Please Welcome: Carol from Happy Are We

Hi everyone! Carol Monson here joining in on the fun at eighteen25 ;) I was super excited to be invited to share some Halloween happiness with you.

I am a scrapbooker at heart and so I wanted to share a few paper related projects you could do to add to your Halloween decor.

I have an old window frame that I wanted to add some garland to for a vignette I had in mind. I grabbed a collection of papers, some punches and my good old Slice die cutting machine (one of these days I will be the proud owner of a Cameo....sighhhhhh). Oh and a roll of crepe paper I had leftover from a party.

I selected a few shapes to work with and cut them all out. Then I sewed them together on my sewing machine. It's easy to do this on a machine and it doesn't mind the empty space in between each shape one bit. I use a regular needle and thread and sew just like I would on fabric. Just push them in one shape at a time. They will string together and collect in a lovely little pile behind the your machine.

When you're done set that aside and pull out the crepe paper. I've made fringes before using this but wanted to make a thinner one this time so we are going to fold it in half. Cut a selected length and double it. Stack those together and fold them in half. Then stitch along the folded edge of the crepe paper. I used a contrasting thread because, lets be honest, it's just funner. Once you have that sewn together you'll simply take some sharp point scissors and cut your fringe along the open edge. Be sure to mess and scrunch those edges up when you're done cutting. It's not a super thick fringe and I didn't want it to over power my garland, but I think several more layers would definitely be fun if you want to pump it up a bit ;)

Now we're going to put it all together ;)

Along with my garland I also made a picture display of my kids from last Halloween. I used a 7 Gypsies Artist Printers Tray, made a card for each spot and filled it in. It will be easy to replace the pictures every year and leave the remaining cards as accents.

And here's the completed collection. My kids are so excited that I've decorated for Halloween already!! They've made me promise not to take any of it down till Halloween is good and over ;)