An announcement

A blog is supposed to be interactive. There is a way for people to post comments, negative or positive, and a way people can enroll as followers.

The blogwriter takes his/her cue from the feedback gained via comments. With good feedback it becomes clear what readers enjoy - and just as important, what they don't.

When there is no feedback it's impossible to know for sure if a blog is providing readers with entertainment or inspiration. It's like talking to a brick wall, without feedback. No response.

Something went mechanically wrong with this blog several weeks ago. Most people couldn't get on to comment(people who know me personally alerted me to this). One person could get on sometimes but only after trying over and over again until it finally worked. This is not normal.

I have reported this several times to the site owners who faciliate all the blogs, but have had no response other than robo-messages. The messages never fit the situation. They also have a "no reply" feature so I can't argue with them!

It was sad to me that after much preparation and interest, when I ran my card giveaway contest through the month of October almost no one was able to participate.

I have to acknowledge the fact that for unknown reasons, this blog is clogged! It is not interactive as it's supposed to be. It's dead in the water. Nothing whatsoever informs me that it will ever be fixed.

Instead of posting here as usual, I am busy trying to find a blog site that works. I will then export my blog to that location and notify everyone here where it is relocated.

Meanwhile thank you so much to all those who have read my blog, who have tried to respond or follow, and who hoped to continue reading. I am very sorry for the technical problems but I did not create them and I have no way to fix them.

Day 31 - October Farewell

How could a month pass so quickly?

October is almost gone and Miss Scarecrow is wearing her somber burlap dress today. Her fierce looking jack-o-lantern candy bucket is slung over one arm. Though she is planted firmly in the ground and cannot go out on the trick-or-treat circuit, she's pretty sure somebody will wander by and leave her a caramel or a chocolate bar.

Miss Scarecrow is a little sad to bid adieu to Halloween fun, but the super-perky gingham bow on her card kind of hints at more festivities to come this fall. Thanksgiving is only a wink away.

It has been so much fun for me to host this handmade card giveaway during the month of October.

I am disappointed, however, that some kind of cyberspace glitch has been dogging my blog! Within a couple of days of starting the contest I began to receive email messages that people could not get on the blog to participate. A very few are always able to get on, but many can't ever get on at all and say they get error messages or "gobbledygook" when they try. My settings are all in compliance with google's cookies and security policies so I just don't know what's going on. Only about 18 readers have been able to access the blog, and some have emailed me that they couldn't register as Followers (no new Followers have appeared since last May, so that should have been a clue to me that something was up). I've tried to find out why these glitches are happening, but all I get are automated help messages that never fit the circumstances. The "help" forum is packed with other users who are having the same kinds of problems, but those problems never seem to be addressed. I apologize to everyone who couldn't get on here and I hope somehow the problems will be resolved. After all, a blog is supposed to be interactive!

The silver lining is, for those who could get on and participate, the odds of winning on any given day were astronomical because of so few being able to enter, and of course not everybody who could register came on each day, either.

I loved sending out cards to the winners! Your feedback was so good to hear and made me very grateful that you all took the time to participate and respond.

Thanks to all the viewers and contestants this past month - and I wish each of you a Happy Halloween today from october pumpkin rubber stamps!

Day 30 - The End Is Near

Last night was trick-or-treat night in our town and several surrounding towns. It's always a big production here in the midwest! After the first several hundred kids we ran out of candy. Each year there are more and more. Vanloads of kids are dropped off in our neighborhood and some of them circle around the loop several times.

I miss the fun Halloweens when our own two were young and we spent weeks working on their costumes so they would be just right. Our daughter, like most little girls, always wanted to wear a pretty costume. Our little boy wanted scary or wild outfits. Once we made a giant green papier mache froghead for him and he wore bright green pantihose for legs with swim fin feet. Oh yeah, it was scary!

When I shopped for candy yesterday (hoping for last-minute markdowns, but there were none)people were grabbing huge bags of it from one section of shelves while across the aisle at the very same time clerks were stocking those shelves with boxes of candy canes and marshmallow snowmen. Pretty weird!

Day 29 - Wichita's mischief

Oh No!!! I had gluestick-fingers when I put today's card on the scanner, and now the smears are visible in the photo (they are on the scanner, not on the card itself!)and I have an appointment this morning so I don't have time to clean the scanner and start all over!

It's almost Halloween and Wichita is already casting a spell, ruining my scan!

You get the general idea of what the card looks like - remember, the gluestick smears were on the scanner surface and will NOT be present on the card if you are its winner.

Remember how I already said buttons & ribbon were my favorite embellishments, but I forgot to say tags were too? Now I'm adding another fave - those tiny stick-on dots, used on shiny cardstock.

Doesn't Wichita look alot feistier surrounded by tiny explosions of metallic green on patent leather cardstock? I made her look so good. She should be ashamed of casting her evil spell on me. Bad Wichita! And it's not even Halloween yet!

Day 28 - Three more days!

When people are scared they turn "white as a ghost". So what do ghosts turn when they're scared?
Transparent!

Day 27: Make to Order

I'm posting tomorrow's card tonight because I won't be home tomorrow morning.

After seeing some cardstock letters I liked at the craft store, it was impossible to resist making the card you see here. It would have been a quick card except the letters were yellow and I wanted orange, so I had to color them with a felt tipped marker. The dots are stick-ons - easy, easy!

This month we have been celebrating the rubber stamp biz called october pumpkin! My daughter Stephanie runs this biz and I design the stamps. I've been giving away a handmade card each day via random drawings - it's not too late to jump in, so scroll back to the start of the month for the info on entering. You can enter here on the blog in the Comments box, or via my email:pelikanbeach@gmail.com - but you have only 5 days to get in on the fun!

Although the name Tara is on the card today, the winner will receive a duplicate card with her own name or any choice of names. That is, unless your name is Henrietta Elfreida Evangelina which wouldn't fit on a card this size.

