Archive for February, 2010

I was in the process of making some valentine things for my DGK and to add a little zip to Gareth’s metal bucket I decided I would add a square of blackboard Paint.

Luckily, my #1 Daughter had blackboard paint in several colors.  I used painter’s tape to mark off the area I wanted to cover.   This took several coats to get the coverage as good as I wanted it and I let it dry in between each coat.  I started off by painting first horizontally and then the next layer I painted vertically.  I made sure the last coat was painted vertically.

It turned out really well, and I was so surprised how well the chalkboard paint handles the chalk and the ability to erase it clean.

I’ll show you the rest of the pictures tomorrow.  I have them on the camera and need to upload them.

Thanks Phyllis for a great day today.  I had a lot of girl fun, the food was great, and I thought the scrapbooking store was great.  Now, I need to start work on the count down calendar’s for Christmas.  You are one awesome girlfriend!

After I added the 3 additional JetMax Cubes to the “Woman Cave”, I decided I needed to do something about the tangled mess of wires under my desk.

I move my laptop from the “Woman Cave” to my chair in the den all the time and wanted to have easy access to pull the power supply.

But I always seemed to be getting a hold of the wrong plug and disconnecting my phone.

With my label maker in hand, I took the time to label each plug.  Genius!  I also took the power supply my lap top and put it at the very end, that way I would always know what plug I needed to pull.

Sometimes it’s the little things that makes us happy and anything neat, orderly and labeled makes me very happy!

I took the card that my #2 Daughter made the other night and made one too.

This is such a cute card and it doesn’t take long to make, especially if you keep everything to a minimum.

But, at last I can’t do that, I’m into the details.  Click on the picture and take a close look at the card and envelope.

Here is the inside and more of the detailed stuff.  On the left side of the card I made a little pocket to put a gift card in.

I used a “Pop Culture” CB embossing folder to run through the middle of the right side where the sentiment is and then I put it at the bottom of the little pocket on the left side.  I used this particular embossing folder because the mats are made out of cartoon looking pattern paper of Superman.  I thought it went nicely since this card is for a little boy.

Easily changed up for a little girl because you can change the colors and add ribbon, bows and flowers.  The baby buggy is just a circle with 1/4 of it cut away, how simple is that!

This “was” a 1956 Ladies Head Vase.  This belonged to my Step-Mother who past away a couple of years ago.  It was in mint condition.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have it in a good place and it got knocked off and broke.  I was just heart sick, but I should have put it some place where it would have been safe.

Used this adhesive to put it back together.  I can’t say that it is as good as new but I can say it is now in a safer place so it will not get broken again.

 Here she is all mended.  I’ve put her up on a shelf away from things that get “tumped” (go ole Texas lingo) over and away from little hands.

Here’s to you Melba and thank you for everything you did for me.  You were an awesome step-mom and taught me so much.  Every time I look at this lady it reminds me of You, for you were a true lady.

This is the Valenhtine Card I made for Daughter #1.

I’m not going to give you a step by step on this card, but click the picture so you can see all the detail.

The pink bracket in the background was left over in my stash.  I cut the little frame out at 2″ using Mini Monogram and George Cart.  I took Mulberry paper (left over from another project) and glued it on the frame.  I bought the Feb calendar from a store call Stamp Asylum in Plano.  I drew the heart around the date.  The flowers are felt (again in my stash) and the brad I got at M’s along time ago on sale. I love this saying and I love it even more since it was a $1 stamp at M’s.  Yes, that is zig zag stitching around the pattern paper.

I inked the edges of the card and the pink bracket but that is about all the inking I did on this one.

I cut this out of a magazine (she loves retro things) and the dress was green so I took the time to color it red.

I matted it and then put it and the sentiment on some dimensionals.

I hope she gets a kick out of it.  Unfortunately, I made Daughter #2 a valentine and didn’t get all the pictures taken before I mailed it.  I’ll see if I can get her to send me a picture, I used vintage music to make a flower, it was so cute and the song was “Love Lifted Me”.

Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!

The second part of the Sculpey experiment I thought I would try something I have not done with Sculpey Clay.

Over a year ago when I bought the Sculpey Clay on sale, I also bought the Pasta machine to use with it.

I wish I had one of these when I was making bread dough ornaments.  I think I could have gotten things really smooth and thin.

I set it up on my glass table (it attaches with a vise grip mechanism).

So the trick here is to pull off some Sculpey clay and knead it, then starting at the largest setting feed it through and turn the handle.

As it comes out I double it over and lower the setting by one number (9 – 1).  Now that doesn’t mean you have to go through every setting, it just means you send it through the machine until you reach the desired thickness.

 I made a variety of leaves, some disc and an attempt at a flower.  Click the picture to get a better look.

I love the ones that looks like oak leaves.  I took my stylus and poked holes in the disc and once they cooked I pulled some baker’s thread through them.  I will definitely pull this out again but I want to look for a book that gives me some ideas on shapes and how to do them.

It snowed here all day yesterday.  The flakes go from being small and light to huge flakes.  If you click on the picture you can see what I’m talking about.  This must be getting close to the end of time if it is snowing in Texas twice in one winter.

I have enjoyed this so much, but of course I don’t have to get out in the cold.

Henry is checking out the fireplace and thinking, oh yeah this is the spot I’m staking as mine.

Oh, baby it’s cold outside and I’m headed to the kitchen to make hot chocolate.  Enjoy your day, Friday we try to get out and go bowling.  There is a bowing alley locally that opens up their lanes to all the senior citizens for free.  Hmm, I really hate to admit that I’m a senior citizen (according to them) but enjoy being able to play for free.

I found the stamp on clearance at M’s.  It has the definition of thanks in the background.

