My Fantasy Craft Room

     Although this is my fantasy Craft room, for one lucky woman, it's her reality!  I was wondering about hosting a tag swap and did a google search and click on something here and clicked again and again and before I knew it I ran smack into Karla's Cottage, her beautiful blog and amazing craft room.  I just can't stop drooling over it and thought I would share it with you guys.

My dream of selling locally might stay just a dream..

    With a bundle of nerves and a large bag of my Note Cards, Bookmarks, Tags and Journals I stepped into the Craft Shop on the Square and spotted a lady sitting in the corner at a tiny but gorgeous Victorian era desk with new right away she was the manager.  She was a very nice lady and she quite nicely told me that although my things were just lovely, she has 2 others booths that sell note cards and doesn't want too much of the same type of items.  My heart just sank.  I pulled forth my journals and invites and other small things that I knew the other 2 ladies were not selling ( I eyeballed their tiny areas as I walked in).  The manager brightened a little and said "Well, now these are different."  The very brief meeting ended with her taking my name and number and telling me that she would think about it and get back to me next week.
     So although it's a maybe.. I've the feeling that it's a no go - ah well.  I will keep my eyes opened for another opportunity.

A chance to sell locally

     I found a place locally that sells handmade crafts, either by commission or by rental of a small booth.  The rental fee is dirt cheap and I won't have to man it myself - which is good, having day time job and all that.  So, I have an appointment this morning with the manager and I've been instructed to bring a small sampling of my product for viewing.  Apparently the "Manager" will decide is my product is worthy of their marketplace - yikes... I'm nervous.  Wish me luck!!

Time to Party!! - well almost..

     Halloween is just a few months off, time to get started on making something lol.  I settled on a set of party invitations.  I used the Happy Hauntings Cricut Cartridge to make these and they turned out very nice.  The event card on the inside was done with my handy dandy printer and 4x6 inch pieces of orange cardstock.

     You can check out the rest of the photos and details HERE!

I've got a bad case of Craft-Itis!

     GOOD GRIEF... I have so many craft ideas bouncing around in my head that I'm literally swimming in a Sea of Crafts.  I've got Christmas ideas flowing from the right side of my head, Halloween Ideas flowing from the left side and I think Thanksgiving is trying to bounce out the middle of my forehead lol.  It doesn't help that I just received 4 new Cricut Cartridges.. oh my, time to settle on something hehehe

My Embellished Journal

     I saw a video on YouTube some time ago on how to spruce up a plain journal.  Here is my first attempt at making a plain Journal something rather wonderful.

     This journal is about 8.5 x 5.5.  I used 2 different pink patterned papers that coordinated with each other and cut them slightly smaller than the background paper, which is a dark grey.  I cut the top paper about 1/3 the size of the bottom pick paper and glued the top to the bottom.  I used a pretty black ribbon and glued the ribbon to the back side of the 3 paper stack - the grey on bottom, the full sized pink (the bottom pattern) and the shorter pink (top pattern).  I then used a hot glue gun to glue the whole thing to my journal cover.

     I dug through my scrap paper and found another pink patterned paper that coordinating with the other two and cut out a mat (upper left corner) and also cut another slight larger one using black paper and glued those two together.  I cut out  one of the die cut flowers (can use a store bought one also, or anything really) I actually cut 4 of them so that I could layer them, two in pink patterned papers and 2 in black and stuck a large foam dot in the center to raise the flower.  I also rolled the petals around a pencil to give the flower some definition.

     I cut out some scroll work (pretty sure it was from the Cricut Home Decor cartridge) in black and glued those on two corners.  I found a nice chip board piece in pink that said "Inspired" and put some pink glam gems on it.  I also put some of the same color gems in the center of the flower and in the scroll work.  I then cut out the word ME using the Storybook font from Cricut and also put some pink gems on the M and the E.

     The inside pages of this journal are actually pretty nice, not the plain large lined paper that you usually get in these journals which made the pages look nice, but to brighten them even more, I stamped in pink some scroll work on some of the pages and used another smaller scroll stamp and stamped in black on other pages. Not every page is stamped, maybe 30 total, but still I thought it looked nice.  

