New stuff in the shop

Ok, I haven't posted stuff I've made in a little while so here goes...

As always, all items are in my etsy store here.

Wow!

I would like to give a HUGE thank you to Mod Podge Amy for featuring my haunted house on her awesome blog Mod Podge Rocks!

For those of you that don't know....mod podge is a "must have" product in any crafter's arsenal of stuff. It glues, it seals, it will cook you dinner. Ok, so I may be exaggerating just a wee bit. It's some good stuff and I use it a lot. They come in a variety of formulas and I most recently bought a bottle of the dimensional stuff to make some cool magnets.

I was going to blog about my crafting weekend in St. Louis but this week has been nothing short of craptastic and I don't think I've been on my laptop at home all week. Shocking!

But....it was tons better once I saw my email from Mod Podge Amy so everything has been roses today!

I would also like to give a big shout out to Tiki Laru. She was the one who told me to send in my link. I never in a million years thought that I'd get picked. Maybe, just maybe, I'll make her something extra special this weekend (wink wink!). I'd also like to thank my family, and especially my husband, for supporting my crafting habit. I secretly think he likes helping me :)

Name Change

Etsy has been updating their site and adding new and better policies. For one time, and only time only, they gave shop owners an opportunity to change their shop name. I thought it was the perfect time to change mine since I had to come up with something quick when I originally signed up.

I had a few awesome ideas but they were taken (of course!).

Some of the ones I liked were:

Scrap Paper Scissors
Paper Covers Rock
Paper Covers Scissors

There were a few others that were similar but every one I tried was already taken. In the end I chose Ink Stamp Paper. It's pretty lame but not as lame as the name I already had. It really didn't match up to the kinds of items I was making and selling.

Anyway, I'm trying to get all of my stuff packed up for a quick trip to St. Louis for my annual visit for Tiki Laru's birthday. I'm amazed at all of the prep and stuff I have to take for a 36 hour trip. But it will be totally worth it and we'll have tons of fun. It'll be nice to get away from home and work and the stress of everyday living. I'll have a total of 6 hours of uninterrupted QUIET time in the car. :)

I finished up Tiki Laru's present tonight. Pics will come on Sunday. I'm sure there will be other pictures of our adventures at Archiver's.

Weekend Recap

Why do weekends go by so fast? We spent Saturday cleaning the house and playing outside. I'm not sure how much longer the nice fall weather will last before it starts getting cold, cloudy, and rainy.

Today we went to a pumpkin farm for my son's preschool family outing for October. It was a lot of fun. We took a hay rack ride, pet/fed horses and goats, and went through a corn maze. Little buddy had a blast and didn't want to leave.

I cut out a ton of tags to make for my etsy store. Decorated a bunch while LB was in the tub. It looked like my craft area thew up on my kitchen counter.

I would have taken a picture but I realized I left my camera out in the car. Why didn't I just go out and get it? Well, because I'm lazy and it's dark outside. And when I say dark, I mean DARK. Country living doesn't include street lights so if you venture too far it gets pitch black....and then my active imagination takes over. I watch too many scary movies. LOL!

I'll try to download some pics sometime this week although I'm not promising anything. I have to pack for STL and figure out how to consolidate my stuff so everything will fit in the car.

Sunday Funday

 My buddy was gone for most of the day today so I started working on some Christmas stuff for my etsy shop.

First up - I started working on these tags at the crop I went to last weekend.

I thought they'd make nice tags for table settings at Thanksgiving dinner or fall parties.

Next up...Christmas tags

I made this wood block thinking that I'd use buttons to spell "FALL" but that didn't work out as planned.

And finally...I'm working on some sort of Christmas house but I'm not quite sure what I'm doing yet.

I love fall

I love fall. I love the smell of falling leaves. I love the colors of the trees. I love the cool weather (except it hasn't been too cool this week!). I love fall colors. I love that Halloween is just around the corner.

Here are some blocks I made for fall. They will be listed on on my etsy page tonight.

I had some scrap paper that looked fall-ish to me so I used up the rest of the paper.

Set 1:

Set 2:

Set 3:

I took the pictures outside on my deck which I thought was fitting today since the farmers are harvesting the beans and corn across the street.

Harvesting crops = unhappy sinuses and LOTS of dust!

It's been awhile...

Wow! I didn't realize that it's been so long since I posted. Last weekend I went to a Scrap for SIDS fundraiser. I had 10 hours of uninterrupted scrapping and it was great time for a great cause. I didn't get much done...worked on a present for a friend which you'll see after Oct. 21st (wink wink), a few cards, and made some name placecards/fall tags.

I also threw together a few sets of fall themed blocks over the past week or so.

I've also been really busy with school. But the good news is that I have all of my homework due this weekend done already (yay me!) so I'll be able to take lots of pictures of my projects and post a few new items in my etsy shop.

The weather is supposed to be absolutely beautiful this weekend so I plan on staying home and enjoying some time outside with the little guy. Other big plans include cleaning out my car and pulling out the garden. We'll probably pull some potatoes if they're ready. I've been looking forward to fresh red and sweet potatoes!!!!

Mom is coming over Sunday to work on something she's been working on. I'll see if I can sneak a pic or two of her project. She's taking little guy home with her on Sunday night. Monday is Columbus Day and daycare and the post office is closed so little buddy will be staying with grandpa all day while the rest of us work!

Harvest Blocks Part 2

Ok, so the site is acting really weird and wouldn't let me type any text beneath the picture.

Next I painted a thin layer of paint on a rubber stamp and stamped the image on a square of paper.

I inked grunge letters with forest moss distress ink then covered with peeled paint distress stickles.

Then I put the whole shebang together. I cut the squares a smaller size so that you might see the distressed technique but I think I should have made them a little smaller. They aren't terrible by any means but they aren't my favorite set either.

