Free Fall Word Art

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

Freebie Friday has arrived along with some sweet inspiration and quite possibly, one of my all time favourite kits from The Kit Cart Designs, Blustery Days. You can find it in my favourite shop, the Digital Scrapbooking Studio AND it's on SALE!!! Let's dig in to all of this fall festivity!

Cool template, eh?  It's LissyKay Designs template and I used a series of photos from a family trip to Cochem, Germany quite a few years back.  Such great times and a fantastic place to visit, too.

Here's a good look at the kit.  Isn't it just fabulous?!  That truck, those pumpkins and the cutest woodland creatures, as well.  Eek!  Take a look at the entire collection by clicking on the preview below.

I thought the alpha from this kit was pretty awesome and knew it would make  great word art.  What do you think?

Here are a few ideas for what you can do with the freebie.

Keep it uber simple by placing a background, one of Jamie's gorgeous mats found in the collection and your word art.  POW!  Scrapped in minutes! Frame it or use it as a cover or in between page.

If you have a couple more minutes to spare you can scrap a layout like this one.  Grab your most awesome fall photo bomb, put the word art in a corner of that blown up shot and border it up top and bottom with lovely papers, ribbons, ric rac and consider a tiny cluster.  Voila!  Scrapped in no time at all.

If you can't get enough of the freebies, take a look at some of our most recent as well as freebies coming to the blog soon.

These stickers would be great on the bottom of a kiss or for your agenda.

Download this unique, Halloween template.

 Here is another recent template for you.

 If you are more into traditional scrap, take a look at our most recent mini.

These awesome templates will be coming very soon.  Make sure you get your butt back here for them!

Thanks so much for spending time with The Cherry.  

Our freebies are always Personal Use Only and are not to be resold or claimed as yours.  Thanks!

Halloween With The Cherry On Top

 Happy Halloween, Cherry fans!

This is what we did for our village's Halloween festival.  I'm an American Ex-Pat living in a rural village/suburb in East Flanders, Belgium.  Halloween hasn't quite taken off in Belgium, but it is growing in popularity.  Especially, in my village.  Yay!  This was our third (I believe) year of our Halloween Celebration.  The party committee asks that everyone do a bit of something scary to dress up our community.

The biggest problem I find, is that it's nearly impossible to find Halloween stuff!!!  On a jaunt to Ghent, I came across a window dressing store.  Eek!  I checked it out on line and saw it was open to the public and they had some pretty cool Halloween stuff.  I purchased the grave stone, skull, bones, that hanging, black death skeleton thingy and some black mesh.  Etalage Gouwy can be found here.  If you want to see more photos of our party, click here.

This photo is for better detail.  I bought the large, full skeleton, the tiny skulls in the glass bowl and the spiders at Paradisio.  I also got JJ's costume there.

The bats are hung with nearly invisible wire, hehehe...They come from templates you can find on our Pinterest board, Halloween.  The raven is also from a template.  I printed out the raven, cut it, then glued it on to the inside of a cereal box for rigidity, painted that side and cut again.  You can always use a black marker if your paper shows a bit around the edges.  I hung it in the cage with more of the nearly invisible wire.

For the long vase, I used the black mesh and placed the bones in and around it.  Books help give height to the arrangement and the candles really help bring the whole thing together.

More candles outside, pumpkins from the fruit and veg box and we're ready for the visitors!

The chain is also from Paradisio and JJ named the skeleton, T-Bone.  Hehehe...

At the last minute, I found this Jack-O'-Lantern at the Aldi.

I used nuts from our neighbours tree to keep the candle steady in my glass jar along with those tiny skulls.

This guy is Gerald.  His eyes light up and there is a motion sensor and scary noise.  Very noisy! I turned it off since no one would be walking by anyway.

Liam wanted to be a ninja, again.  Yes!  Easy peasy!  Black jogging pants, black long sleeve t-shirt and a ski mask.  Cake!  He made some paper Chinese stars from a video he found on You Tube and took his safe, foam sword.

If you don't have a ski mask, here's something I found on Pinterest that you can do with a long sleeve shirt.

Liam thought he had the problem solved, when we couldn't find his ski mask, which was two pair of underwear!  BUAH!  This kid!  (Yes, they were at least, clean.)

JJ wanted to be a skeleton this year.  I broke down and spend the 7 Euros for his costume.  He found the mask way too scary and didn't want to put it on.  Dad tried to encourage him by saying, "Once it's on your face, you don't have to see it any more".  Hehehe...He at least let me get a few photos with it on.

This can probably go on one of those meme's about Failed Pins !  Hehehe...I wasn't feeling all that great and just didn't put the time into the make up. Then I forgot my cape!  Ugh!  Everyone thought I was a witch, again.  Hehehe...I was SUPPOSED to be a vampire-ess.  The wig drove me nuts and those awful fake teeth left my mouth sore for a couple of days and made it impossible to talk!  Hehehe... 