You may wonder where the october pumpkin stamp images are on this card. The candy corn stamp is used to "pretty up the envelope" and a couple of pumpkins are stamped inside the card along with the message. There just wasn't room for one on the front!

Day 26: Tag addiction

Here is a true story. A few years ago when I found out about papercrafting I became addicted to tagmaking and ended up with hundreds of them before I realised it.

I have always done painting. So, you might say, artsy stuff is artsy stuff. No, it definitely isn't! When you paint it's two dimensional,flat. When you do papercrafts, it's dimensional. You are applying layers and small objects. You can very quickly stamp images, add embellishments, backgrounds and borders, change your composition, your color scheme, subtract embellishments, go crazy because after all it's just fun and very informal. There's no stress or tension because if you mess up you can immediately start over and in a few minutes have something completely different. There are lots of surprises, and ideas burst out like wildfire. Best of all, you're not waiting for the paint to dry!

I started in papercrafting by making tags and I was having so much fun, whipping them out eveery 5 to 10 minutes, that pretty soon I had 2 drawers filled with about 500 tags. Then I stopped myself. What do you do with that many tags? Actually, I started enclosing them in letters and cards. I gave tags away to friends in bundles of 25 at a time. They seemed to love getting them. People used them for bookmarks, package ties, place name IDs.

How about you? Have you tried your hand at this fun little project - making a tag?

Day 25 - A quiet little card

My papercrafting table is right in front of a large window looking out into the upper branches of an ash tree in our front yard. Leaves that at first dropped one at a time now cascade from the tree as fall deepens, and the oak and elm trees are showing their skeletons as well. More leaves are on the ground than on anybody's branches, that's for sure.

It makes for a reflective and quiet mood sometimes, sitting in front of a window watching time actually pass in the annual shedding of leaves from growing plants who will now become dormant for the long cold months.

My card today is a quiet celebration of this rite of passage. The colors do not scream, "Look at me!" Instead there is more - well - quietness to the design. I added a double organdy bow to the tag, its transparency a symbol of the invisible way our time slips past if we don't take a moment to stop and savor it.

Day 24: A Tale of Three Ghosties

The three october pumpkin ghosties, Trick, Or, and Treat, went out to bag their annual Halloween goodies.

In their travels they came upon an olde abandoned monastery. It was a huge and monstrous structure on a hill, made entirely of dark stone with shadowy recesses and deep-set windows wreathed in grime and spiders' webs, many of which were occupied by their fat and hairy architects.

The ghosties were terrified! But you have to be brave if you expect to get any Halloween goodies.

Trick, the oldest ghostie triplet, ran up the steps and knocked timidly on the splintery wooden door. "It's Trick, Or, and Treat!" he hollered in a trembly voice.

By and by an olde man in a monk suit opened the creaking door of the monastery.

"Here is your blasted treat, now get outa here before I throw you in my dungeon!" he yelled as he handed Treat a small paper bag.

The ghosties ran away fast, in case the olde monk decided to grab them. When they had run so far and so fast that they had a stitch in their nonexistent ribs,they stopped to examine the contents of the bag.

Oh no! It wasn't Snicker bars, or even bubblegum! The durn monk had given them a page from an old choir book, a purple paper clip, and a piece of ribbon.

When the ghosties went home later, after a successful run on the neighborhood for real treats, they complained to their mom Ghostina about what they had been given at the olde abandoned monastery on the hill. "It's just junk!" said Or.

Their mom gave them each a Tootsie Roll to settle them down, and took the choir page, the purple paper clip, and the black ribbon. "Never you mind," she told her ghostie boys. "It is a treat for me. I can make a nice card out of this stuff!"

The End

Day 23 - A bargain find

I found a neat bargain the day our bagels got stuck!

We had an old toaster that kept limping along even though the thingie you push down to make it heat no longer worked and either hubby or I would have to stand there holding it down. This week we had another problem with it. The slots were supposed to be wide, but our bagels kept getting stuck.

I said, "That's IT! T've had it with this toaster!" A few hours later I was in WalMart getting a replacement for it. Of course, I had to take a peek down the craft aisle. That was when I found the bargain.

Along an end display I saw some pretty nice packs of embellishments, but one was my favorite. It included about ten pieces. That's a guess, I didn't count before I used 'em all up. They were very nice-looking autumn leaf stick-ons in 3-D. Here is the bargain part. The package was only $1.50 (why didn't I get an extra one?)

You'll see what they look like on today's card. In fact, I used a couple on yesterday's card. Don't you love a bargain?

Day 22 - A pretty fall card

For a change, I had an image in mind for this card before I began to assemble it. However, my image called for a print background behind Miss Scarecrow & the embellishments. I have plenty of print papers, but none were just right. The colors didn't really work.

Not wanting to tear out to the craft store just now, I wondered, "why not make my own print, and why not use something reallly different to do it?" But what?

Just a few days ago I happened to notice some thread on an old-time wooden spool in my sewing basket. It must have come from my mother. I wondered if I could make a design using a wooden spool for a stamp?

Well, guess what, kids! It worked! This card shows my first effort but now I've thought of some other ways to stamp with a spool and am anxious to try them out.

But here's the funny part. I had cut out several pieces of cardstock for experimenting and when the time came to add the print cardstock to the card itself I was concentrating on the way the different pieces looked with regard to the pattern and in the process I inadvertently selected a crooked piece! Without even noticing my mistake, I adhered it to the card. Only after scanning it into the computer did I happen to see that error - look over on the left lower side where the background piece is chopped crookedly! Aaaargh! Just be glad I wasn't God. That wouldn't be a good time to be turning out weird creations.

Anyway, I'm going to remake or reassemble this card and fix the problem, so if you win it you won't see this strange looking background piece.

Do you ever mess up when you're making something? I do, plenty of times! It's easy to overlook details when you're concentrating on something else! But it's probably just part of the fun of cardmaking. . .