Pink Slippers

     I was digging through my bag of finished products that I have for sale in my shops when I found a set of gift tags that I never listed.  These are so cute, they are made using two different Cricut cartridges, the Ornamental Iron and Wall Decor and I used Design Studio to weld the shoes inside the iron gate.  Welding allows me to cut out the design as one design and not have to worry about cutting two separate images and then somehow attaching them together to get them to look like one image.  If you want to view the other photos of these tags, you can see them in my Storenvy shop.

     The little bows were made using the fork method which I have a link to the "How To" video here and in an older post in my blog also.  They were super easy to make and so cute.

Making Paper Flowers

     I've been remiss.  I really thought I had posted about making these wonderful paper flowers.  I used one of the 5 petal flowers from a Cricut cartridge (on shadow), and cut 3 of them, then I pained the petals with my own glitter concoction.  Then I pretty much followed the instructions in the YouTube video and they came out very nice.  I designed a set of tags using them and you see the tags here.

     Here is the link to the video with super easy instructions on how to make these.  (I'm going to add 2 different links here, the one that I did was using the Cricut paper flower with 5 petals, but there is another one using a different die cut, Sizzix I think, but I'm certain that cricut has a 6 petal flower like this somewhere.

Paper Flowers, using 5 petals

Paper Flowers, using 6 petals

A new Note Card

     I somehow ended up with 2 extra Note Cards that are based on the "Gnomes in the Garden" collection, but did not have enough of the little gnomes to use on them.  I think they turned out really cute even without the Gnomes. 
     I still used the Freshly Picked Cricut cartridge to design the flower pots and I used all the different layers features to get the 3-d effect.  The diecut word "Bloom" is also from the same cartridge, they even have a handmade seed pack option that I going to try out. This card is 5x7 and made from white card stock and I cut out enough of the "Bloom" word's to glue to the back flap of the envelopes in order to match the cards.
     The butterflies were made from the Picturesque cartridge and I used the base and frame options for the layers.  I only glued the center portion of the butterflies body so that I could lift up the wings and give them the "taking flight" look.

A little "Gnome" of an idea..

     LOL - "Gnome" of an idea - get it? hehehe anyway... I was thinking that I have the Freshly Picked Cricut Cartridge which is what I used to make the "Gnomes in the Garden" note card collection.  One of the items that I can make from that cartridge is a seed packet.  How about putting together some handmade seed packets to sell? do you guys think they would sell?  or any other ideas of what I could do with them? 

The First of the Christmas Projects

     Wow - I can't hardly believe that half the year is gone already.  I know it must be true though, not only does my calendar say so, but I'm starting to get that "Lets do Christmas Stuff" itch!  I keep bouncing back and forth between wanting to work on Halloween and Christmas lol.  
     Here is the first of my Christmas tags and it's actually 1 of a set of 6 that I made.  I try to make one extra of any set that I make so that I can keep one for my own use and the rest of the set goes up for sale at my store.  If you want to take a look at the rest of the set, jump over to my shop on Storenvy and take a peek.

Gnomes In The Garden

I recently acquired another Cricut cartridge, Freshly Picked, and was playing around with it.  I designed a set of 8 Note Cards, featuring little Gnomes... So cute!  I had such fun putting the gnomes together.  I must say that it was rather involved with all the layers and the little pieces, but still lots of fun!  Here is one of the cards with the little Lady Gnome.

   
     The Butterfly was made from the "Picturesque" cartridge and I just cut out the base and the frame.  I used hot glue on the body with the wings raised to attach it to the card.  I folded the wings up to give it the "taking flight" look.  If you click the photo, you can enlarge it to see the Lady Gnome and the Flower pot and get a better idea of the many layers involved.

Hopefully the final re-design of the Calling Card

This looks to me to be a bit less busy and the font's easier to read.  What do you guys think? and yes, I really do want an honest opinion.  I want the very best card that I can make and I don't mind re-doing it until I get it perfect!!!

My Business Card

Do you guys think my card is too Busy?  

Some people are just so darn talented...

Ugh.  I just saw this blog http://www.scenicglory.blogspot.com/ and it's put mine to shame lol.  Now I want to redesign the whole thing all over again */facepalm.