Photo Tutorial: Thanksgiving Napkin Rings

It's my turn to share another photo tutorial over on the DeNami Design blog today. This time around I'm showing an easy way to dress up your holiday table settings with handmade napkin rings! Be sure to check out the DeNami blog to learn how to make these little beauties:

And just think of the possibilities for creating similar napkin rings for other holidays!! DeNami offers a full line of incredibly versatile circle stamps as well as small images perfect for filling those circles.

Thanks for stopping by today for this little peek of my photo tutorial. I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Emily

DeNami Design Chickies Sneak Peeks

Welcome to Day 1 of the DeNami Design Fall/Winter Release Sneak Peeks!! Today brand-new DT Member Pattie Goldman, veteran DeNami DT member Lisa Petrella, and I are giving you sneak peeks of brand-new DeNami stamps about to be released in the always-fun CHICKIES category! Be sure to read all the way to the end of this post for details on a great giveaway :D.

Do the sweet DeNami chickies totally tickle your fancy? If so, you are positively in luck! The new release includes brand-new chickie stamps for summer activities, various sports, girlfriends, camping, gardening, Halloween, and Christmas. Whew!! That's quite a few! 

Are you ready to take a peek at what's in store for the chickie category? Let's get started!

The new chickie stamps I was most excited about are the camping ones! Not only do I have my very own Girl Scout and Cub Scout in my family, but our family loves to go on camping road trips. This card uses the brand-new Campfire Chickies stamp and Chickie in Tent stamp. I thought this would make a perfect thank-you card for my daughter to give to her Girl Scout leader! Her troop LOVES to go camping. :) I also used the ultra versatile Small Cloud and Thanks A Bunch sentiment, and threw in a couple of Sand Boutique Buttons. (All of the patterned papers are digital prints from the digital Campout collection by Design by Dani, available from JessicaSprague.com.)

Now how about taking a gander at a pair of stamps that are perfect for the rockers in your life?

This card shows off the new Rock Band Chickies stamp and the fun You Rock! sentiment. I added some chipboard alphabet stickers to spell out "dude," the perfect touch for a teenager-bound card. A bit of Black Curly Loops washi tape and some red DeNami cardstock round out my design.

Next I'm shifting gears to autumn and Halloween!

For this creation, I paired the brand-new Pumpkin Patch Chickies stamp with the cling-style Trick or Treat sentiment stamp. Aren't those chickies sweet? I made my background from an assortment of DeNami washi tapes: Lime/White Dots, Black Curly Loops, and Orange Stripes. I also used some Desert Orange cardstock and black baker's twine from the DeNami store.

And finally, let's have a little Christmas in July!

Don't you just love those sweet little Caroling Chickies? And I am completely captivated by the tiny sentiments in the brand-new Christmas Greetings petit four stamp sets!!! This is a set that I have been waiting ever so patiently for :D. They are just the perfect size for Christmas tags, and that's exactly how I put them to use.

The DeNami To and From stamps are perfect for completing these festive tags. I also used some red DeNami cardstock and red baker's twine from the DeNami store. 

All of the new stamps I used today in my sneak peek projects will go live in the DeNami online store on July 10 at 9am PST.

OK, are you still with me? Thanks for hanging in there through this long post. :-) I mentioned a giveaway way back at the beginning of this post.

DeNami Design is giving away two gift certificates today! Be sure to leave a comment here on my blog post, Pattie's chickie sneak peek blog post, and Lisa's sneak peek blog post, too. Then head over to the DeNami Design blog and leave a comment there, too, for another way to win today!

I'm so glad that you dropped in to check out some of the new chickie stamps in the DeNami Design Fall/Winter Release! Be sure to tune into the DeNami blog tomorrow for more sneak peeks and giveaways.

Until then, have a day filled with bliss,
Emily 

Thinking of You on Thanksgiving

OK, East Coast, are you bracing for Winter Storm Athena? Here we go again! It's likely to get frightful outside here later today, but it's cozy and warm inside for the moment. Once the kids were off to school this morning , I cranked some jazz, lit a spicy candle, and cranked out some more Thanksgiving cards. Here's one of them.

I reached for my DeNami stamps for this one: Small Jack O'Lantern (I masked out his sweet face for this Thanksgiving card--such an easy way to stretch your stamps!) and the "thinking of you" sentiment from the Thoughtful Greetings Petit Four stamp set. I love this little stamp set--such a great and useful collection of petite sentiments. One of my favorites! I had fun watercolor painting that little pumpkin. I stamped it in Vintage Sepia Versafine ink on watercolor paper and then heat embossed it with DeNami clear embossing powder.

