and loop the other end.

Loop one end around the earring hook and the other around a small jump ring that’s attached to the whole in the top of your shrinky dink piece.  You’re all done!

Happy Crafting!

So here’s the first one!  Hexagon-A-Thon!  I love hexagons and their ability to be used separately or fit nicely together to make a pattern.  This set comes with 10 hexagon images that can be interchanged!  The three larger borders fit nicely around the smaller ones and are easily stamped on top because they are clear!

Outside the box is a great stamp set too!  This set has 4 blocks, and the fillers, so if you just want to stamp the design great, but if you want to fill it in, just stamp the coordinating image on top.  The boxes along the bottom will fit easily around the blocks too if you want a little bit of a border!

Build A Border!  This set is great for making backgrounds, borders, and many other things to add to your card and scrapbook layouts!  I even designed the border stamps so that they are super easy to manipulate and you can even bend the borders to make circles and ovals very easily!  I love what you can do with clear stamps!!

Furnishing Fun.  I love Interior Design, but there’s not too many sets out there that include it.  This has a cute little shelf with two vases.  (The middle of the vases are different stamps so it’s easy to make it a different color (or emboss) just the middle!  There’s a few different flowers for the vases as well as a few cute pears.  The shelf can actually be made into a picture frame too!  (I’ll do a card showing you that soon!)  And of course the chair!  Love the chair!  Looks cute with a little pear sitting on top of it!

There you have it!  My brand new releases!  And until October 1st-all stamp sets will be on sale for $12.50!!!  Even the previous releases!  And FREE shipping on all pre-tax orders of over $40 STILL applies!  Now is the time to stock up!  Visit the website here or if it’s easier to purchase from Etsy you now can!  I opened up an Etsy shop to make it easier on those who already have an Etsy account.  Purchasing through either site will still give you the sale price, as well as FREE shipping on all orders over $40!!

************************************

Giveaway-  Ok, now that you’ve stuck with me-ready for the details?  I’ll be giving away to 1 lucky reader 1 each of the above 4 stamp sets!  You’ll get ALL the new sets!  How cool is that?!?  Here’s what you have to do (and how to get extra entries!):

1. Leave a Comment at the end of THIS post and let me know which one is your favorite.  Easy, right?

2. Extra Entry: Share this post on Facebook.  It’s easy with the little Facebook button on the bottom of this post. Leave a comment letting me know you shared it on Facebook.

3. Extra Entry: Share my new releases on Twitter.  Again, use the button at the end of the post to easily share it!  (Be sure to include @eschlosser in the tweet so I can see and leave another comment on this post.)

4. Extra Entry: Blog about your favorite new stamp set and include a link back here.  Let me know that you blogged about it here in the comments.

5. Extra Entry: Sign-up for my blog feed in the sidebar there.  (If you’re already signed up, you’re already entered!)

6. Extra Entry: Be a fan of Schlosser Designs on Facebook!  Either click on the link on the right sidebar, or click here to go directly there!  (If you’re already a fan, awesome!  Just leave me a comment letting me know that!)

So go ahead and enter up to 6 times with the entry ideas above.  Good luck!  The giveaway ends October 1st and I’ll announce the grand winner October 2nd!

]]> http://www.schlosserdesigns.com/2009/09/new-clear-stamps-now-available/feed/ 42