Planner Friday - Halloween special

It's been absolutely ages since I've done a Planner Friday post so hop on over to the Trendy Twine blog to check it out!

Hi!  I'm Amanda from She's Eclectic and I'm the resident planner girl here on the Trendy Twine blog.  If, like me, you're a fan of paper planning then you will love the range of stamps Annie's Paper Boutique have created over the years!  There are practical everyday sets, school life stamps, journalling and scrapbooking kits, special occasion and holiday sets and some really cute image stamps too. 

As it is almost Halloween I wanted to show you my spooky themed week I have created using APB stamps, I have listed the sets I used below.

Products used: Happy Halloween stamp set
Foodies planner stamps
Drinks & More planner stamps

At Home planner stamps
Hello Fall planner stamps
Weekend banner planner stamps

Halloween Trendy Page Dots reinforcements

Round stamp block with gridlines
Used but not pictured: More At Home planner stamps

Check It Off Planner stamp set

Washi tape

If I can, I like to pair my pages's theme with a matching set of Trendy Page Dots reinforcements as they strengthen the paper around the holes and add an extra pop of colour to my spread.  For Halloween I had these awesome skull and pumpkin designs to work with!

Halloween Trendy Page Dots

As usual I started my decoration by adding strips of washi tape to the top and bottom of my pages, followed by the Trendy Page Dots.  

I have daily to do lists and reminders so I used the Check It Off set to print some tick boxes (or circles in this case!) and then added what I need to do and remember with the At Home and More At Home stamps.  Anything I don't have a stamp for I fill in with a pen.  

Any space I have left over afterwards I use for fun!

My Halloween themed week

You can read the rest of my post here, thanks for stopping by!

Artline Monday - No carve pumpkins

One of my favourite Halloween traditions is making Jack o'lanterns with my kids, we try to create different designs each year so I usually hit Pinterest to look for inspiration.  This year I came across some lovely no carve pumpkins so I thought I'd have a go at making a couple.

Pumpkins & Artline pens

For the first pumpkin I wanted to do something a bit girly so I started by painting half of it metallic pink with my Artline poster marker and the other half white.

Metallic pink

White

It only took one coat of paint to cover up the orange skin and the pink colour looks so pretty!

Painted pumpkin, look at that shine!

Once the paint was dry I added a big squirt of gold glitter glue around the top of the pumpkin and then used a brush to spread the glitter around.  The last step was to add some gold and bronze confetti to the top half of the pumpkin.  I really like how it turned out!

Poster markers, confetti & glitter glue

According to my daughter the second pumpkin had to be more Halloweenie (that's a word, right?) so I got out my Artline 900XF silver pen and started drawing a spooky spiderweb.

Metallic silver pen

I also coloured in the pumpkin stalk with a black Artline 70 marker to make it look like either a fly or a baby spider in the centre of the web.

Colouring in the stalk

Drawing the web

I drew a large spider sitting in the web and then glued on some googly eyes.

Adding the spider

Here is the finished pumpkin!

Halloween pumpkin

The nice thing about no carve pumpkins is that they still look great during the day whereas the carved ones look best lit up in the dark and they will last a while longer too.  

On the doorstep

If you want to make some traditional Jack o'lanterns then take a look at the ones we made last year for some ideas.  The haunted house one is my favourite! 

Last year's pumpkins

Thanks for stopping by!

Artline Monday - More Halloween fun

So we are still getting ready for Halloween in our house, we really like to go all out with lots of decorations, spooky themed snacks and family friendly scary movies, half term is practically a week long celebration of everything creepy and fun!  I always decorate our front door too so people know it's okay to come and trick or treat on the 31st October, so for today's post I am going to show you how I do it using my Artline glass and chalk markers.

The first thing I wanted to do was make a chalkboard sign to hang outside, I brought a cheep one from Home Bargains and got a bag of googly eyes too. 

Supplies for a spooky chalkboard sign

I painted the wooden frame with a red poster marker, it only took me a few minutes using the 12mm sponge tip and it dried really quickly. 

Painted frame

Then I glued some of the googly eyes to the frame.

Googly eyes

I used my white chalk marker to write "Tricks" and "Treats" on the board....

Writing the sign

... and then used my purple chalk marker to write "no" and "just"...

Finishing the quote

... the last steps were to add some cobwebs to the corners of the chalkboard...

Drawing some cobwebs

.... and then a loop of twine so I can hang the sign up!

My finished sign

Outside I got to work on my door using the glass and chalk markers and a few window stickers and chalkboard labels.

Both the glass and chalk markers work well on glass so they are great for drawing on your windows.  They wipe away easily with a damp cloth too.

Adding some grass with a glass marker

Drawing a pair of eyes on my letterbox

Colouring in the whites of the eyes

Boo!

I didn't want to use the markers on my UPVC door so I stuck a few chalkboard label stickers onto it instead and then wrote and drew on those with the chalk maker.  I can peel them off after Halloween and throw them away without worrying they might damage my door.

Close up of my window decorations

I have a couple of stickers on the glass of my door that say no leaflets and no door to door sales so I covered these with some black tissue paper and used an oval chalkboard sticker to make a cute little spider, adding eyes, legs and a web with my chalk markers.  I also drew a ghost and wrote "Hide" and "Run away" on the glass before adding a few more decorative stickers to finish the look.  