I'm playing along with a few challenges with this card:

• CASology: Orange
• A Blog Named Hero: Punched/diecut elements (I think I have 5 on this CAS card!)
• Simon Says Stamp Challenge: Thinking of You/Sympathy

In case you haven't noticed, I'm just mad for DeNami Design products! Are you intrigued? Then you should give the DeNami Addict Challenge a try!! This month's challenge is a fun sketch, and it's open for three more days. You do not need to use DeNami stamps, but if you win (and there's a good chance that you could: right now there are only 5 entries!!) you could win a $15 gift certificate to the DeNami Design online store to start your DeNami addiction collection :).

Of course, if you already have some DeNami stamps, then you should also try the DeNami Design challenge hosted on the DeNami Design blog. This month's challenge is also a sketch and requires at least one DeNami stamp. The pay-off for winning on this challenge? How about a $20 shopping spree in the DeNami Design online store?

And what if you are more of an instant-gratification kinda craftista? Then DeNami has got you covered! This month DeNami has a great online store sale. Check this out!!

I did some stocking up at the DeNami store myself over the weekend and will share some photos of the new haul when my eagerly anticipated package arrives!!!

OK, friends, stay safe, warm, and dry wherever you are. And thanks so much for dropping by!
Emily

Harvest Time

I'm plugging away on making easily mailed Thanksgiving cards. When I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel idea-wise when faced with the need to create {now!}, I turn to challenges. I wrapped several into this creation.

• The Craft's Meow November Sketch Challenge 
  
• Do You Stack Up? to use brads (two big fuzzy yellow ones!)
• The Kraft Journal Challenge: Happy Harvest
• A Blog Named Hero: use a punched or die cut element--I've got a diecut circle and a punched border

The sentiments are from a great stamp set from The Craft's Meow called Season's Greetings. The patterned paper is from an old Tim Coffey K & Co. pad, and the flocked brads are from We R Memory Keepers.

Thanks for taking a look!
Emily

A little Frankenpumpkin in the middle of a big Frankenstorm

I hope all of you are holding your own against Frankenstorm if you are in harm's way. I've prescheduled this post (in case we lose power!), so I don't have an update on our situation yet. But I wanted to be sure to share the pumpkin my kids decorated to spiffy up our house for Halloween! (Be sure to see yesterday's post for the ones they made to enter in their orthodontist's pumpkin-decorating contest. So cute!)

OK, ready? Here it is:

It was SO much fun watching this take shape!! Didn't they do a great job? Their Frankenpumpkin started life as a small-ish orange pie pumpkin. They painted it in several layers of acrylic paint and molded ears and nose from Crayola Model Magic. Frankie's hair is a miniature black feather boa from A.C. Moore that I helped staple into place. The eyes are circles punched from cardstock (aren't they lucky to have a mom who is all outfitted with just the right craft supplies??), and the mouth and stitches were drawn on with a black Sharpie. To give Frankie a rosy glow, I let the kids borrow some of my blush. Too cute, right?

I'm still working on my son's Halloween costume, so I can't pre-schedule a post about that at this point. I'm planning to finish it in the next few days, so hopefully we'll still have power so I can share photos of it on Halloween. Would you believe that it is a paper-crafted costume? I can't wait to show it off. Fingers crossed that the weather won't ruin trick-or-treat for the kids. They are so looking forward to wearing their costumes (and all the treats, of course, too).

Thanks for taking a peek at our pumpkin! Stay safe, wherever you are!
Emily

Some Halloween Critters

OK, this Frankenstorm business, quite frankly, has us running, if not quite scared, then at the very least cautious. We aren't too worried about the rain, but the forecasted high winds could be quite a problem for us. We lost half of one of our taller trees over the summer, and we noticed recently that the remaining half is starting to split away from the main trunk. The direction it is listing aims it directly toward the power and cable lines that feed our house. Realizing this sent us scurrying into action over the weekend. Really, there's nothing we can do about the tree, but it became paramount that we prepare for the {now strong} possibility of a power outage. Lots of measures taken over the past two days, and now I'm pre-scheduling a few blog posts that I'd hoped to share this week. It would be just my luck to have Halloween projects to share and then have to miss Halloween completely because of a power and/or cable outage. And since we get our Internet service via cable, either type of outage will torpedo my posting plans!!

So today I want to share photos of the cute little pumpkins that my kids decorated! They made them to enter the pumpkin-decorating contest at their orthodontist's office. They had so much fun making them!! Each of these started life as a mini white pumpkin. Here's what my 13YO daughter did with her pumpkin.

And now it's my 9YO son's pumpkin.

Am I allowed to say how cute I think these little guys turned out? Can you spy the paper-crafted portions of both of these? It's true, the apples don't fall far from the tree ;).

I hope you'll tune in again tomorrow, because I have another family pumpkin project to share. This one is the one that we're keeping for ourselves. We'll put it out on the porch to entertain the trick-or-treaters on Halloween (if any of them come out in Frankenstorm, that is!!). Anyway, I think it's totally cute and can't wait to show off how it turned out.

Stay safe everyone!
Emily