This was the look I was going for.  BUAH!!!  Not even close!

There you have it!  Our wacky Halloween!  Hehehe...

Thanks so much for stopping by for a peep and we hope, a laugh.

Happy Haunting!

Luigi's No Cost Costume

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We are hanging with the Halloween theme.  I just love Halloween.  Although, it's not taken off in Belgium, it's on a slow roll.  Yay!

Of course, the kids love Halloween.  Perhaps like your kids, my kids are serious gamers.  Last year, Mario was the big deal and JJ had to be Luigi from Luigi's Mansion, at the last minute.  I was a bit frazzled at first.  Especially, with the vacuum.  The clothes, no sweat.

Jeans: Check!

Green T-shirt:  Check!

White Gloves:  Check!  (a pair of my winter gloves)

Green Hat with L:  Check!  (my hat with a hand drawn, green letter L, glue dotted to my hat)  Hehehe...

Black shoes:  Check!  (He just so happened to be wearing these heavy, black shoes. Pure luck!)

Moustache:  Check!  (thank you, black eye liner)

Now, bring in the vacuum.

Materials we used:

cardboard, black marker, scissors, red book wrap or wrapping paper, aluminium foil, funnel, tape (a lot of tape)  hehehe..., a large plastic water/wine or soda bottle and hose thingy

I realise that this is not a beautiful project, but JJ was absolutely over the moon with his costume.  We started off with the wheels.  I took apart an old box and used a side of it.  Find something round in the size you want.  I used my tape and then something larger or smaller to get both circles if you even want to.  You could always just use one circle.

Then, put your kid to work!  JJ cut them out and coloured them just the way he wanted.

The tube was the trickiest part.  Unfortunately, I used something that was too rigid and it was difficult keeping it in the bottle and all nicely connected.  Try to find something with give and flexibility and that is light, too.

Painting the bottle would have taken a while and I don't think the result would have been all that great.  I went for our red wrap that we used to cover the boy's school books.  (Take off the handle.)
If you don't have anything like it consider red sheet paper and a lot of adhesive or tissue paper and a decoupage adhesive style. 

The hose was definitely the hardest part.  I filled in the excess space with folded up paper from the recycle bin and then went crazy tapping around both the bottle and the hose to keep that sucker in there.

Simply cover a plastic funnel with aluminium foil and adhere it to the hose with more tape.

Again, my work horse...TAPE!  Hehehe... Attach it to your hose.  You could cover your tape job if you prefer.

As you can see from the last two pics in my layout, I used a belt to keep the vacuum on JJ.  Ya need really good adhesive for that!  Double sided carpet tape did the trick!  Hehehe...It didn't move!

If JJ wasn't so particular, I would have used a box for the vacuum part, cut out a side of the box and hung it over a back pack, attaching it with staples, more than likely, but it had to be this shape.  Darn Autism.  Hehehe...

We made colourful buttons with our cardboard and markers, too.

Sure, there are other ways to make this costume that are tons better.  This is what we did.  JJ loved it. He got to help with its construction and everyone knew exactly who he was.

Good luck with your costume design and Happy Halloween!

Lessen Your Ironing Load

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

After a small hiatus, we are back to the Dirty Laundry Series and we are discussing ironing more in detail.  We'll go over ways to bringing down that mountain of wash into a mole hill.

As mentioned in our previous series, *hanging laundry out to dry is a fantastic way to shrinking your ironing load.  If you don't like ironing, make sure you choose only the pieces that really need it.  Then get an awesome *steam iron to cut your ironing time in half, at least.  Also, *shaking out your clothes really well after the washing cycle has finished, is a huge help in getting out the wrinkles.

Try to *fold you clothes as little as possible.  Folding brings on wrinkles for sure.  My hanging clothes go right from the line, on to hangers, on to a rolling rack.  This way, if something comes up or I don't have time to get them into the closet, they won't get more wrinkled.  It's also really easy to put the clothes away this way.  Even the kids can just grab it off of the rack and hang it in the closet.

If I do use the dryer, then the clothes also go right from the dryer onto the hangers and on the rolling rack.  Often, you can smooth out wrinkles, too.  The longer your clothes sit in the dryer, when the cycle is finished, the more wrinkles they will get.  I've read putting ice cubes and starting the cycle again fights against wrinkles, too.

The fabrics you choose often dictates how much ironing you'll have to do.  Synthetics often don't need ironing and the iron easier, too.  They also need a lower setting on your iron so make sure you read the care instructions and adjust your iron accordingly.

When shopping for clothes, try to keep your ironing pile in mind.  I'm a cotton freak.  100% cotton, please, but that does mean a lot more ironing.  You can often tell just how bad a garment will need ironing, if you look closely enough.

Wools, cotton knits, cotton blend knits, wool blend knits, angora, mohair and cashmere usually do not need ironing.

