Encre, papier, ciseaux: If You've Got It, Haunt It

Inspiration: Septembre 2020 Page Maps Sketch + Inspired By #146

I grabbed the papers and stickers from the Happy Haunting collection from Simple Stories last year and I thought they would be perfect to scrapbook pictures of my niece when she was younger, all dressed up as Minnie for Halloween day at day care. The collection, with its cute and girly elements and shades of pink, is perfect for kids' pictures and the Minnie costume.

There were so many good items to pick from that this page came together really quickly. I used the same page for the three panels - I cut it in thirds and flipped the middle to show the backside (the stars). I kept one of the pictures as a full 3" x 4" and I cropped the other one smaller to fit into the "scary cute" frame from the cut-apart sheet. I pulled another cut-apart for my journaling. I added the "2 cute 2 spook" words handcut from the little square cut-apart sheet. The little ghost with the "if you've got it, haunt it" sentiment was also a 3" x 4" cut-apart, but I cropped it to keep only the image. I added a little sentiment sticker from the sticker sheet and an old black and white decorative brad from my stash.

I wanted to extend the middle row with a pink border, so I looked through my pink scraps drawer and pulled out a hounstooth paper, which I punched with an old lace border Martha Stewart punch. I added peach crinkled seam binding in between and used a bead dangle that was sitting on my desk (an early experiment with teaching myself bead wrapping), tying it with black twine from the peach ribbon bow.

The sketch had four circles and I planned on using the house stickers. I discovered it was a long border, so I only kept four of the houses and snipped them out and I moved them to the bottom of the layout to balance things out. I added a bat sticker and Shimmery Crystal Effects on the windows.

The "Trick of Treat" sticker was used as my title on the flowery circle of patterned paper and I added two flower stickers on each side to frame it. I used the little pompom banner at the top and added Shimmery Crystal Effects to this sticker as well. I then added a spider hanging from the end, drawing a line with my black pen to link the images. Then, I looked through my embellishments and I found rhinestone flowers and little black swirls, that I added to the flower bundles. I added a tab sticker to the journaling block and dabs of Crystal Drops to fill in the gaps.

I love the idea of having Crystal Drops in many colours to be able to create drops of any sizes on your projects, but I find that the product thickens over time and don't create round drops anymore. I've seen tips online to add a few drops of distilled water to your bottle and the product will work again, which seems to work, but then you can't use the product right away and have to wait for the distilled water to mix. This is pretty annoying and it has dampened my enthousiasm for the product, so I've stopped building my collection and have reverted to using enamel dots, even though those are more expensive in the long run.

Supplies
Patterned Papers and Stickers: Happy Haunting (Simple Stories); Sweet Pea (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories: Peek-a-Boo Peach Crinckled Seam Binding, Stampin' Dimensionals, Shimmery Crystal Effects,
Spiral Punch, Pretty in Pink and Basic Grey Corduroy Brads, Black Baker's Twine (Stampin' Up!);
Bubblegum Blush Crystal Drops, Earl Grey Vintage Drops, Cloud 9 Dream Drops (Nuvo);
Halloween Bling Stickers, Boo Bling Sheet (Recollections); Gem Art Stickers (Forever in Time);
Beads (Beads Landing); Lace Border Punch (Martha Stewart)