Whirlpool of Imagination

Framed

I spent my craft time today organizing and mounting new rubber. I have am embarrassingly large bunch of stamps that need to be mounted so I got a start on it today. It's been good to take the break from stamping. I think by the end of the week, I'll be ready to jump back into the stamping waters.

As soon as I saw this paper at my LSS, I knew that I wanted to make a frame. I then found these 3d flowers (Anna Griffin) at the store too, and I knew they had to go together. I painted the sides with a ivory paint, added the paper and the flowers and finished it off with some ribbon. My mom really liked it so it just might make its way into her house.

Cold, wet and rainy describes today. I was freezing - the heat has to come back on - one word, yuck.

Dancing Couple

Thanks Susie and Margie for your kind words. I missed you guys at the fair - it wasn't the same without seeing you two!!

Yesterday was designated as an official spring cleaning day. We pulled out furniture (thereby evicting numerous dust bunny families), changed over the clothes from winter to spring, changed all the bed linens for the spring and generally cleaned things that now really sparkle since the permanent layer of dust has been chased away. I also took a stab at cleaning up the studio. During the week of the fair, I kept making stuff but not putting things away. It piled up until, by yesterday, you couldn't see the table. It was bad. I put away all my fair items and made headway in putting everything else away too. I'll keep working at it for the next couple of days and will be a happy stamper again when I can see my table.

As a result of cleaning day, I didn't stamp (although after my week, I need a day or two to recover) but I have some things to show you for the next couple of days so I'm good to go until I make something new. This card was a suer easy card that I wanted to make for anniversaries, weddings, love....that kind of theme.

It uses one of my favorite sayings from Papertrey's Out on a Limb set:

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world."

I paired it simply with this old stamp I have from Stampington.

I'm hoping to catch up on my message boards and blogs today - I feel so out of the loop! Hope you have a spectacular day.

Yeah, Friday!

I am always happy to see the end of the week get here but this week I'm especially happy. While I had a great time at my fair (hi to any of my fair readers!!), it's been a crazy tiring week and I'm ready to relax for a couple of days. I took a few pictures the first day of the fair which I've finally gotten around to uploading. Here's what my tables looked like:

This is a straight on view of the front of the table. I have all my various covered notebooks (comp journals, jr legal pads, mini comp journals), checkbook, photo brag books and in the far left a few nugget tins.

Up top I have gift sets, binder clips and a couple of mosiac flower pots I had created.

I had two tables for this fair - this is the second table. Here I have my iris folded cards (I charge more for those), notecard sets, memo cubes and little tins decorated and filled with candy.

Here are my two card spinners. This is the first fair that I had two. Each spinner holds 72 designs and I got them at Displays 2Go if you are in the market for card spinners. I have to say the service was very good and the shipping was reasonable, given the size of these things. They break down for transport which makes it (fairly) easy to take to fairs.

If you look close, you can see my mom behind the spinner. She came the first day to help me finish my set up and keep me company.

This was where you could find me all week. I'm hoping to do a few articles over the next few months that focus on craft fair do's and don't's and some ideas for those of you considering jumping into the fair circuit.

But for tonight, I'm going to relax - have a great night!

Cake Anyone?

The idea for this card is not mine originally but it was so cute, I had to give it a go.

Having a cuttlebug made this one come together pretty easily.

I used the swirls folder for the cake layer and the swiss dots folder for the tops of each layer. The original example I saw used ribbon and tiny pearls but as I didn't have those, I went with the swiss dots. I used primas for a bit of decoration and Swarovski crystals for some sparkle. The background is stamped with a lace backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms.

Day 4 of the fair went well. I'm having fun meeting new people as well as getting visits from my regulars. The week has been crazy busy and a part of me is sad to see it end but another part of me is definitely happy to get back to my regular routine.

For a Little One

I did this easy design up in both pink and blue colors to add to my baby card inventory.

Both of these cards are essentially the same. They just use a different top layer color.

Although it looks really dark here, both cards are paired with brown. I really like both the light blue/brown combo as well as the pink/brown combo.

The cuttlebugged layer is cut with my old scallop scissors. I had forgotten that I had them but will definitely make use of them now that I realize I have them.

The sentiment is either from Spunky Stamps or Green Grass Stamps, I'm not sure.

Here is the same version in pink.

Day 3 of the craft fair went well. It helped me a lot that today was Administrative Assistant's Day. I had quite a few people grabbing last minute gifts and cards for their Admin's!

Hope your week is going well!

Dad Yesterday, Mom Today

Hi all. I got some much needed sleep last night, even got up early to go to the gym. I had a fantastic sales day at my fair today - I may be staying up late to replenish my stock of some items! Since I showed off a Father's Day card yesterday, I thought I'd give Mom her due today. With the use of the patterned paper, this card came together quickly.

This paper is from one of the DCWV stacks, I believe. The stamp is from TAC, colored with a marker and the sentiment is from Papertrey. Are you noticing a trend lately???? I have been using a lot of TAC and Papertrey in all my cards.

This morning I made the cutest (well, I thought at least) card with a Lizzie Anne stamp. I forgot to take a picture this morning and it sold at the fair. I'm hoping to make some more tonight so I'll get a chance to show you all.