Day 21 - A different card

It's kind of interesting to come up with a different card every day.

Some days the creative juice just doesn't flow. Yesterday was one of those days! We were tying up the details on a family member's serious health crisis, and my mind wasn't on cardmaking. . .yet I know it's important to anyone'e equilibrium to get out of a stressful situation for awhile. So I trudged to my workroom and put together this card. As I worked and listened to music, I felt alot of the tension fall away as I entered a space where life was less stressful than dr.'s offices and hospitals!

Art therapy has been recognised as a calming force for many years. I have to take this chance to urge anyone with challenges of any sort to give it a try. When you are feeling anxious about someone or something, take some time to create. It will uplift you and you will come back to everyday life a little stronger.

Gotta run! The day's already getting away from me!

Day 20 - only eleven left!

We're really enjoying our days of Indian summer here in western Ohio. The fall color has peaked here and it's just gorgeous everywhere you look!

Today's card a a little lighter in color than the scary ones from the past two days. I had to sneak in a ribbon and just one button, too. The pumpkin faces along the bottom half are a border I cut from a sheet of scrapbook paper. I have about 300 different papers and usually have to go through most of them to get the one I want, but when I find the one and only paper that matches what I've envisioned for my project, I am only then perfectly satisfied.

How about you? Do you agree that the time making the card is as nothing, compared to the time in selecting the elements you want to use? Do you first imagine the card design and then search for the materials - or do you mess around with all your papers and embellishments until they provide the just right inspiration?

Have a happy day today - and if you haven't entered yet, you can do it right here on the blog or send to my email, pelikanbeach@gmail.com - better hurry! October's running out!

Day 19 - Moving right along!

Here is an interesting way to use many of your medium size stamps. I had a strip of really nice Halloweeny purple cardstock on my worktable, leftover from yesterday's project. Why not make a tag? It takes about 10 secs to make a tag out of a chunk of cardstock.

Next I stamped Wichita on the purple tag, centering the stamp to get her face, and allowing the remainder of the image to land on some scrap paper. See, you can use stamps effectively without using all of a larger stamp.

The cardstock I used for the card is embossed with some primitive house images, though they are not quite as visible via computer as they are in person.These must be the homes of sleeping mortals who have no idea Wichita is flying overhead on her trusty broom.

I'm lunching with a dear old friend today & hope you're doing something fun too!

Day 18 - Still time to enter and win!

Today's card is one I had several ideas for color combos but only time to go with the first try. My father and his wife are coming to visit in a couple of hours, so I can't stay with my papercrafting as long as I usually do,yikes! Now I have to go to my bread machine.

They're bringing us apples from their trip up north last week - there's a special orchard they visit that has great apples in the fall. I want to have a loaf of homemade bread to hand back, plus won't it make the house smell good? Bread, coffee, and anything with cinnamon, vanilla, and/or chocolate are the best cooking aromas I can imagine!

Anyway, I might revisit this card when I have more time to play around with the colors. For today, here you have it. See the tiny october pumpkin jack-o-lanterns making a print background? The haunted houses seemed good just as they are, I mean not colored, but uniformly gray and gloomy.

In case you wonder what the black organdy ribbon is all about, let's just say that's the lunatic fringe.

See you next time! Good luck on winning - lots more are entering now, and remember, you can enter right here via comments or you can send your entry to my email at pelikanbeach@gmail.com

Day 17 of Great Card Giveaway

Can you believe it's already mid-October? If anyone is just now finding us, you're invited to hop aboard and be a part of our Great Card Giveaway where you can enter a random drawing for one of the free cards shown daily. For easy instructions on how to participate, just scroll down through the posts to October 1!

Today I made a fun and colorful Halloween card. Gosh, there go those buttons again!

Few of these cards would fit through the automated letter sorter at the post office, so if you win one and mail it off to somebody, be aware that the USPS requires an extra stamp for hand sorting. The cards are heavy, though, and would require extra postage anyway.

Wishing you all a really great fall weekend! It's more TV football at our house today, with some frantically fast household chores stuffed in during the commercials! My husband follows Ohio State and I'm a Bama fan - Roll Tide! I wonder who your fave team is?

Day 16: Gilding the lily

What if we took pumpkins to a new level? That was the question in my mind when I made this card. Why not a serene, elegant-ish fall card just for variety? Let me know if you approve. . .or not.

To show this is not your grandma's pumpkin card, I stamped a green pumpkin image.
From there it was a short hop to selecting an elegant, baroque type of background paper. Punched out a shiny blue oak leaf! Finally, oh sacrilege, stuck some playful
blue "jewels" on the green pumpkins' frame.

It doesn't hurt to get a little playful when we make a card.

Yesterday was an awful day at our house. Maybe I'll tell you about it later. For now it's time to fix breakfast. (I hope the computer gremlins don't stick a time of 3 p.m. on this post. The time never matches reality.)

Day 15: The Haunted Cupcake

I am in a real time crunch this morning, so no rambling - aren't you lucky?

This card was lots of fun to make. There wasn't quite room for all 3 of the ghosties so after I stamped them I cut one off. Poor guy, no cupcakes for him.

Day 14 of Great Card Giveaway

If you already checked here and found nothing for today, it's because some computer maintenance was being done.

Today's card is the first of its kind in the world, for more reasons than one. The big first is, it's the first ever dignified, serious, sedate, calm,
quiet Halloween greeting ever put together by mankind. Or womankind, in this case.

You may well ask to whom you might send such a card if you wanted to make one. I'm not really sure. How about Auntie Matilda? Or Cousin Melvin? Of course there's always the Pope.

I wanted to show how a small stamp can be used in a big way. The candy treat stamp from october pumpkin is usually used to decorate an envelope, or as a motif in the middle of some embellishment, a tag or bookmark, etc. Today I'm illustrating how a small stamp can be used effectively on a card - or really anywhere that a border would be needed.

October is half over and you don't want to miss out, so enter today!

