Halloween Fun with Spellbinders

When Spellbinders recently sent me some stickpins with corresponding dies and some new embossing plates, I immediately chose to do a Halloween themed craft. After all, ’tis the season!

I made a little witchy collage for the stickpin, and then a Halloween tag to display the pin on. To get the creepy background look on the tag, I embossed a plain manilla tag using the Artisan X-Plorer embosser along with the “Poetry” embossing plate, and then lightly inked the tag to highlight the embossed areas. I then layered the tag with some Halloween papers and a couple of bats. What a great setting for my stickpin!

To make the stickpin, I cut out a piece of orange cardstock using the correct die. I found an image of a little girl, gave her a witch’s hat cut from some scrapbook paper, and then embellished it all with glitter and a couple of rhinestones. I outlined it all with thin black edge stickers to make the image pop.  The stickpin is attached to the card with a removable glue dot, so you can easily remove it for wear. It’s the perfect little Halloween gift for your favorite witch or goblin!

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of playing with my Artisan X-Plorer, and it’s not been all about Halloween. I’ve made stationery, bookmarks, and different stickpins for every day wear, and they’re all posted on Craftster! Check them out and find out how handy the Artisan X-Plorer is for all your embossing and die-cutting needs.

Playing Around With Spellbinders' Media Mixáge Line

One of the perks of my job as a contractor for Craftster.org is that occasionally some of our wonderful sponsors send me products to try out. I love that! Recently, Spellbinders sent me products from their new line, Media Mixáge, which is tailored for the mixed media artist. Look at the goodies they sent! There's the new Artisan X-plorer Machine, a paper pack, some dies, texture plates, ICE resin, and round bezels and bezel dies. The wonderful thing about this line is that the dies cut shapes that fit exactly into the bezels. No awkward edges or ill fitting pieces here.

This was my first project using the largest bezel, which is about 2 1/4" across. I filled all these bezels with resin after adding the art and other elements.

Then, I got frisky and used a pig image from their paper pack. I added a little tutu and the words "oink (oink)" cut from an old dictionary. I love the little rubber pig at the top. I glued some magnets to the back of this so I can keep it on my fridge. You know, as a reminder: only one pig per household!

For my last (and favorite) project, I finally tackled the smallest of the bezels. I used a bee image from some Graphic 45 paper, some glitter, and a foam dot to raise the image of the bee and give the pendant some dimension. The bee charm is from Alpha Stamps.

Spellbinders sells packages of five of the smaller sized bezels. They also have them in other shapes, like hearts, triangles, and squares. I'm definitely going to have to make more of these for gifts for this Christmas. Thanks again, Spellbinders! To read more about how I made each of these projects, click here to go to the Craftster blog.