When you are wrapping presents, do you have the same problem that I do with people trying to sneak a peek? Then check out this combination holiday decoration/alarm system that I came up with…

Ha ha, this year anyone who tries to sneak a peek while I’m wrapping will be discovered!

Instructions:

1. Coat a wooden door hanger with gel medium, then adhere patterned paper.  Distress the edges with sandpaper.
2. Stamp owls so that they are standing on top of one another as shown on a Cream notecard trimmed to the width of the wooden door hanger. Trim any excess from the top and bottom, sand the edgess, then rub with distress ink.
3. Stamp owls again on white cardsock, color and cut out.
4. Ink DesignBlock Holly Flourish with VersaColor ink and stamp on the Cream Piece.  Sprikle with clear sparkle embossing powder, then brush away the powder over the owls and emboss.  Tip:  By brushing away the embossing powder where they owls are, you will be able to adhere the owls stamped on white in place without lumps and bumps! Love how the sparkle embossing powder adds a little “extra something” to the design but doesn’t distract from the owls.
5. Adhere the owls stamped in white in place.
6. Punch the edge of a Crimson notecard with the scallop edge border punch and trim to fit the cream piece.  Tie on jingle bells with twine, then adhere cream piece. Adhere to door hanger with gel medium.
7. Stamp “absolutely” and “peeking” with the Sparkle Clear Cute Letters on white cardstock strips.  Stamp “NO” with Sparkle Clear Little Letters.  Adhere stamped strips to Pool, Crimson and Lime notecard strips, then adhere to piece with foam tape.
8. Add Black Gemstones for the owl eyes, and Smooth Gemstones for extra bling!  Tip:  I think this would also be cute using wiggle eyes instead of the black gems — but I liked how the middle owl was looking up so that’s why I didn’t use them.

Supplies:

• Clear Design Owl Christmas
• DesignBlock Holly Flourish
• Sparkle Clear Cute Letters
• Sparkle Clear Little Letters: “N” and “O”
• Clear Sparkle Embossing Powder
• Smooth Gemstones
• Black Gemstones (for the owl’s eyes)
• Crimson, Cream, Pool, Lime Notecards
• Memories Black Ink
• VersaMark Ink
• Other: jingle bells + wooden door hanger (craft store), colored pencils (Prismacolor), twine, patterned paper (Cosmo Cricket), gel medium (Golden), sandpaper, Old Paper Distress Ink (Ranger), ribbon (May Arts), scallop edge border punch (Fiskars, “Treading Water”), foam tape

Enabling alert!  ALL of the stamps used in this project are HERE in the Hero Arts Online Store. Love those owls — they crack me up!

Hope that I’ve inspired you to enter the Deck the Halls challenge (click for more)! Here are some other ideas that I had — but didn’t have time to stamp:

• Garland:  Try stamping a message on punched out scallop circles backed by scallop edge circles  with an alphabet and stringing them together.  I plan on making one that says “peace & joy” to hang above the fireplace with the Clear Design Bold Caps Alphabet.  Love it that the set has an “&” in it!  You could also do one for Halloween or Thanksgiving.
• A ginger bread house:  A quick search on Google will lead you to many templates to use to create a house.
• A wreath:  Stamp notecards with DesignBlock stamps, then use leaf cookie cutters or a template to cut out leaf shapes.  Use holly leaves for Christmas or maple/oak/beech leaves for fall.
• An Advent calendar!
• Stockings:  Cut shapes out of  paper and stamp away!   I also like to cut stockings out of felt and stamp on them with bold stamps.  Quick how-to:  Using dye ink, ink your stamp well.  Stamp on the felt, but do not lift the stamp right away as you normally would.  Instead, press it firmly on the felt for around 30 seconds so that the ink has time to transfer.  Do not try to use inks which require heat setting — you’ll melt the felt!
• Scrapbook pages: Frame a holiday scrapbook page and hang it up for everyone to enjoy!  I think it would be neat to create a grouping from different years.

I took a peek in the Flickr group, and I see some great entries already!  WOO HOO!

Be sure to visit the blog tomorrow — we have something very special planned for World Cardmaking Day!  A little birdie told me there’s going to be a great giveaway, too…!

If you have any questions on this project — or any others that I did this week — please leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Until tomorrow,

Filed under: deckthehalls

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 am and is filed under Fun Fridays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.