Yesterday a reader told me that she had been unable to access the blog because she spelled pelican with a c. Don't I wish we all could! But pelican with a c was a domain already claimed (by a posh resort on the seacoast, sigh!)so I resorted (smirk) to a K spelling. It's still pelican, but in German. 'Bye!

Day 13 - enter and win!

You may be thinking, "Why is this old lady using the same stamps over and over? Doesn't she have any other stamps?" The answer to that is, yes, I have loads of other stamps and I love 'em all, but I am promoting october pumpkin stamps in this blog, because this is my blog and they are my designs! Ta-daaah!

My daughter Stephanie and I just started this stamp company a matter of months, not years, ago. We don't have tons of stamps so far. We have them manufactured in the highest quality, which is pretty expensive, and they are produced in our own country. This costs more than Chinese labor. But we think it's worth it. The stamps improve with use, and that's important to us because it means you'll be able to enjoy them for a long time to come.

Getting back to not having alot of stamps yet, we do have a fair size beach set, and we have a smallish Halloween set. We have an elegant set of lighthouse stamps, 5 large and 3 small. (All 8 don't have to be purchased together!) We're gearing up for a Christmas/winter set next. Our company is building and emerging. If you want to see our other stamps, be sure to click on the etsy address to the right.

Because I want to showcase just october pumpkin stamps, all we have to use from our fall line (so far) are 3 medium and 4 small stamps, then we have 2 more fall stamps that could be used for either Halloween or Thanksgiving themes. That number is fewer than the days of our card giveaway contest, so there will definitely be repeats - but the card designs will be different. Also I am now starting to branch out to using the stamps in different ways. For instance, today's card has the scarecrow cut out and fixed to a tag, losing a couple elements of the stamp in the process. There are many ways to alter the way you use stamps, ours or stamps made by other companies. Keep visiting the blog, Stephanie's blog, and the etsy shop, and you'll see lots and lots more examples!

Meanwhile, enter the card contest to win a free card. Some people are saying they don't know how to leave comments because of the directives that pop up. They don't have a google account and fear they are being forced to get one. No, that's not correct. Just check the option that says Anonymous. You don't need to set up a google account. You will be asked to decode some letters and numbers, but this is common internet practice done for your protection from spam. Spammers use "robots" to gather information for purposes of advertising. The robots can only understand certain computer language. They can't read the garbly-looking letters/numbers, only humans can - so when a human types this in, it is alerting the blog folks (google) that a human being, not a spam robot, is trying to gain access. I hope this answers those questions! If you don't want to use the comments box you can send your entry info directly to my email address at pelikanbeach@email.com One way or another, our giveaway month is almost half over, so if you want to win a card it's now or never!

Day 12 already!

Today's card is another easy one for you to try at home. I used something a little different for a "rustic" embellishment.

The paper the pumpkin image is fixed to is a piece of cardstock crunched up. And crunched up. And crunched up. Then crunched up again! It makes a nice textural background in the end. Do you think I crunched it up enough?

When I scanned the card in I was juuust a tad disappointed that some of the colors did not translate well. If you saw the real thing the brown background is handmade veined paper of a lighter shade. The two little brads in person (or in brad. . .) exactly match the card color,at least unless they're scanned. What happened? I'll never understand all this tech stuff!

Day 11 of Great Card Giveaway

This is another very simple and fast card, using a tad of paper piecing, a punch, and a "store boughten" embellishment.

Do you know the diff between a trademark and a rut? Neither do I. They are both repetitive and visually linked to the person responsible except it sounds better to have a trademark than to be in a rut. My trademark seems to be one or both of the following: ribbon (LOOOOoooooove that ribbon!), and buttons (what are they cute as when they're already buttons?). Realizing that what seems like a trademark to me might seem like a rut to others, I resolved to give everyone a break by not using ribbon or buttons on today's card.

But, gasp, I love to have something kind of special, don't you, on a card? Finally I realised that since Halloween cards are often weird anyway, I decided to use "jewels" for eyes on the little trick-or-treater. I think it was effective.
You'll have to take my word for it, though, because glittery jewels don't show up well on a monitor.

By the way, the ghost stamp is from october pumpkin and yes, it does have eyes. You do not have to add your own. I just wanted to this time!

Day 10 of Great Card Giveaway!

In cardmaking rhetoric this one would be known as a CAS Card, or Clean And Simple. Although it's fun to load up a card with "embellishments" (cardmaker rhetoric for doodads) sometimes it's nice just to make a plain old quiet card.

That's what you have here. A little paper piecing with a ribbon tied around it just about says it all.

After rain all day yesterday, we now have a cold front in Ohio, brrrr! Last night I hauled out my trusty bread machine and we had fresh hot bread to go with dinner. No, we didn't eat the whole loaf!

Wishing you all a happy day today. To my fellow northerners, stay warm!

Card 9 in Great October Giveaway!

Just a minute or two ago I was reading a message from our daughter Stephanie. She said she's been making "harvest dinners" at their house. She is a wonderful cook, taking after her grandmother, so I'm sure her house was filled with yummy aromas all week long. Do you remember when you were a little kid (come on, has it been THAT long ago?), coming home from school and realising as soon as the door was open that there would be a spectacular dinner that evening? MMM! The roast chicken! The baking potatoes! The onions in the dressing!

I don't think Wichita has been working in the kitchen. At best she throws a few frog's tails in the cauldron, mumbles her magic incantations, then hops on her broom and goes searching for mischief.

Notice what a difference there is with the same stamp when a different color scheme
is used.

Remember, you can enter via Comments or enter via pelikanbeach@gmail.com
If you don't, you have no chance to win at all. I'll be shipping out this week's won cards tomorrow morning, so look for yours in the mail!

Day 8 of Great Card Giveaway

We're blasting through October so fast this year. . .or is it just because we're busier and time is sliding by while we're not looking?

