I went to Dollar Tree and bought a set of four pair of brightly colored socklets (ok, that’s what I’m calling them and thought they’d be really fun to decorate with my peg stamps.  I practiced on a pair that I ruined when I cut the socks apart.  I used Staz-On ink in black for my stamping as well as the peg stamps.  You can find them at http://www.pegstamps.com.  I also used a Derwent Inktense pencil as it’s a permanent ink once it dries.

Went to a few more garage sales today and didn’t really find anything thrilling, so I came home and started cleaning my craft room.  It seems like I say I’m cleaning my craft room constantly, but honestly, it’s a horrible mess and it doesn’t matter how hard I try to keep it organized, it just looks terrible.  I can’t even begin to consider making a video craft room tour, because it’s such a holy mess, but maybe some day I’ll get it cleaned out.

I saw a couple of videos on how to make a purse out of cardstock to hold cards and I don’t think it will be too difficult, so my plan for tomorrow is to finish the rest of the covered note pads and then work on making at least one of the purses and filling it with cards.  I think I’ll do something with a floral theme and then use my flower dies to create six cards that are simple but elegant looking.  I hope they will be something that people will want to buy at the fundraiser I’m making them for.  You never really know what people will buy though and I’m hoping I don’t disappoint my girlfriend with the things I come up with.  She’s really talented, refinishes furniture and makes signs with sayings on them.  They’re really unique and lovely, but too complicated for me to ever consider making.  I would like to videotape her making one, as she’s really good at it.  Maybe I’ll talk her into a video project soon.  I hope so, because she does make some really interesting projects.

I went to several garage sales today and fell in love with an old oak rocker that fit me like a glove.  I sat down in it and know I had to have it.  Do I have one spot open in my house for it?  No, but I couldn’t resist.  It was so comfortable and reminded me of being at my grandmother’s house and swinging on her porch swing.  I love it and it was $10, a real bargain.

I bought some crafty items because I promised a friend I’d make some projects for a fundraiser of hers and I wanted to try a couple of different things, so even though I promised myself I wouldn’t buy any more paper pads at Michaels, I bought three paper pads so I could make sets of cards and little purses to hold the cards.  I think they’ll turn out pretty well as I’ve almost finished the notebook holders I’ve been working on for her and now it’s almost time to turn to card making for her money maker.  I don’t know if she’ll even be able to sell the things I make, but I’m giving it a good try.  I promised I’d make ten of the notebook holders and so far, I’ve finished five of them.  I need to make one on video and haven’t done that yet, but wanted to wait until I felt like I’d really mastered them.  So far I’m a little bit shaky about the measurements and want to be certain I know what I’m doing when I make the video.

I have to say that sometimes I’m just too tired to do much.  I did go to our closest Michaels and bought some of the big paper pads that I keep swearing I’m not going to buy again.  I bought them this time to make card sets for a friend who wants me to make things for her to sell at her charity’s rummage sale.  I like trying new projects and re-making old ones with a new twist.  I love making covered notebooks, so made some of them and used some fun embellishments and made others with hot glue.  I’ll have to do a video on the hot glue, as the results were fairly amazing.

I also want to use the big paper pads for the sentiments that are inside.  I think it will make it easier to make inexpensive card sets with my pre-made cards and envelopes.  I hope it will anyway.  I have so many of the pre-made cards and I’ll be thrilled if I can get rid of maybe one box of them.  Two would make me even happier.

Tomorrow is garage sale day, so I’m hoping to spend some money and find some really fun goodies.  At least that’s my plan.  I might come home with a big bunch of nothing.

Two of my close friends have their birthdays in August.  They are kind of frisky, and will get a kick out of these cards.
The old lady with the bootie is from AI Art impressions and the zombies are from Art Gone Wild.  I decided to color the zombies and use the sentiment from the AI set for both cards.  I used wobbles to make the lady’s face wobble and the other wobble I used on the cut out of the lady zombie.