All set for Halloween

I am quite pleased with how the front looks now, but if I change my mind it will be easy to wipe it all away and start again!

What do you think? 

Artline Monday - Halloween decorations

Halloween and half term are fast approaching so for today's post I am going to show you how to make some spooky decorations to keep little hands busy during the school break.  Everywhere we go my youngest has been collecting conkers and bringing piles of them home but she didn't know what to do with them so I thought it would be fun to use some in a crafting session this weekend.

Conkers, card, twine & Artline pens

For this craft you will need:

• Conkers
• Card
• Twine or string 
• Artline poster and paint markers
• A pen or pencil
• Scissors 
• PVA glue

We turned our conkers into spiders, ghosts, a pumpkin and a vampire bat!

For the bat I folded our card in half and drew the shape of one wing, the body of the bat would be along the folded edge so after you cut it out you will be left with two wings joined together in the middle.

Drawing the bat's wing

Cut out

Painting the conker & wings with a poster marker

Adding eyes & vampire teeth once the paint had dried

After the eyes and teeth had dried we used a black Artline 70 marker to add the finishing touches, pupils and a mouth to our bat and then stuck the conker to the wings using PVA glue.

For the spiders we painted a couple of conkers with green and red poster markers and cut out two circles of white card.  

Painting the conker red

We drew eight legs on each card, added faces and decoration to the bodies and then glued the conkers to the middle of the cards.

Next we made some ghosts.  I drew a couple of basic ghost shapes onto the card, cut them out and then painted one blue, we left the second one white as that is a more traditional ghost colour.  Then it was time to paint the conkers, some of the shinier ones took a couple of coats to cover them completely but the paint dries quickly.

Drawing a ghost shape

Painting the conker white 

Painting the ghost shape & conker blue

We drew faces on the ghosts with the Artline 70 pen and paint marker and then moved on to the pumpkin.

This one is a little bit Pinterest inspired as we made it metallic pink instead of orange! 

Painting the card and conker metallic pink

Adding a Jack o'lantern face & gluing the conker to the card

Once we had made all our creations I glued some loops of twine onto the back of the card on each one so we could hang them up.

Our spooky decorations!

I threaded the decorations to a longer piece of twine to make some scary bunting, perfect for a Halloween party!

Scary bunting!

If you want to try some more Halloween crafts then check out my creepy candle jars and ideas for pumpkins too!

Planner Friday - September

Hello, it is Planner Friday again over on the Trendy Twine blog.  Please stop by and say hi!

Hands up, who is excited for October and Halloween!  I am!  This month I am setting up a couple of journalling pages in my travellers notebook to record all the spooky fun we are going to have over the next few weeks.  

Products used: Documenting The Everyday stamp set

Happy Halloween stamp set

Foodies stamp set

Hello Fall stamp set

Used but not pictured: Clear stamp block

Mini index card

Mini calendar card

Washi tape

October is one of my favourite months, the schools break up for a week, there's a ton of horror films on the TV and well, there's a lot of fun candy and treats to eat!  I started off by adding some washi tape to my pages and then glued in a mini calendar and mini index card so I can document anything I want to remember.  I also wanted to create some space on the other page for memories and a photo of us all dressed up for Halloween so I used some stamps from the Documenting The Everyday set.

Sweetie stamp from the Foodies set

Then it was time to break out my Happy Halloween, Foodies and Hello Fall stamp sets to add some decoration!

You can read the rest of my post here.

Artline Monday - Halloween creepy candle jars

So tomorrow is Halloween and we have carved our pumpkins and got our costumes ready but there is still time to do one more quick craft!  

Creepy candle jars

These creepy candle jars are really easy to make and they are a fun way to pass some time on All Hallows' Eve Eve!  You will need some glass jars, candles or tealights and pens that will write on glass.  I used these Artline 900XF metallic pens and Supreme markers.  The decorative washi tapes are an optional extra.

Artline pens, glass jars & washi tape

I removed the labels from my jars and some of them came off easier than others.  You need a nice, dry, clean surface to work on and the smallest jar I had was covered in a sticky residue which would not wash off.  I decided the best thing to do was to wrap the whole jar in washi tape and then use a permanent marker to draw a spooky face on it.  If you find yourself in a similar situation but you don't have any washi tape then you could cover the jar with masking tape instead.  I think that could make a great mummy style jar with the masking tape looking like bandages!

Washi tape covered up the hard to remove glue

For the jars that were glue free we went a little crazy decorating the glass with Halloween themed drawings.  I drew a cute little witch's cat with stars, my eldest daughter drew a pumpkin and storm clouds with bolts of lighting and my youngest really went to town covering her jar in moons and stars and a lot of tape.  

As well as the pens I mentioned above we also found that our paint, chalk and poster markers worked well on the glass!  The only thing you need to remember is to let each colour or section dry before you do more so the inks don't smudge.

My witch's cat

I have a couple of glassboard markers that I haven't used before and luckily they happen to be orange and green which is perfect for Halloween.  These pens can write on glass but they are easy to remove with a damp cloth so I tried them out on my glass candle holder.  The colours are really vibrate and they look fab when the candle is lit behind them.

You could also use these pens to decorate your windows or mirrors for Halloween if you are feeling artistic!

Happy Halloween!

Here are our creations with the candles burning inside them, my girls loved making them!

Waiting for it to get dark

Spooky!

Happy Halloween, I hope you have a spooktacular day!