Please ignore the dirty dishes in the background. It is Sunday and yesterday was house cleaning day. I would end up doing dishes twice a day if I let it bother me that much. :)

Harvest Blocks

Me and my mom got our craft on today.

I made a set of harvest blocks that I'm still deciding on if I like the outcome or not. Once again they didn't go according to plan but the finished product has its pros and cons.

I mixed my own paint because I needed a darker brown than what I had. I painted the blocks a base brown and then rubbed a white candle on the edges. Why? We'll get to that. Then I painted another coat of burnt orange. Once that coat was dry I rubbed the edges and the orange paint rubbed off where the was on the block.

Nice distressed look, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Football Widow

I hate football. My mom hates football more than I do.

What's a girl to do? Well, craft of course! Mom is coming over in a wee bit and we're going to craft our fool heads off. I'm working on another set of blocks and I'm not yet sure what she's going to do.

I'm also going to try a new technique. We'll see if it works out as planned, ends up as a happy accident, or totally fails.

Pics will follow later...

Halloween votives

This weekend has been rainy and cool. After I got home yesterday from my trip to visit my friend (see previous post) I came home and my little buddy was napping. I took the opportunity to try a new project since he NEVER naps for me :)

I'm sure I found the idea in one of my scrapbook magazines.

I bought the glass votive candle holders at the dollar store. I used StazOn ink to stamp trick-or-treat on  the glass. StazOn is the only ink that will stick on other surfaces such as glass and plastic.

Once I stamped the image I covered it with clear embossing powder and hit it with the heat gun to melt it.

Note: glass gets hot when it is heated up...and embossing powder is hard to melt on glass.

I stamped the image on 2 sides. I tried to stamp a spiderweb and spider on the other sides but I think it was just too much...and I didn't expect the ink to take so long to dry so I put a giant fingerprint in the middle of the spider. Luckily the ink wiped off which is weird because that stuff usually doesn't come off of anything, including clothes. Don't ask about the ink but let's just say a friend got it on her pants.

They still needed a little "something" so I put some ribbon through the xyron and stuck it on top.

Like what you see? I listed them in my etsy store here. I made 2 but if you'd like them with a different phrase just let me know. I take custom orders.

Project: Disney is finished!

I met up with my friend halfway between our houses yesterday to deliver her darling daughter's birthday blocks. We live in different states and the halfway point isn't too far for either of us. We had a wonderful lunch and spent a few hours just walking through the mall and visiting.

Here is a peek at the final product with a few "action" shots:

In my previous post I had put a base coat of white and pink on all of the blocks. The next step was to trace the letters on the blocks. I downloaded a Disney font and printed out the letters. In order to keep the spacing right I just cut the letters out of the paper and traced them on that way.

 Lots of cutting...

tracing and painting

I traced the letters and went over them with a paint pen. Then I filled in the spaces with acrylic paint and a brush. It would have been easier to just use the paint pen but the fumes were giving me a major headache.

The next step was to trace circles on the birthday block. I used the caps of both of my white and black paint pens. 

And...viola! I'm so happy my friend liked them :)

We also decided she can reuse the base blocks over and over and just repaint the top block every year. 

Despite a few "issues" I think they turned out really well.

Close Call

Have you ever thought a project needed just a little more something? Well, I was done with the disney blocks and thought I'd spray them with a clear coat just to give them a little more protection. Sometimes the podge can get a little tacky and I didn't want the paint to come off.

I set everything up for spraying outside. I sprayed and then went to play with little buddy on the swings to give the blocks time to dry. Well, I hadn't expected the wind to pick up just a smidge and the newspaper totally stuck to the front of the blocks. Let me tell ya...I wanted to cry. CRY! They were so perfect and now I had bits of paper stuck to the fronts.

One block came away unscathed. I tried some cosmetic work on the others but they looked bad. Tonight I tried a little rescue. I lightly sanded down the ridges and splotchy touch-up paint that looked bad. Add another few coats of paint and they look good as new!

Moral of this story: go buy the little triangle things they sell that can are specifically made for painting stuff. I'm going to pick some up tomorrow. Class tomorrow night so I won't be able to finish until Wednesday.

And....I'm meeting my friend halfway between our two respective towns (we live in different states) sans child on Saturday for lunch, trading of stuff (I have blocks; she has baby stuff she borrowed), and maybe a little shopping. I can't wait to see little Miss A!

Finally pictures!

Let's try this again...

These were super easy to make. The letters are plain paper mache letters I bought at HobLob. I just painted them. cut paper to size, and mod podged them on. Ink the edges and add a sealer coat of the podge and voila! The black and purple paper is core-dinations paper. I crumpled them up, smoothed them out and sanded the ridges and edges to make them look distressed.

New items in the shop

I guess I should have said item and not items.

Anyway, here it is. They are paper mache letters that spell BOO.

You can get them here.

I'll try to post the pictures later. For some reason I can't get them to add at this time.

Project: Disney

A friend of mine wanted me to make her a specific Disney birthday decoration for her daughter's first birthday.

Here is what I've done so far...

WARNING: If your name is Amber and you don't want to see what progress I have made just close the page now!

Seriously, don't scroll down if you don't want to see.

Ok, this is your third warning....

I bought a large piece of 4x4 wood from my local home store.

The husband was kind enough to cut the wood into pieces for me and sand down the edges. I think he secretly likes it.

Several coats of paint...

Apprentice or child labor?

and more coats of paint

Disclaimer: I am no Picasso. Amber sent me this graphic that she used for the invitations. I just traced around it and started painting.

The next steps are to trace around the letters and start painting "Happy Birthday" on the other blocks. I think I'm going to become very good friends with my exacto knife.

I'll update with more pictures as I get more blocks finished. Until next time!