I know! We should all take time to make a card or two today, or some kind of a paper craft.

Our October contest card for today features a witch. Her name is Wichita but she isn't saying whether she's from Kansas or ot. Tomorrow you'll see her again, because I want to demonstrate how different the look can be from one stamp, just based on color differences. Today, alas, poor Wichita has a scary green face and must share her card with a creepy spider.

Speaking of spiders. . .this morning I went outside to get our newspaper and when I came back in a large obese garden spider had apparently been trying to break into the house via the upper sliding door track, because it fell and just grazed my front as it came crashing to the floor with a thud. I know spiders are our friends, blah, blah, but for all you naturalists and arachnophiles out there let's just say that particular one has gone to heaven.

Day 7 of Great Card Giveaway

Western Ohio looks like November this morning - cold, dark, and drizzly. It's a great day to stay inside and make a few cards!

Today's giveaway features a fall scarecrow with a goofy grin. This one could say Happy Autumn or happy-any-other-October-holiday. On this gloomy and rainy morning I wanted to feature something using bright colors!

This was a fun and easy card to make, using an october pumpkin stamp and some slabs of leftover cardstock. The addition of a fiber in the upper left corner gives some soft texture to an otherwise flat scene. Hope you win this colorful piece!

Make-it-up-as-you-go-along

Here's an example of a spontaneous card. They're so easy to throw together.

You start with a subject, which in this case is the trio of october pumpkin ghosties.
Next, go through your stash of embellishments. I found the round Boo sticker right away, then my cat punch - surely black cats would be darting around on Halloween night, wouldn't they?

The rest kind of comes together, chunks and strips of paper in scary, gloomy colors. Random pen scribbles, a word ("frightening," of course). Finally, a slither of purple ribbon. Are you creeped out yet?

Day 5 of Great Card Giveaway

Ok, I admit that one of the purposes of the Great October Handmade Card Giveaway Contest is to showcase different ways our october pumpkin rubber stamp company stamps can be used.

Then a sudden idea for a card popped into my mind and guess what - it doesn't use any stamps at all! I have to share it with you anyway.

The ghostie (a ghost, by the way, is scary, while a ghostie is just plain cute) is torn freehand from a piece of watercolor paper. WC paper tears nicely and makes soft edges.

An old bristly paintbrush dipped in a tiny bit of paint makes the soft blurry eye and mouth shapes.

Shimmery color scraped around the corners with a metallic ink pad help suggest a round dark pit where the ghostie is usually hiding in wait.

The scary tag was punched from a section of a Starbucks coffee cuff, and the motif on it is an embellishment someone sent me from a "card candy" swap - motif brand source unknown to me.

I think it all came together nicely and made a cute card! Even if it does not have any of my personally designed october pumpkin stamp images on it!

Mayday!

News bulletin:

A reader just sent a message to my email that the Comments box on the blog is not working. She says that when she tries to post using Comments she is asked for her "profile" (?) and that when she tries to respond to the options they are all declared invalid. I'll have to report this and hope it's fixed soon.

Meanwhile, contest entries can still go to my email site at pelikanbeach@gmail.com

So sorry about this! I can't imagine what's gone wrong.

Card 4 in October Giveaway

Can there be too many Halloween cards? I doubt it. Halloween is a holiday that's really caught on the past few years. To some, especially kids, it's a time for lots of candy, costumes, and decorated cupcakes. For most of us adults it's a time to see the kids having fun, a time for lots of color, creativity, and wackiness.

I like the simple and sweet side of Halloween. I'll take a smiling pumpkin over a blood-dripping skeleton any day!

This card has two unusual elements. One is a layer of sandpaper, for texture, and the other is a cat paper clip from ye olde Staples.

Card 3 in Great October Giveaway

Here is the third card to be given away this month as we continue to celebrate October. This one would make a good Thanksgiving card, a fall greeting, even a birthday - the inside is blank for you to add your own sentiment. The punpkin stamped on the card is from october pumpkin rubber stamps, available online at etsy.com (see link to right).

Be sure to enter our giveaway contest by sending in your contact info via Comments below or else to pelikanbeach@gmail.com - good luck! It's always fun to win. Okay, I have to admit it would be alot more fun to win a million bucks in the lottery, but your odds of winning a card are alot better!

Cyber mystery

A couple of people have asked why the dates of my recent posts and the Day of the giveaway contest don't match up. The answer is, I don't know. The first day I posted the card just after midnight, making the date Oct 1, but the date on the blog site remained Sept 30. On the chance that the blog site and my computer were in diff time zones, I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night (yawn!) to test it before posting my Day 2 card. Once again, a discrepancy. Even at 2 a.m. the preceding day's date had not turned over. Tomorrow I will post in the "real" morning (that is, the morning when most people are awake, not the wee hours!) and see what happens. I'm sure there is a reason why the dates are contradictory, but I don't know what it is.

Day 2 of Card Giveaway

So far, so good! We had a winner for yesterday's card and the ghosties will be sent north to their new owner on Saturday.

Wonder who will win our second card in the October Card Giveaway? Hope it's you!

People seem to be sending their contact info via my private email, which is fine. If you missed that address, it's pelikanbeach@gmail.com

Good luck to all on today's drawing!

First Day of Oct '09 card giveaway!

Here is the first of 31 cards in this blog's first ever October card giveaway contest.

To anyone joining us today, the contest was explained last night, September 30. Just scroll back a post for details. You can join in anytime and it's not necessary to enter each day, but in order to win you need to enter on each day you want to participate. In other words, you cannot enter for all 31 days at once, but only on each day separately.

A random drawing from all entries will be made at the end of the day at midnight but the cards won will not be mailed out until Saturday morning of each week.

I'm anxious to see who has entered the contest and who will win! I've always enjoyed giving things away far more than selling them, so this will be great fun for me and I hope it will be for you as well. Good luck to all!

The Great Handmade Card Giveaway!