I colored the zombies with Touch 5 markers and Rich wrote the numbers on the screen. I used gray tones to color the zombies.  I like to use the lightest color first for the whole image, then go over the highlights with a  darker tone, then go back over everything with the lightest tone again.
I used a peg stamp small crab to stamp on the rubber duckie.  You can find them at http://www.pegstamps.com, and Lindsay the frugal crafter almost always has a discount code for them on her latest peg stamp video.
I had a stamp from Seaside Stampin Inc  that had some sand on it and I inked the stamp where the sand was, and used baked brown sugar ink to stamp it with.    I’m sorry I was out of frame for the sand and part of the zombie coloring.
I used the 1″ chip brush to color in the background with Cool Caribbean ink.  I used Summer Sun to stamp a sun from the peg stamps and stamped it in the corner.  I used another chip brush to color in the sandy area with more crumb cake stampin’ up ink.
I cut one of the lady zombies and used a black Sharpie to outline the lady so there is no white showing.  I tried to cut one of the wobbles down so it would work under her head, but it doesn’t really wobble in the end.  I had to add foam tape behind the rest of the lady zombie, so she didn’t tear at her neck.
I found nail art jewelry at the Dollar Tree and used it as embellishments on both cards.

One of my girlfriends asked me if I would donate some of my crafty projects to a group she is affiliated with.  I wasn’t sure what I should make, because it’s a fund raiser, and most of the things I make aren’t really money makers.  So I decided to make little padfolios and decorate them with paperclips that have embellishments on them.  I’ve made four of them tonight and will be making several more for her event.  I’m not sure if that’s what she had in mind, but I also might add in a few easy cards.  I have one card in particular that is really simple to make, but won’t make them much money unless I sell it in a set.  I was thinking about making a padfolio to hold the cards and then make sentiments that are separate and all they would need to do is choose which sentiment they want, and stick it on the card they choose.  I’m not sure if it would be a big money maker either, but it’s worth a try.

I had bought a small Sears hot glue gun at a garage sale.  It came with a big bag of glue sticks and I thought it was a great deal.  It was a great deal for the glue sticks, but the hot glue gun doesn’t have a trigger, you just push the glue stick in if you want glue to come out the other end.  I’ve never seen a glue gun like that before, and I have to say, it doesn’t seem to be very safe.  I already burned my thumb really badly, but that wasn’t the glue guns’ fault, it was just another day of crafting with Sandy.

I’m happy with the little notebooks I’ve made and am hoping that they sell as I’d hate to be the one whose products aren’t marketable.  I’d be really embarrassed if that was the case.  I’m already gearing up to get all of them back once the event is over.  Isn’t that just the way things go?

I have a plan for the day that includes making a tote bag out of duct tape.  They sell really cute patterns at the Dollar Tree, and I bought a bunch of them.  I wanted to make things out of duct tape so others know they can as well.  The only difficult part is ripping it off of the roll.  It’s not that hard to work with, but,  I’ve only made a small change purse in a video.  That was pretty easy, so how hard could this be?  It’s big, probably the size of a beach bag, but I really want to make it.  If I’m a failure, I can live with it, but I want to give it a try.

I have some thank you notes I need to make as well, so will be doing that too.  And now that I’ve made a card using an embossing folder, I’m going to play with some of my others to see what kind of fun I can make with them.  I love covering paper pads and thought maybe I’d make some covered paper pads or journals using embossing folders to give them more dimension.  I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be doing, but will definitely be trying out some duct tape bags first, as it’s been on my mind for a while to give them a try.

I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.  Cross your fingers for me, duct tape awaits.

Our nephew and family went home today and Rich and I were sad to see them go.  Aggie, our oldest dog, was exhausted from all of the activity over the last five days, so we decided to spend the afternoon and evening resting, watching movies, and relaxing.  She seems a little bit more spry today and we’re really relieved.  It’s hard when you have older animals, watching them decline.  The first thing I do every morning, is check to see if she is breathing.  Until I see her chest move up and down, I hold my breath and fret.  I’m by nature a fretter.  A lot of people will tell you that you can control fretting, and I’m here to say they are wrong.  I started fretting in first grade.. I had a teacher who was really large and extremely loud and I was scared of her.  Back in those days, we didn’t have kindergarten, so I started first grade when I was four (turned five in November.)  I can still remember doing the Pledge of Allegiance and feeling my lips go numb and not knowing why.  A few minutes later, I was off to the nurse’s room and going home.  I spent a couple weeks in the hospital while they ran every test they could think of, until one day my teacher came to visit, and all of my symptoms appeared at once.  Problem solved.  By then it was almost the end of the school year, so I just had to get through a few more days and I was free of her.