We are having the most glorious weather lately - sunny and warm. In fact, I think I need to break out the sunscreen. Conor looks like the back of his neck got a bit too much sun today. I'd like to get flowers for my window boxes but I'm not totally convinced the cold weather is history yet - I might wait another week or two just to be safe. Of course, I have no green thumb whatsoever. I love the look of flowers but have no ability with them at all. I buy them and have Mo plant them and take care of them. He does much better than me! Have a great night!

Can I nap?

It's 7pm -is it too early to go to bed for the night? In anticipation of the fair today, I went to sleep really late, woke up in the middle of the night and woke up early in the morning. I'm totally dragging right now. I have fair pictures in my camera - I hope to maybe upload them tomorrow. Today went fine. Monday is usually the looking around day. Since this fair is a week long, most people browse first, shop later.

When preparing for this fair, Father's Day is coming up in the next couple of months, so I made some cards for dads. I'm really stuck in the brown mode for dads though - I need to break out. When you look at the Father's Day cards on my spinner, they're all brown!

This ship stamp is from TAC. Originally I had the caramel layer plain but it looked a bit too plain. I pulled out one of my backgrounders from Cornish Heritage Farms to add a little something. Have you seen some of their new backgrounders. I only have 2/3's of their backgrounder stock and I must have more. I just may treat myself once the fair is over.

Boy or girl?

I was originally going to show you another little project but since I haven't shown a card in a few days, I decided to go with the card instead. We have friends who are expecting twins, a boy and a girl. I made this card as her shower card.

After looking at it, I figured it would also be good as a card for someone who didn't know who was having a boy or a girl. Since we have several friends expecting, I made a few more.

The image is from TAC and she's colored with prismacolor markers. I paper pieced her dress with patterned paper. I haven't done a lot of piecing but found it to be pretty easy.

I used the cuttlebug for the background - originally I ran the pink and blue through separately and then cut in half. Unfortunately, if you look close you'll see why this isn't the best idea - the words are slightly off. So the second time around, I cut the cardstock ahead of time, used a little tape to tack the two colors together and then ran it through the cuttlebug - worked much better this way.

Tomorrow starts my craft fair. For my local readers, hope to see you there sometime this week. I should be checking in through the week - I have projects lined up for the week.

Little Projects

Last year I got a great deal on 4x6 mini composition notebooks. Since I sell all types of covered books/journals, I figured these would fit right in with the rest of my inventory.

I've had these paper flowers for ages and haven't even opened them up. I figured this was as good a time as any. I also have a lot of buttons when I went through my button stage when I was scrapbooking a lot. I figured I'd better start getting some use out of them. I sewed the button onto the flowers so that it wouldn't fall off. I have a TON of floss from my cross stitching days. Are you sensing a trend here?? I have lots of toys/gadgets that I really need to start using up.

The sentiment stamp is from Stampin' Up. It's a purple stamp so I'm thinking it was in a special catalog or something.

I love how the flower in the sentiment matches this paper. And the ribbon in person looks more vibrant. This one makes me smile when I look at it.

If it doesn't sell, I may just keep it for myself!

This is my least favorite of the four I'm showing today. I had originally adhered this paper to the notebook before I had a plan. This goes to show that I should always have a plan before I start sticking things down.

Although if I have learned anything in the five years that I've been doing craft fairs is that what doesn't jump out to me speaks to someone else. Items that are not my favorites sell and some of my most favorite items don't. You just can never tell.

The stamp is from TAC.

And here is my last picture for the night. I have had this paper forever. In fact, I'm not sure I have full sheets of it left anymore or just scraps.

I bought these felt flowers from my LSS on my last trip there and the shape and color matched so well that I figured, why not?

I hope your week has been a good one. We had yet another gorgeous day here. The kids got a bug catcher set for Christmas so now that spring is here, we broke it out for them. They have spent the last two days hunting bugs. I say great as long as they stay outside with it!!

Have a great night.

Check Please

Each day this week, I've been going down to my studio with my head just whirling. The week before a fair, I try to make exactly 5000 new items so that I have a lot of new stock. Of course, I'm lucky to make just a fraction of that but it usually means me making all sorts of items; items you won't see probably any other time of the year.

Today I decided I needed to make some new checkbook covers.

This first one is the only one with stamping on it. The paper was double sided so I used a bit of both sides along with this stamp from Stampin' Up.

On this second one, I wanted to recreate the flowers from the paper. So I punched them out from white mulberry paper and added some silver stickles to the center of each one.

This is very simple and plain but hey, they can't all be flowery! This just uses some paper and cardstock for the strips.

If you have a burning desire to start making checkbook covers, I have ordered covers from Annette at Stamp on This and covers and registers from Vicki at W.I.N.G.S.. If you're looking to make just one, these places are not for you but if you'd like to make a whole bunch, both of these sites have fantastic customer service.

Big news today was Meg got her ears pierced. She was sooooo excited. And the poor thing was so brave - you could tell that it hurt and she had tears in her eyes but she was so excited and happy that she just gave me a ton of hugs until her eyes cleared up. And she looks adorable with the earrings - my little girl is growing up.