A Spooky Banner and apology!

I’ve been gone for a week and I am sorry.  My work schedule got really hectic and I was battling a sinus infection .  I pretty much went to work and then came home and crashed only doing what I had to do.  I didn’t work in my studio for over a week.  I missed it and I missed blogging.  I am back and promise to be give you as much inspiration as I can muster. 

This week I am getting ready for my spooky dinner party with my grandchildren.  I started this banner a week ago and then when I wasn’t feeling well and my schedule was a bit more hectic, it rested on my work table unfinished. And really what I had to finish was very little.

The Spooky Banner!  It really was fairly simple.  I used purple and dark orange cardstock as well as paper from the Old World DCWV stack and the orange patterned paper  is from Debbie Mumm’s Seasonal stack from 2009.  I used purple and black organza ribbon for the pleated ruffle under the orange layer from Joann's and the ball trim was from Joann's as well.  All the ribbon comes from Joann's and Hobby Lobby.  What did take a lot of time were these organza flowers.  Sorry the photo is blurry.  No matter what I did this morning I couldn’t get a good photo. 

The construction was simple but time consuming.  I seamed a length of ribbon 13 inches long for the large flowers and 7 inches for the smaller flowers and then ran a gathering stitch around the inside of the seamed ribbon.  I pulled the thread tight and fastened the thread.  Then I glued a paper circle and a button in the center.  Some of the flowers only have a button.  For the small flowers I folded the width of the ribbon in half when I ran the gathering stitch and it made a smaller flower.  I used a flower on each letter and as the center of my bows. 

The letters are from Storybook and the background  cuts are from Gypsy Wandering and its  designer tags.  I cut the chipboard with the regular blade, but set the Cricut to cut 3 times. All the layers were inked with black ink and faux stitched with a black gel pen.  You can’t really see the bottom layer, I pop dotted the orange and organza layer up from it the letters and strung the banner using three different ribbons and adding the scalloped oval between the letters. The ovals include words like boo, eek, weird, and shriek! 

And that’s that!  I have no idea what tomorrow will bring but I hope to be back tomorrow with something new.