I started out with a 5″ x 6″ card; however, it creates a lot of area that needs something done with it so I think I’ll stay with a 4″ x 5″ card.  You wouldn’t think an inch each way would make a difference but it really does.

I CB the white mat using the Stylized Flower embossing folder.  Because this white mat was bigger than the CB folder I had to do a little manipulating of the mat to get the stylized flower across the entire mat.

I popped the pink stamped mat on the black mat so there was some distinction.  I used the MS doily punch to create a little offset  banner.  This ties the plaid ribbon in with the rest of the card.

I inked the white mat with pink and the green banner with Color Box green olive.

Yep, that is a double looped bow made with the Bow-Easy template (love that little tool).

Found a scripture that suited the purpose of the card and used the same green pattern paper to tie the inside to the outside.

The bow on the inside is just a simple little tie with a little flower charm.

I took the same embossing folder I used on the card  and ran it down one side of the folder and then chalked it.

I love the way this came out, click on the picture to get a better look at the envelope.  Would love to hear from you let me know what you think.

If you haven’t seen my “Woman Cave” here is the link.  I fell in love with these JetMax cubes simply because they house all the stuff you need for crafts in a very orderly way and there are so many versions of the cube to meet every organizational need you could have for a craft room.

Since Christmas and my Birthday I ran out of space to store some items so I decided to add more JetMax cubes.  These cubes run about $29.99 retail (or as I say $30.00) at M’s; however, I wait until I get a 40% off coupon and they are not on sale (when they put them on sale they are usually only 30% off).

My TV sat on my desk and all of the drawers underneath it are full of Cricut cartridges.

If you look underneath my desk you can see the edge of my printer.  It is setting on a plastic two shelf stand on rollers.  Needless to say the printer is bigger than the stand and so it shakes when I use it to print.

Ok, I confess I’ve added 3 new JetMax cubes to the 21 I already had making me a grand total of 24.  I added this 3 drawer underneath the TV.  Yes that is Barefoot Contessa on the screen.

I decided to see how long it would take me to put this little 14.25″ square box together.  Now let me say before I begin this is one of the easier ones because it doesn’t have any drawers (with a bunch of little screws).

So it is 3:45 PM and I snap a picture of the clock.  Honestly, this is real time stuff…..I know you are on the edge of your seat.

Since I have put so many of these together, I have figured out there is a simpler way to put the initial box together than how the instructions says to do it.

I put the bottom and the sides together holding them in place while I slide the back panel in and then put the top on.  I then screw the top into place, turn it over and screw the bottom into place.

Here is the finish product.  This one is going directly under my printer with the longer slots horizontal to hold the paper for the computer.  I have 8.5 x 11 white paper, some pink paper and some paper that has been printed on one side.  I’ll recycle that paper for test cuts or test printing.

Drum roll!!!!!!!!   Yep, this took me no time at all, of course I used an electric (ok, battery operated) drill.  Thanks Phyllis & Joel (it was my Christmas present 2 yrs ago).  Nothing like having friends who understand your love of power tools.

Slipped it under the printer (of course I added the little 4 drawer JetMax cube as well) and it works perfectly.  It steadied my printer and the cubbies are perfect for my paper, ink and photo paper.

I’m not paid by JetMax to advertise their product; however, every dealings I’ve had with this company (they are here in TX) has been very pleasant.  Out of  all the JetMax cubes I have bought only one was missing some screws and a handle.  I called them and they sent the missing items to me no charge (not even postage).  This is a great product and I wish I had thought of it!

There are literally so many combinations you can arrange with these little cubes.  My favorite are the 4 drawer and the 3 drawer.   Some of them even come with little dividers so you can corral all the tiny stuff.

Hmmm, I wonder where I can add the next group of JetMax cubes?

After I made several of the flowers I thought I needed to make some leaves to go with them.  I could have easily done this by cutting them out of paper, but I wanted to try something different.

I bought this Sculpey Clay over a year ago and have never messed with it.  In a former life (wink, wink) I used to make bread dough Christmas ornaments for some ladies and this felt a lot like that.  You know what happens you get burned out on something and it’s very difficult to pick it up again.

Pulled out a tool kit that contains various tools for working with tin and knew that these same tools could be used for the clay work.

Here I torn off a piece of clay and kneaded it and rolled it around in my hands until I got it warm enough and smooth enough to roll out this egg shaped ball.

If you hold this in the palm of your hand and put your pointer finger on one end and roll it back and forth you will get this tear shape.

Place it down on the craft mat and using your palm flatten it out.

It is already taking on small leaf appearance.

Using a “push” tool you can take the tip and put some indentions into the clay and make it look more like the veins that run in a leaf.

You can also take molds and get an impression of a leaf using sculpey clay.

I used an acrylic roller – looks like a small rolling pin to flatten out the clay.  I did it much like you would do pie crust, where you roll across it, lift the clay up and turn it a 1/4 of a turn and roll again, until I got the clay out big enough to accept the mold.

This one is a little “fuzzy” but after I lifted the mold off I used my Cricut Spatula (I don’t think they would have thought that it would be used for clay) to cut around the outside of the impression.

Because this is such a thin piece of clay you have to be very careful with lifting it up off the craft mat onto a silpat or cookie sheet.  Now that I think about it, you could have probably used a silpat to roll it out and then just put the silpat on the cookie sheet.  I bought a cheap silpat ($1 bin at Target) for my craft projects like this.  Works great and if I do something to mess it up, no big deal.

Sculpey Clay needs to bake for 15 minutes on 130 degrees in the oven.  Well, my oven will do 100 degrees or 170 degrees but not 130 degrees.  So I put it on 170 for 10 minutes, but I didn’t do just leaves I made some other stuff too so stay tuned.