Happy Thanksgiving & ABC Challenge

Fido the cat says:
Happy Thanksgiving

And keep scrolling down for the challenge....

I  made this origami tree inspired by my Quick Cards magazine.  Origami usually makes me crazy because I rarely understand the directions but this one was easy.  The hard part was getting a photograph where the flash didn't shine off the slick origami paper. I thought it was a fun card and I just might make some more of them,you never know.

Earlier I said stay tuned and see what other things the day brings. So here you go, I made a little something for the A Muse Studio Challenge.  This time the challenge was to make Anything But a Card (also called ABC).

I don't tend to make things that aren't cards. I mean, what do you do with it? I have plenty of stuff already!  But I decided that I could turn an ordinary mini composition book into a fancy one.  I got the idea from a class at my big stamp club meeting, where this what the project.  Of course, the one there wasn't done up all A Muse fancy, but mine here is.

I covered both the front and back cover with A Muse's gingham paper.  I love a|s's gingham paper!  It is almost dizzying to look at a full sheet of it because it is a small, tight gingham but it is so awesome with their stamps.  The original mini comp book had very slightly rounded corners.  I decided to use my corner rounder instead of scissors to round down the gingham layer.  I realized the corner round was also going to nip off some of the cover, but thought nothing of it.  Until I did it.  Then I realized that the pages of book now stuck out past the rounded corners.  To remedy that I went through and rounded the corners on every page.  Luckily it is text weight paper so I could do many pages at once! 

The small plastic "jewels" on the front cover are these plastic half beads that come out of the floral department of the craft store.  You then take a few of them, put them in a small plastic zip lock bag with a few drops of alcohol ink.  You then squidge the ink and the beads around until the beads are covered.  Viola!  You have a much cheaper version of Dew Drops (or whatever they call those colored plastic half beads!).  I didn't make these ones, but have made some in the past.  I also learned that if you don't have the right color alcohol ink you can use a small round hole punch to punch out a circle the size of the bead in a colored paper.  Then use clear glaze to stick the bead to the colored paper and it reflects into the bead making it look that color.

   So that's my Any But a Card challenge!

The Fine Print: Origami paper from Accord Publishing-Fold a Day Calendar, background and glitter paper by DCWV, greeting by A Muse Studio.  Mini composition book from Walgreens (also seen at Office Max), A Muse Buttercup gingham paper, Spellbinders Labels Eleven die, A Muse stamp from "Friend to Friend" set, A Muse papaya polka dot ribbon, and plastic doo hickeys courtesy of Sue!