Denim isn't too bad either.  The heavier, the better.  Denim wrinkles can also be smoothed out a bit, too.

If you don't know what setting to use on your iron, by all means start off with the lowest setting.  I remember a long way back I thought I'd iron the lining of a jacket.  Oops!  Huge hole!  Never iron spandex, rayon or velvet.  If you dare, go the lowest you can and do a test.

Some old tricks to getting out the wrinkles are introducing damp with a water spray bottle, hanging clothes in the bathroom while you take a shower, but I've found very little effect.  Just get the darned iron out!  Hehehe...

Prioritising could be helpful, too.  Categorise your ironing pile!  Put the clothes that are just slightly wrinkled in one pile or hanging, even better  and have another pile or section of clothes that definitely need the ironing.  When you're sick of it, see what's left.  Hopefully, you'll get through the dire section.  Put yourself in a place with a nice, outdoor view, by the TV or play some music.  I often iron while my boys do their homework.  I can speak with them, help with them and we keep each other busy while doing chores we don't like.  Hehehe...

I found a lot of very helpful links.  Here are some where you can find a lot more detailed information on fabrics, care and ironing.

This one is specifically for ironing temperature selection.

This article has a lot of information on fabric and how to care for it.

We've got TEN blog entries on laundry.  From your washing area, machines, detergents, care, line drying and the most efficient and green ways to care for your clothes.  Go to the search field at the top, right of this blog and enter "laundry" and they will all pop up for you.

We'll be back with more laundry advice and tips.  We're still wanting to hit on the basic pieces everyone should have in their wardrobe.  Quality clothing purchases.  Shopping on line for clothes and what to do with your old clothes.

Thanks for spending some of your precious time with The Cherry!

Three Halloween Freebies

 Welcome, Scrappers and Crafters!

We've got a super hot blog, today filled with inspiration, awesome Halloween goodies and your favourite, freebies.  Three freebies all linked up for your downloading enjoyment.  There are noo excuses why you can't get scrappy this weekend.

The Digital Scrapbooking Studio is my go to place for Commercial Use as well as Personal Use digital products.  They have the best prices around and a very easy to use site.

We are totally getting into the Halloween spirit at the Studio and here at home.  Our village just had their Halloween event yesterday and we had this place decked out to spook and delight our neighbours and visiting ghosts and goblins.

This is my large picture window in the front of the house.  Every year I go all out!

Next to winter and Christmas, I love scrapping Halloween photos and creating fun, festive, free hybrids for the holiday.  Like posters and stickers. Check out my layout love using goodies from the Studio. 

These four layouts use The Kit Cart Designs' new kit, Oct. 31st.  I love this colour palette and Jamie has included so many super Halloween elements, you're just going to love it.  From spiders, webs, brooms, candy and potion bottles to ghosts, eyeballs, witches and your traditional floral and binding goodies as well.

The above, two layouts uses Heartstrings Scrap Art templates, Spooktacular.  These templates make scrapbooking really fast and easy and if you're needing some mojo, they help with that, too.

This is last year's window and photos.

I turned my above layout into this fun, page border and Jamie has it on her blog for free.  Click on the image to get there.

I have a freebie available for your Halloween photos, too.  Click on the image to get to our previous blog where you can find this fun template.

Another great Halloween theme kit you can find at the Studio, is this one from LouCee Creations.  Trick or Treatin' also has fabulous colours and LouCee's uniquely awesome elements. 

LouCee also has a super freebie on her blog in the form of a template.  Hit up that image to get to her blog and enjoy the free stuff she posts on a regular basis.

We've got tons of freebies if that's what you are here for.  Scroll through our blog and find tons.  Join us on our Facebook Page for daily freebies and our Pinterest as well.

All of our goodies are for Personal Use ONLY.  Do no resell or claim them as your own.  We love to see your comments, shares, likes and +'s.

Have a super scrappy weekend!

Recycled Box For A Mini Album

Howdy, Crafters and Memory Keepers!

Late in the summer we made this mini album from our free printable.  Today, we have the up cycled box project to store your mini.

He were the laminated pages from the mini.

This is what the mini looked like completed.

This is the box we recycled.  You may have something similar to this one with your crafty stash.  There are so many ways you can pimp up boxes like these.

You can trace around your box on your favourite paper, cut and adhere, modge podge or you might choose to paint and embellish like we did.

We used our free Summer Printables for the album and to decorate our box.  Choose some coordinating, plain paper and paper the inside.  Apply your favourite Cute Card and cut out any other embellishments from the printable to finish it off.

Use dimensional glue dots to give your embellishments height and added interest.  Add some glitter or pearl drops around the edges and some stickers, letters, dates or journaling for the final touches.

Here's another project we recently finished.  We'll be back with more details on this lovely mini, next time.

Thanks for making time for The Cherry.