Anxiety is a terrible thing, and I really feel for people who have it worse than me.  I’ve learned to push past the things that I’m afraid of and try to force myself to do them.  It’s never easy, but I always feel like I’ve accomplished something terrific when I do.  I doubt other crafty bloggers talk about things like this, but then again, most YouTube channels aren’t created around the craftiness of someone with physical limitations.  I don’t have issues with words like disabled or handicapped, but have heard from others that those words are not socially acceptable, so I go with the flow.  I really only have one word that makes me crazy, and that’s crippled.  There’s just something about it that really bugs me.  Maybe you have a word that makes you nuts, and I’d love to hear it.

I’ll end this post on another note about Aggie.  This summer has been hard on her and although we have air conditioning in the house, we also have fans for rooms that just never seem cool enough.  Aggie’s never seemed interested in the fans before, but this year, she absolutely loves them.  I don’t spoil her (that was a huge lie), but this year, anything she wants, I give her.  That includes buying big box fans at garage sales and placing them strategically where she likes to lay, so she can always have ice cold air blowing on her.  We have oscillating fans, and she lays so close to them, sometimes they can’t oscillate.  If she’s cooler, she seems less anxious, and pants less.  Maybe it helps with her pain.  I don’t know, but whatever the fans do for her, I’m going to make sure she has one in every room she lays in.  (No, she’s not spoiled at all.)

 

Today we decided to do an acrylic pouring technique that was really addictive.  It involves using acrylic paint, glue and water, as well as some silicone spray, pouring them into a cup and dumping the cup onto a gesso’d canvas.  It creates cells of color that are really interesting and my great niece and I loved making them.  We ended up with one that we both thought really turned out well and were thrilled with it.

We made a video showing how we did it and finished the video on the bath bombs and had a terrific time hanging out together.  She’s sixteen and so much fun to do crafty things with.  We had ideas for more things we were going to try, but ran out of time.  We tried to do something crafty every day, but we still just didn’t have the time to accomplish all that we wanted.  Oh well, we’re hoping they’ll come again next summer and we’ll be able to do other projects then.

 

Rubber Stamp Tapestry came out with three new bee inspired stamp sets and sent them to me.  I was thrilled to get them and made a card to go with them.  The sets are Bee-utiful Day which is a red rubber stamp set that needs to be cut apart.  I show how to cut this set out.  I store mine in cd cases and use Aleene’s Tack it Over and Over to glue the stamps inside.  I use a label maker and create a label with the name of the company and stamp set to put on the end of the cd case that doesn’t open.

The second and third sets of stamps are both peg stamps.  The first is called Chamomile Bee and the second is Field of Clovers.

I used two of the sentiments on the card from Bee-utiful Day and stamped one inside the card and the other on a strip that is 2 1/2″ wide and 5″ tall.  I used a die to make a row of small holes the length of the strip on both sides.  The card is an A2 size which is 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ .  I took a piece of white cardstock and used a Darice embossing folder of a honeycomb background that was 5 1/4 x 4″.

I used the mini buzzing bee, chamomile sprig, mall schamomile flower, fern, and open chamomile flower to stamp on the strip.  I used Gina K’s Sweet Corn ink to rub across the embossed paper and used one of my chip brushes to go around the edge of the strip of paper.  I stamped bamboo leaves from Memento dew drops and Espresso Truffle for my inks.  I colored the flowers with alcohol markers and the colors are listed on the video screen and used a Chameleon blender pen to blend the colors on the flowers.

Stamped ” have a bee-utiful day” on the inside of the card and used the sprig with the same green ink and one of the chamomile flowers to stamp around the sentiment and colored the centers of the flowers with the same alcohol markers.

I put foam tape behind the thin strip of paper and put tape runner and wet glue on the back of the embossed piece and laid it on the card base and added the strip with the stamping to the front of the card in the center.
I stamped some of the chamomile flowers and the sprigs on the envelope and colored them in with the same alcohol markers.