Places You Don't Want to Live

We are watching Longmire again to prepare for the new season. What a great show. The audiobooks for the mysteries it's based on are also very good. You get a little bit more background - a lot more background, actually - on the characters.

But I realized the second time through that for a teeny town in Wyoming, there sure are a lot of murders. I came up with a list of places you probably don't want to live based on various TV shows:

• Absaroka County
• Cabot Cove
• Fargo
• St. Mary Mead
• Grantchester
• Bay City

I think Mayberry would be a better choice in terms of per capita murder and shenanigan rates. Well - I guess there were a lot of shenanigans, but they were harmless.

If you do live in Cabot Cove or Absaroka county, stay inside with the doors locked and read stamping blogs. I recommend mine. :)

Today I'm hopping around with some friends who do NOT live in Absaroka County. We are all safe and sound and playing with this month's My Monthly Hero Kit and decided to get together.

Fall holidays are pretty much my favorite and I feel like they don't get enough love in the crafty world, so I was super excited to have a chance to make some Thanksgiving and Halloween cards. The kit also has oodles of Christmas potential, but I wanted to stick with Thanksgiving and Halloween for mine. True fact my friend Libby told me - the sentiments in this set features Clare Prezzia's hand lettering. I love hand drawn stamps and I LOVE her blog - her art is amazing. Stop by sometime.

There are 30 million (that may not be technically accurate) dies in the kit to make wreaths with. So I cut out all the pieces and put them on my grid paper just to see what the shapes wanted to say to me. I do this every time I get new dies - cut out all the shapes in black and put them down to see if something other than the intended purpose pops out at me. Sometimes nothing comes of this, but sometimes it does.

This time, when I looked at one of the wreath pieces, I thought  - if I put a back on that it would look like the opening of a cornucopia.  So that's what I did! I took a piece of watercolor paper, and watercolored an entire piece. Then I used the tiny dies in the kit to cut out some colorful leaves, squash and acorns that could tumble out of the opening. This wreath die is one of the optional add-ons to the kit that I could not resist. Then I lightly rubbed some InkaGold on the wreath cut for a little shimmer.

Links to supplies:

InLinkz.com

Next up - Halloween! Every year at Halloween I put a wreath of BONES on my door - muahahahah! Don't ask where I get the bones! If you're not too much of a fraidy cat, you can see a picture of my bone wreath here.

The barer wreath shape in the die set looked like those bones to me, so I took the test cut and used it as a mask. I added Green Apple ink with my stencil brushes to give it an acidic, spooky glow. Halloween doesn't have to be black and orange. Nothing should really be black and orange anyway, except maybe tigers or monarchs. It's not a great combo outside of the animal kingdom. Sorry Princeton!

I stamped the skull, and die cut the sentiment and added some little green rhinestones. It's actually sort of a happy looking Halloween card I think. Not too spooky! The Halloween Trimmings stamp & die bundle are an add-on too, so if you're not into Halloween, you can just get the kit with the fall images and dies, and/or the Christmas add-on.

Links to supplies:

InLinkz.com

Then back to Thanksgiving I went. The kit comes with three ink cubes in Mustard, Rust and Deep Burgundy. However, they also make an ombre ink pad in these colors which I have, so I swiped that down a quarter sheet of cardstock to make stripes.. Then I flipped the pad upside down and continued the striping, adding a second stripe of the burgundy color to draw your eye to the center of the card. The sentiment and branch die are from the kit. All the fun silhouette dies make for nice dramatic simple cards.The card base is the rust cardstock from the kit, which is a match for the ink.

Links to supplies:

InLinkz.com

Now speaking of fall holidays that usually get crushed on the way to Christmas, did you read about Falliday Fest at Splitcoast?

We are going to have two weeks of challenges, holiday crafting tips and prizes, along with TEN holiday tutorials, so read the full story and follow the instructions to participate! We are going to make the most of the fall crafty season.


For the hop, those generous peeps at Hero are giving away one of these kits, so be sure and leave all my buddies some love too for a chance to win, starting with the next person on the hop - the amazingly talented Jessica.


The Hero Arts Blog
Jennifer McGuire
Yana Smakula
Mariana Grigsby
Clare Prezzia
May Park
Amy Tsuruta
Laura Bassen
Lydia Fiedler
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Libby Hickson

I saw some peeks of their projects on Instagram and Facebook - I can't wait to see the full cards.

What do you like to craft this time of year?

My favorite is little treat containers for my people at Starbucks. I'll be back tomorrow with something cute I'm doing this year. :)

Happy Fallidays!

Loveyameanitbye.