Hi everyone,

We're finally here! It's Contest Eve, and I want to give you the instructions to enter this month-long event.

Basically, each day I will post a photo of the card to be won on that day. You may enter the contest by sending in your contact info. You can send just your email address if you wish - I will contact you and ask for your mailing address if you have won.

At no time will any information be shared with anyone else or sold to advertisers or used by october pumpkin to send any advertising. I will not retain your contact info after the contest is finished.

You cannot enter once for the entire month, but must re-enter each day.

An unbiased source (Mr. Contest Widget) will draw the winning name at random each midnight. I will inform the winner the next morning. Once a week, on Saturday morning, I will mail out the cards won during the previous seven days (nope, I don't have time to go to the post office EVERY day, friends!)

It's that easy! We just do this for 31 days. Why? It's a celebration a biz called october pumpkin. But you don't need to be a rubber stamper or even a paper crafter to win. The cards are all made and ready to go or keep or whatever you choose.

An important note. . .you can enter by typing your contact info in the "Comments" area of the blog, which may be the easiest way to go. Alternatively, for those who do not wish to have their e-address available to the public, feel free to send it to my personal mailbox at pelicanbeach@gmail.com This will in no way affect your chances of winning.

As I mentioned before, this blog is fairly new and not publicised much, so there are not that many who will see this. Your odds of winning are therefore huuuuuuge as contests go.

Good luck, to all of you! I think we'll all have lots of fun with this!

Tomorrow's the day!

Be sure and begin your October fun with PelikanBeach's monthlong card giveaway contest! It starts tomorrow, and let me remind you once again that because of PB's low profile the odds for you to win on any given day are huge! How's that for good news?

I'm off to an appointment now, but later today the few "rules & regs" will be posted here. Tomorrow the contest begins. Hope you'll jump right in and win several cards during the upcoming 31 days!!!

Beach fashions

Someone sent me this photo of bikini-ini-ini-ini kitties and it gave me a laff.(A laugh is a polite chuckle; a laff is way beyond that!) We've had several days of gloomy weather, so I figured it was time to get a little goofy and share this item with you all.

It's less than a week til the Great October Handmade Card Giveaway starts up on Pelikan Beach! I'm really looking forward to it! Don't forget - October 1.

BTW, Stephanie just put up some really fun Halloween card, tag, and trim kits on october pumpkin's etsy page. Click on the link to the right of this post to check 'em out.

Back to the workroom for me now. See you next time!

Evening falls on Pelikan Beach

Hi friends! No, I have not abandoned the blog. I've been super busy for the past few weeks, working on a couple of stamping projects.

One of the projects that has kept me so busy is designing a set of Christmas stamps for october pumpkin. At first we weren't going to produce a Christmas set this year, but now we have decided, in response to many requests, to go ahead and do a set for Christmas 2009. Alot goes into prepping the drawings for stamp reproduction so I've been concentrating on doing a good job with this.

The other project is creating the 31 fall or Halloween cards for my great blog giveaway throughout the month of October! I hope you've marked your calendar for this because you have a good chance to win on any given day. Stay tuned.

You'll love this!

One day a friend emailed me about how delighted she was to receive handmade cards. She said she enjoyed them so much that she would return again and again to look at them, and each time received the same "thrill" of holding something in her hand that a "real live person" had made just for her.

I thought, this is nice, but so many today don't have the time or the confidence to make their own cards. Others, like me, love to do it and can end up with a stockpile!

Out of this a wonderful new idea was born - an idea YOU will just love! It is very likely to put a card or two in YOUR hand, to use or keep as you wish!

I decided to have a giveaway on my blog every single day during fall's prettiest month of the year - October! October is also part of the name of the stamp company I design for, october pumpkin. (See links to the right.) I will be using our stamps to create these special cards. Yeah, folks, it's a promo! But it still means 31 lucky winners are going to get a prize. That is always fun!

You may wonder how much chance you have to win. Guess what - a great big one!
My blog has not been advertised to very many, so there are few, few, few viewers as yet. I've just been too busy to publicize it much. So on some days your chances might be 100% for winning - on others, 1 in a hundred. Either one of them are good odds, because you can enter every day. All you have to do is include your blog or email address in the Comments section on any given day. Winners will be drawn at random and I will send you your prize.

Stay tuned for more details as we near October. I'm putting up a couple of cards today that I've made so far for this competition. Hope you like 'em!

It's almost fall

Ohio has been surprised by a very cool end-of-August. Our temp overnight was in the mid-forties, surely a record? It's getting everyone in the mood for fall!

Last night I stamped some random samples of october pumpkin fall stamps on a piece of paper, just to practice using different colors with these designs. (I'll probably cut each off and use it in a card project later on.) I thought it might be fun for you to see.

If you want to put your own stamp on fall, check out the offerings at octoberpumpkin.etsy.com

The rubber stamps are manufactured from my designs and drawings. I love having my drawings in the form of stamps that I can use to make quick duplicates when sending out several cards for the same holiday greetings. Saves having to draw the image over and over!

Happy fall to you and if you are reading this, thanks for stopping by!

Just for fun

As a member of splitcoaststampers I sometimes participate in papercraft trades. If you don't know about this great website, check it out!

This week I did a couple of cards for a swap about foresty stuff. It could be anything you might find in a forest. I thought of Halloween ghosties and bugs!
Herewith, the cards I made. It was lots of fun!

Today was an exciting day! The crate of rubber stamps arrived from our stamp manufacturer containing the eight lighthouse designs which many have been waiting patiently to get.

I just had to throw together a couple of cards stat! Yaquina Head Light in Oregon was my first try, and it came to me that this design, while intended for a card, could also make a nice mini-album or journal cover. What do you think?

Wasn't real sure about the Cape Hatteras card. It didn't come out quite the way I intended - it's too busy or lopsided or something! But it's a very hot night, late too, and I'll probably run at it again some other time when conditions are more favorable. Everything we do needn't be perfect anyway, right?

