Halloween Cards

In just three weeks from today, the ghosts, goblins, witches, princesses, and super heroes will be out in full force celebrating my favorite holiday, Halloween. There's nothing I love more than dressing up and decorating for Halloween.  But even more so than that, I love crafting for it! This year, we decided to share our Halloween projects earlier to give you all some inspiration early enough to have plenty of time to create that spook-tacular card, layout, or gift you may be looking for. To kick off the Halloween celebration here are our favorite Halloween cards from our readers and designers...

Practical Scrapper Kerri

Erin Reed

*click the read more for some more fabulous Halloween cards!

Cards with Prints

One of the hottest and fasted growing trends in scrapbooking these days is using paper with print on it.  Now, I'm not talking animal prints or patten paper.  What I mean is those papers that have sheet music, dictionary pages, or words all over them.  Adding some print paper to a project can do things like create a vintage feel, or even using a dictionary page that has the meaning of a one-word for some journaling that describes exactly the message you want to convey.  So maybe you don't have any these papers lying around, no problem...we have the perfect solutions...
*Go to your local library, hit a yard sale and ask if they have any books.  I was able to pick up at my local library for 25 cents an old dictionary that they were looking to get off their shelf (remember though, if it's not acid free and you use it with your pictures to buy some archival safe spray at your local craft store).
*Use a print stamp and create your own background paper
*This is my favorite idea (and I'll share on Wednesday the layout I made making my own).  Out there in our Internet world there are programs that allow you to play with words and randomly arranges them for you and creates "word clouds".  In this case I am talking about Wordle.  I love this and play with it quite frequently.  It's a great way to add journaling (especially for those "all about me" pages).

Moving on, let's take a look at today cards (and a altered project) using some print paper...

Practical Scrapper Carolina

Irit Shalom

Core Cardstock Projects

With so many options today for Color Core and White Core Cardstock it's easy to find yourself using it in nearly every project.  Today we've got some projects to share with you showcasing ways to really make it stand out in your creation.  We featured this previously and you can find links to a whole bunch more ideas in our Idea Central area.

Courtney created this set of cards for a challenge over on the C'oredinations site.  I love that it is clean and simple but still totally eye catching.

Practical Scrapper Sarah

There's more....click on the Read More button

Altered Projects

Wow, you ladies sure do love altering things! What a fabulous round of submissions which is bound to inspire everyone in some way. Today, we have a wonderful array of projects ranging from the simplest of skill levels all the way through you hard core altering machines. Check them out...

Practical Scrapper Fern

Dee Dee Catron

Practical Scrapper Patricia

Card and Altered projects using Chipboard

Hope everyone is having a great Labor Day Weekend.  To kick off our week we thought we'd take a look at chipboard.  In case your sitting there in your scrappy area looking at some chipboard and cannot decide what to do with it, here's a list of what you can do with some "naked" chipboard to make it more interesting...

Paint it with your favorite color of acrylic paint.

Mist it

Stamp a design on it.

Cover it in pigment ink and embossing powder.

Add whimsical doodles with some of  markers or pens.

Embellish with tiny rub-on letters or designs.

Give it some bling--add rhinestones, pearls, micro-beads, or glitter to it.

Cover it with patterned paper.

Add some Glossy Accents or Crackle Accents to add more dimension to it.

Decorate it with your favorite stickers.

And just what if you don't have any chipboard on hand?  My favorite way to save money on buying naked chipboard is to use those items you already have in your house...cereal, cracker, pasta boxes are the quickest fix for this scrappy dilemma.  Hand cut, machine cut which ever you prefer, just cut two of the same to "double it up" to give you a more stiffness.

Enough talk...today, we have cards and few altered projects from our readers and designers to give you some inspiration examples of how you can use it... 

Practical Scrapper Teresa Jaye

Practical Scrapper Christine

Rachel Kokes

Challenge Me Tuesday: Flags

***Next week we're featuring customized buttons*** Show us how you can transform a button, or just a great fresh way to use them. Send us a link to your project at Practicalscrapperslayouts(at)gmail(dot)com If you would like for us to feature your work. 

If you thought banners were a popular page element in the past year or so, just wait until flags and pennants catch on! I've seen a few manufacturers releasing stickers or die cuts in flag shapes, and making your own is easy!

Flags are a great way to convey a message, or signal a celebration.

Practical Scrapper Erin

On my layout, I used a sticker by Echo Park layered on white cardstock, and "mounted" on a wooden skewer that I misted with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist. 

Practical Scrapper Christine

Christine made flags and attached them to stick pins.  She used Momenta paper and embellishments throughout the card and added some black doodling (100% inspired by Practical Scrapper Erin!) throughout to give the products a slightly bolder look.

 Practical Scrapper Michelle R

Here the flag coordinates with the rest of Michelle's page, using October Afternoon Product from the Rocket Age Collection.

Layouts Using Circles

We had you spinning round and round with our fabulous circle cards on Monday, today we take a look at our favorite layouts featuring the use of circles.  As with any trend, it always "comes full circle" and makes it way back around.  These never ending lines just don't seem to fade away.  Here's a look at our top 10...

Practical Scrapper Teresa Jaye

Julie Leonhardt

One Layer Cards

One of my favorite things about Practical Scrappers is that we are a place that embraces and showcases all the different styles of papercrafting that we can find.  I love to look at layouts and cards that are totally not my style, but still an incredible piece of art.  Clean and Simple (CAS) has really been exploding in popularity lately.  Today we're going to be showcasing one layer cards (a card that has no additional layers - everything is attached to the original cardstock).  There are no hard and fast rules on this, just a general guideline.  I think you will enjoy seeing that even in this style of card making - it is not always CAS.  I challenged our designers to really give this one a whirl (this was a first attempt for most of them) and here is some of the cards they came up with.

Practical Scrapper Christine

Practical Scrapper Teresa

Practical Scrapper Brenda B created this two cards.

Practical Scrapper Fern created this one using four stamps and a masking technique

Pia created two sets of cards - the first is invitations and the second is another invitation.  Either way her son is going to have some cute invitations!

Practical Scrapper Audrey created these three sets of cards.  Aren't those little feet adorable?

Practical Scrapper Samantha

Practical Scrapper Kerri

**Designer projects are not always linked in our posts, but you can always find their blogs in our sidebar or in the staff tab**

Red, White, and Blue Layouts

Welcome to another fun-filled day of layouts!  Here's our patriotic tribute to the 4th of July by celebrating the colors red, white, and blue in layouts.  These 10 layouts will leaving you "ooohing" and "aaahing" for more just like those fireworks...

Practical Scrapper Samantha

Practical Scrapper Sandi