It's been awhile

March has been a busy month here. I haven't had much time to update the blog so here goes...

I had friends from Indiana come and visit. We had a lovely lunch together and spent a beautiful day at the zoo with the kids.

The weekend after we attempted to have our own scrap-a-palooza with Tiki Laru and little sis Amy. Not much went according to plan but all was good since their brother arrived safely home from Afghanistan that weekend. :)

Last weekend we went bowling with little buddy's preschool class. We had lots of fun and I almost, almost, beat the man of the house. Is it cheating if we used the lane with the bumpers too?

I started (and almost finished) another online card class. It's called "Creative Chemistry" and shows the different Tim Holtz/Ranger products and how they work and why. It is definitely very interesting and I'm learning a lot of techniques.

I also signed up for a "card kit of the month club" through simonsaysstamp.com. I've been busy playing with my new goodies.

Enough talk. I know y'all really just want to see pictures of what I've been up to lately...

Reorganizing...again

It seems like I am in the constant search for the perfect organization/table set up for my craft stuff. I currently use an old desk that had a shelf on the top. I took the shelf off thinking that it would limit my room and throw a shadow over my workspace. With the recent addition of my silhouette I was pretty much forced to put the shelf back on. The good thing is that I now have more room for my laptop and lots of room for "stuff" underneath. It will be nice to have stuff right in front of me so I won't have to go searching around.

One of these days I will be satisfied with the way things are, but I doubt it. I also went through all of my carts and reorganized. Tiki Laru and her little sis are coming over Friday night and we are having a scrapfest at my house. It will be lots of fun and I've been looking forward to this since we decided to do it. Bring on the junk food, crass movies, and lots of creativity.

Just a quick update...

March is a crazy busy month for me. We have 5 birthdays, I have friends visiting from out of state, friends staying and scrapbooking, and at the end of the month I have a Hunger Games weekend planned. I shudder to think about what my house will look like come April.

Anyway, I did make some time to play with my new Silhouette and I must say that IT. IS. AWESOME. It was worth every single penny I paid for it. The software took a big of a learning curve to figure everything out but the possibilities are endless. The cuts are absolutely amazing.

I'm looking forward to experimenting with it a little more on Sunday and trying out the different features and I promise to post some pictures of some of the things it can do.

I must say it is a far cry from my Slice. It served its purpose and has been given a home with my mom.

Is it 4:30 yet????

I finally bit the bullet and decided to order the Silhouette Cameo. I love my Slice but the simple fact is that sometimes I want to cut bigger images and I hate the fact that I have to buy a whole cartridge for just a few images I like.

Anyways, I ordered it yesterday and as of right now it is on the UPS truck on the way to my house. I'm excited beyond words.

March is a really, really, REALLY busy month for me so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to play around with it. On top of school and work I have something going on every weekend. And by every weekend I mean EVERY Saturday and Sunday in March. I'm tired just thinking about it.

New Stuff in the Shop

I found these cute little notebooks at my local dollar store and thought they would look so much cuter covered in paper and other fun stuff. As always, I just posted these in my etsy shop. Oh, and there is a random sympathy card at the end too.


They are really easy to make and I thought they'd make great teachers gifts.

Uneventful

This weekend has been pretty slow. I should have been crafting Saturday but I decided to read Mockingjay instead. I tell you, those books sucked me right in. I took advantage of the kid being gone a few hours and tackled my closets again. It feels so good to get rid of so much unneeded stuff. I also found the humidifier that I've been looking for. I knew it would turn up eventually. I did whip out a few notebooks but I haven't taken pictures yet.

Hope to post more stuff soon! Stay tuned...

the learning curve

So I have finally decided to mess around with blogger and see all that it has to offer. My goal is to make additional pages with things such as tutorials, gallery, and miscellaneous things.

I also discovered that I can add "buy now" buttons that link to paypal so you'll also be able to buy things right from my website. I will still be linking things to my etsy shop but after 120 days the listings expire. I have to pay again to relist the item. If it is a seasonal item I'd rather not but if I list it on my blog then they will always be there. Plus not everyone has, or wants, an etsy account.

Please bear with me during this transitional process. I'm not web savvy whatsoever. I know how to waste time on the internet but all of this code stuff is above my head.

Don't forget...you can always subscribe to the blog using the RSS feed, google friend, or by email. All options are on the right hand side.

Testing

Item 1

new cards and stuff in the shop

I've been a busy bee working at my craft table.

As always, they are listed for sale on my etsy shop.

Shop News

I finally decided to buy a banner for my etsy store. It looked so blah and I think this is a nice touch.

One of these days I'll dig deeper and figure out how to put more advanced features in the blog. But for now it works.

Packages!!!

I don't know why I get so excited when I get packages in the mail. I mean, really, I was the one who ordered the stuff.

Anyway, today I finally got a t-square ruler and a powder tool for embossing and de-sticking stickers.

It's the small things that excite me.

Now, if only my other package would come....still waiting after almost 2 weeks.

Perfect Ending

This weekend was overall lazy. The huz and the boy left the house for a few hours yesterday to get hair cuts. I cleaned and got it over with so I could craft the rest of the weekend.

The result? A ton of cards. Some are pictured in the previous post. Then the kid took a nap today and I knocked out a few more.

I'm slowly using up my stuff one brad and chipboard piece at a time. It won't happen overnight since it took me about 10 years to accumulate all of the stuff. One day I'll take pictures of my craft area and my organization and all of the stuff. Oh who am I kidding? I change the way I have everything organized about every other week.

Using up the Stash

I used up more of my stash o'stuff this weekend.

Check it out!

As always, these will be listed on my etsy shop.

Clean & Simple Cardmaking...Day 1...another sketch...

I promise this is the last one since I'm not working on anything tonight and class starts tomorrow night.

The yellow paper is just plain cardstock that I dry embossed with my texture boutique. The yellow fibers are way old. Yay for using up some of my stash!!!!

Clean & Simple Cardmaking Day 1...again

These cards were from a sketch from Day 1. They are basically the same but vary slightly. I didn't like the button so I moved the butterfly. I tend to make 2 of each card since it limits the amount of paper I waste or that ends up in my scrap pile. I already have tons of scrap paper and am really trying to use it up.

Instead of inking the stamp I used white acrylic paint. It gives it a different look. I'm still trying to perfect my bows but I'm sure that will just come with time.

Clean and Simple Cardmaking Day 3

The cards from day 2 just weren't my style so I didn't try to replicate any of those. I did try a card from day 3.

Once again I used the tone-on-tone with the circles by stamping a background stamp with versamark and adhering them to the same color paper. I used up some of the butterflies in my stash that I had bought off etsy last year and also used up some of my thickers I had. I had to fight the urge to add stickles. Stickles are the devil.