Hey kids!
It's October - one of my favorite months in Oklahoma - and I'm very happy about that.
I'm also very happy that my first inchie for October includes a pumpkin.
Friday was a busy day.
It included my D'Art group meeting, lunch on the patio at our favorite Mexican restaurant with Me Darlin' Mither, Prince Charming, Beeg Seester and Bro, and giving Me Darlin' MIther an impromptu hair-cut because I just wasn't able to do her weekly styling without doing so.
Then Miss Helping Hands came home for the night, and we spent a good part of the evening designing and working on fall door decs for her dorm residents.
This year she has 45 girls, so we tried hard to keep the design simple.
Here's what we did.
We got out the 25 big, black shipping tags I've had in my stash forever, and we made 20 more just like them out of black card stock.
We stamped 45 pumpkins on old manila file folders (see...you really do need to keep everything!), and...
... watched a really boring movie with one of our 'adopted' daughters while we cut them all out.
We punched some 1/2" circles out of orange card stock, punched a hole in the center using a standard hole punch, and then glued them over the original grey reinforcements on the tags.
We tore some black and cream decorative paper scraps into strips.
And we tore some old manila file folders into strips.
We coated the back of a decorative strip with glue (stick), adhered it to one edge of the tag...
...and then turned the tag over and trimmed off the excess.
We glued on our pumpkin...
...and adhered a strip of manila file folder the same way we did the decorative strip, trimming after gluing.
Then we added another scrap of decorative paper to the top corner and trimmed it because, remember, we're trying to keep it simple.
Ahahahahaa!
Now, the reason we added that strip of manila folder is because we needed a place to put the name of the resident.
And, again, because we're keeping it simple, we used some of my favorite alphabet stamps and some black ink to stamp each and every individual letter of each and every one of the 45 names on the roster.
Also, in the name of simplicity, we applied some Crystal Lacquer to one random letter of each name to give it a 3D effect.
Which meant each tag had to be carefully laid out to dry...
...on my studio floor.
Did I mention that somewhere along the way it became Saturday afternoon?
We did pretty well using what we had on hand, but right about here we had to make a trip to the store for some ribbon to complete the project.
We cut nine inches of wide ribbon and seven inches of narrow ribbon for each tag, and Miss Helping Hands patiently started tying them on.
Now, I won't go into details about what happened at this point, but it involved some whining, some almost-tears, and a few little pats on the head.
By whom, I'm not gonna say.
So we moved the whole operation outdoors and one of us laid on a blanket in the sun to keep from having a breakdown, while the other one of us tied more ribbons.
At last...
...we had them almost all complete...
...and another batch of 'simple door decs' went back to college with Miss Helping Hands.
Yes. We're out of our minds.