Hope you enjoy the look-see!

Coming soon!

We are counting down the days until october pumpkin's latest shipment of rubber stamps arrives from our stamp manufacturer, Picture My Stamps. This will be the set of eight lighthouse stamps. Five are a larger stamp and three are smaller stamps. I posted two samples below, featuring two of the small stamps, and am now working on samples showing the remaining half dozen. Be sure and watch for them!

If you haven't visited our etsy shop recently, click on the link to the right.

New lighthouse stamps

I've started working with october pumpkin's new set of lighthouse designs, making two casual cards using two of the smaller designs.

The cards are each very simple and fast to make. Sometimes a simple card is restful and pleasant, I think. As my mother used to say,"Less is more."

The stamped-on october pumpkin lighthouses were colored with watercolor paints.

I hope you enjoy seeing these! There will be more to come by and by.

Old and new

While going through some old photos I came across one of my favorite guy taken quite a few years ago. It's a long while til Valentine's Day but I wanted to make a card that said, "I love you."

Using a photo program I enhanced the age of the picture by transforming it into sepia. I chose brown and black papers/cardstock just because I like those colors together. A single word below the photo expressed my thought, and a copper clip adds a little sparkle to the presentation.

Isn't it fun to do something spontaneous when inspiration strikes? And by the way, my husband really liked the card.

Shades of pink

Yesterday I felt like making a monotone card. No, I didn't say a monotonous card!

Sometimes there is a restful kind of look to a card without high contrast. Too many of them would, in fact, be monotonous. But once in awhile, they're fun!

I wanted to share this card with you all, but I am disappointed in the color reproduction. You'll just have to believe me when I say the shades of pink are
truly coordinated - but for reasons unknown to me, when I scanned the card into my computer different papers and cardstock came out as slightly different colors than they actually are. How can this be? I don't know. Maybe it has to do with textures or some invisible factor relating to color dyes from different paper companies. It's a mystery to me, like so many technological things are!

Oh well, it's nicer in person but try to readjust the colors to be harmonious when you see it on the machine!

Shell and sentiment stamps are by october pumpkin.

Came in the mail today...

Several weeks ago I joined a "card candy swap" on Splitcoaststampers.com. If you're a follower, you may remember some photos I posted here, of some "card candy" I made to trade. That part was alot of fun to do.

In case you aren't a cardmaker, "candy" means the embellishments that help decorate a greeting card. Some are die-cut, some are stamped, some are original designs, etc. The idea is to make a bunch or a few and exchange them with other cardmakers or scrapbookers across the country.

It was a first time for me to do this, and after the fun of making my "candy" to swap, it was great fun in the waiting, and even more fun in getting my first pack of swapped goodies. I'm showing some of them in the photo above.

A perfect day

Yesterday was my father's 90th birthday celebration. I'm sharing one of the photos showing him with his only two grandchildren, David's (my hubby) and my son James, and our daughter Stephanie. When I saw this shot I rememebered Jim saying, "That's right, stand too close to me and make my nose look a yard wide!" He is a little out of kilter here, but at least looks happy.

We had a wonderful time, with relatives from far and wide pouring in throughout the afternoon, lots of laughter and memories, good food, good friends,and good wishes all around. Weather was perfect, which is miraculous for mid-Ohio in July. Well over a hundred guests attended the event and all seemed to be having a great time visiting and making new friends.

Poppy, as my dad is known to his family, seemed to have a super time as well. He is a thoughtful and generous person, so when his brother played Happy Birthday on the piano and we all sang to Poppy, he had to remind us that his wife's 85th birthday is this month too and therefore we ought to sing her a Happy Birthday as well - which everyone did.

Isn't it a major, major blessing when something planned for months suddenly arrives and turns out even better than anyone anticipated?

Last three lights

Sorry I've been away from the blog. It's been a hectic half week at our house. A relative had a sudden serious illness, I'm not making the speed of progress I'd hoped for in preps for my father's 90th birthday party Sunday or in getting ready for a houseguest arriving Friday, had two dr. apts. to deal with, and today the car broke down! Tomorrow will include alot of dealing with the car repair. So I decided to jump on here and show you the lighthouses as promised, right now!

The left image is Key West Light in Florida. Ernest Hemingway lived across the road from this one. No wonder he wrote so well. Wouldn't we if we had a view like that? Then you see Cape Lookout in North Carolina. Like Cape Hatteras, also in NC (see photo in previous post), they are similar in a way, because of their interesting daymarks. If you are not familiar with daymarks, this refers to the high contrast design painted onto a lighthouse so that it's visible to ocean traffic by day as well as the actual light beam itself is at night. The little tubby lighthouse is Thomas Point Shoal Light in Maryland, an example of a screwpile light out in the water.

I figured out why rubber stamping is so popular! We would all love to draw an attractive design in a hurry and have it look "right" - but that takes alot of time and also some feel their art skills are not up to it. Then by using a rubber stamp, anyone can instantly create a great image - what a rush that is! I feel it too when I stamp. Power to the stampers of the world! We are all artists!

First five

Here are the first five lighthouse rubber stamp designs in what will become octoberpumpkin's annual series in this topic. What you see are the original designs, not stamped images.

By midweek these along with three additional lighthouse images will be shipped away to our manufacturer to make into first-quality cushioned rubber stamps ready for market.

The copyright info will not be incorporated into the stamps themselves, but appears only on the photo illustration here.

The remaining three images will be posted here before the end of this week. Sometime during the next few weeks I will post some cardmaking and other projects using the lighthouse designs.

The lighthouses shown, left to right, represent Cape Hatteras Light NC, Brant Point Light MA, Marblehead Light OH, Yaquina Head Light OR, and Annisquam Harbor light MA.

It was fun for me to study dozens upon dozens of lighthouses and choose the ones I wanted to present first! I hope you like my choices. Feel free to suggest yours in time for our next year's set! Who knows - your fave lighthouse might be among the ones selected to immortalise on rubber stamps!

The lighthouses will be available in sets and singles, available from octoberpumpkin.etsy.com (see link to the right) in 6 or 7 weeks.

Thanks for coming to our preview!

Big big news!

Okay, the news some of you have been waiting for and asking about. . .the new lighthouse stamp designs are almost done. There will be 8 lighthouses total. I am going to post several of them on my blog within the next few days, so be on the lookout! I'm very excited about this, and I believe you will like the designs too. They have to go to the manufacturer to be translated into actual rubber stamps, which takes approximately a month, and it is another couple of weeks more until they are ready for shipping out. But the biggest part is behind us and they will be ready before you know it! Tune in in the next few days for the design preview!

Logjam

I haven't been on here for several days because with the start of summer everything at our house seemed to pile up like a mess of logs going downriver. But overall, a happy mess.

Besides the annual picnics, festivals, yardwork, extra socialising, Father's Day, & all that normally takes place in early summer, our family is gearing up for a big bash celebrating my father's 90th birthday, with relatives coming from far and away.
He and his wife are also moving to a retirement village some 20 miles away in a few weeks, so that's another thing, and we have a total of 7 or 8 other b.day celebrations featuring friends or family coming up in the next few weeks.

I love birthdays but I hate that, "Now what would be the perfect gift for this dearly beloved individual?" feeling, don't you? I end up overshopping, never finding that one ideal item I wish would express all the positive thoughts and feelings I have for the giftee, and end up buying a gift card at the last sec. If Mother had thought ahead she might have named me Good Intentions.

I have had a medical crisis of sorts as well, which I am trying to decide how to handle. In March a case of flu went into pneumonia and uncontrolled asthma, sending me to the ER one scary crack of dawn. The doc there said since I was over 50 & couldn't breathe, it was hospital protocol to require a CT scan to check for pulmonary emboli. Ok, did that. There were no clots but a couple wks. later my asthma doc's nurse called and said a "pulmonary nodule" (???) had been seen on the scan so I needed a followup. Having never heard of that I immediately went into a spasm of terror. But, she said, it was most likely "nothing", or scarring from the pneumonia. People walk around with all kinds of stuff inside them that they never know about until it is incidentally discovered by a test for something else.

I am the world's foremost living medical chicken and scared to death of even having my blood pessure taken (it hurts! oh yes it does!) But I also don't want to die of the Dread Malignant Exploding Pulmonary Nodules, so I agreed to the followup scan which I had last week.

Yesterday the results of that followup showed that the item in question was behaving itself and not growing or assuming odd postures or anything else suspect. But now get this! They want me to have another followup scan in October. How weird can this get?

It seems like I don't have anything wrong, but just in case I might have, even though the odds are way against it, I am supposed to keep getting a test that exposes my poor innocent lung tissue to higher and higher levels of carcinogenic radiation whilst at the same time flooding my vascular network with dye that is known to destroy human kidneys. How does this make sense?

All you papercrafting radiologists and specialists out there who read my blog (big LOL) (in fact, big HHH for har, har, har) should think this over and come up with an answer. I'll be a-waitin'!

Hidden photo

There are several photos below, but the entire series is not immediately visible at this time because a photo which is part of the series is stashed under "older posts". The space alloted for immediate view of posts was apparently used up and did not allow for inclusion of the earlier or first photo at the bottom of the series. To see it, just click on older posts or click on the first post in line under the visible series of pictures. (As more posts are added, the configuration is going to change due to space, so none of this will apply after that. In fact it will probably change with this particular post, and you will need to click on older posts to see the last few photos!)

The candy swap items shown in this series are all made of acid-free materials except for parts of the items shown in the "missing" first photo in that series. I'm talking about the photo with the lobster, pig, and toast. (If that combo doesn't compel you to check it out, I don't know what would!)

The theme in that photo was Cooking. I made motifs related to food, which is certainly used in cooking (at least we would hope so, but when you read the list of ingredients on some products you have to wonder!) It seemed like it would be a fun idea to use retro illustrations for these motifs, so I dug out some old magazines and pamphlets which featured foody or cooking graphics from olden times. They have not been duplicated or sold, just cut out and looked at, so no copyright problem.

Some would question the permanence of the papers the illustrations are printed on, but if you want to try the idea and have concern for this just spray the items with archival spray available at any craft and hobby store.

Another thought is, while the items I cut out are not necessarily archival, they are mounted on acid-free archival Stampin' Up cardstock which would be the surface in contact with a project. Therefore if the cut-outs faded or yellowed it would not spread to or stain the project itself with the SU cardstock providing a safe buffer. Actually I thought yellowing, if it occured, would yield a desirable antiqued effect.

By the way, I drew the faces on the toast slices. . .it seemed to give the motif a nice cheerfully-goofy 50s look.

Not only did my computer upload 321 photos, only 6 of which it had been directed to do, and not only did my flash fail when I took the pix, but then I learned they all uploaded to an alien photo storage locale (that I had never even heard of and didn't know lurked inside my computer) instead of going to My Pictures as per usual. When I tried to retrieve them, either they failed to transmit at all or whole batches went together even though they weren't remotely connected by date, topic, or relevance.

At last, though I don't know how it happened, I managed to get the 6 pix I wanted to share with you all swept over to My Pictures, and from there I hoped eventually to reach this destination. But by the time I sweat blood over all the other procedures and misattempts, the left side of my brain had gone into freeze mode and I couldn't remember how to cluster pix to travel together with a text post. Perhaps I never knew. . .sigh!

Now it's time to make a cup of coffee and do something wonderfully simple and dependable - read a good book! Yeah!!! Isn't it a huge relief to know there's still something in life that doesn't have to be turned on, programmed, troubleshot, aimed at, or adjusted for sound? All you need are eyes. . .and a cup of tea or coffee makes it even more fun. See you next time. I'm outa here!