I thought these photos of "My First Doll" were so precious.  The dollie was a gift from Denea's mom Pam.

     I'm trying my hand at digital scrapbooking and thought I would show you guys the pages that I've done.  This was done with Paint Shop Pro.  It's actually a lot fun but just at time consuming as "real" scrapbooking LOL

The Baby Shower was a raging success! as I knew it would be.  Any party that my sister is in charge of would not dare to fail !  She is a fantastic party planner and pulls it off every time.  The mother to be was overjoyed with her loot and all of the homemade decorations.  I will post some photos soon, I promise.

Homemade Nursery Sign

 My my niece and nephew's first baby, I made a sign for the nursery.  The sign did not photograph that well, I couldn't seem to get away from a glare in the photo when I snapped the picture looking straight at the sign.  It did better when photographed off to the side a bit.  The images at the bottom are from different nursery rhymes and the hanging is made from pink and white ribbon and white tulle.  The words,elements and images were all cut using various Cricut cartridges.

   

Homemade Apothecary Jars

I've been helping my sister create some decorations for a baby shower that she is hosting and we decided to make some apothecary jars.  These will hold some little baby items like miniature cradles, rattles, baby bottles, etc.  This is the stages of the jar creations which started out with plain jars, candlestick holders, mason jar lids and some wooden beads.  The candlestick holders were spray painted with white enamel and then glued on with E4000 glue.  I then used some little bottles with nibs that I bought at JoAnn's to hand paint the pink and black elements.  I glued the wooden beads together and painted those and then glued them to the mason jar lids (that I also spray painted) and then I hand painted the lids.  It was a very fun project and so easy! 

And another.  I'm sick at home with a head cold, so I might as well play around with Paint Shop Pro lol

     Here is the third background in the Valentine Theme and in case your wondering, the themes were all made using Paint Shop Pro.

So I guess I'm making a Valentine's Theme series and this would be the second in that series.

Here is another background, this one in honor of Valentine's Day.  If you like these, you can use them by first clicking the image to bring up the full image, then right click and choose "save as background".  You can then make your own Windows 7 Theme by right clicking on a blank spot of your screen, choose personalize and a window will come up with your available themes.  At the bottom will be the option to select a background, just browse to where the background that you saved is and click it, then when your back on the Themes window, click the "save theme" link towards the bottom, give it a name and your done.  I made these backgrounds to fit my laptop, the resolution is 1366x768.

I know, I know, it's been forever since I've blogged - sorry everyone, I've been super busy in non-crafty things.  I did fire up Paint Shop Pro last night and make a background for my desktop.  Windows 7 Themes are so lame, I wanted something completely different and couldn't find it, so I made it.  Then I got the idea that I could just make a bunch of them and change them whenever I want.  Here is my first attempt at it, not too bad for a first attempt.

     I'm starting the year off fresh... New changes to my eating habits, new hours on my job, new craft ideas and a new name of my blog.  I will no longer be selling handmade items which made the old "Notelets By Design" title of my blog rather senseless.  The new name of the blog doesn't make any more sense than the old name, but at least it's cute!  Happy New Year everyone!

Gift wrapping went slowly...

The Helpful Kitty

     Well so the holiday rush is over and all the decorations are packed away for another year.  The craft room is a mess from last minute whirlwind "omg, I forgot to make...." episodes and all is quiet in the house.... I miss the craziness of the Holiday Season already.
     I actually did take some photos of some of the projects I made and they are now residing somewhere on my harddrive ... I wasn't as organized as I told myself I was going to be when I transferred them off my camera.  I really want to show all you guys some of the things I did, so I promise I will find them and get them uploaded for all to see.  

     I made this set of popup cards for Christmas about a month ago and then promptly forgot that I made them!  LOL 

     It's a little bit hard to tell that those center images are actually pop up's, but indeed they are.

     Here are some of the tags that I've been busy making for Christmas.

I've started working on some Christmas tag to sell at the Craft Shop.  I really like how these turned out and the tins were so inexpensive at a buck each.  

Learning New Things

Hi Everyone!


I was sick with a cold all last week so I spent my home time learning some stamp coloring techniques.  I have always been amazed at how so many talented people are able to color gorgeous stamps and I've never been able to do it myself.  I watched a ton of You Tube videos on different techniques and decided that I would like to use Copic Markers.  Then I discovered that I couldn't afford Copic Markers ( I almost fainted at the price of those Markers... I mean they are MARKERS for goodness sake lol.)  I then found that Letraset Pro Markers are very comparable in quality to Copic and decided to go that route.  The expense of the Letraset is about 1/4 of the Copic and I got luck and found Set 1 at my local JoAnn's.  I also had a 50% off coupon in my purse which brought my total to 15 bucks for a set of 12 markers plus a blender.  I was happy.  


I had to wait until the next day to play with my new markers and all of my new found excitement quickly disappeared when after trying to color/highlight/layer/blend with them ended up looking like a 2 year old's water coloring drawing thingy :(


I then decided instead of giving up completely, perhaps color pencils would be a better choice for me.  Back to JoAnn's I go armed with the knowledge that Prismacolor pencils are a good quality pencil for beginners to work with.  I end up back in the art department with a basket full of pencils, wax blenders, erasers and what-nots.  I realized while looking into my basket (the little kind that you carry, not the big push cart) that the final dollar amount was adding up rapidly.  I notice there were a few different brands of pencils at a much lower cost than Prismacolor and being budget conscious I look around for someone with more knowledge about this stuff.  I located a young woman in the framing department that was incredibly helpful.  She said that the water color pencils in the Sargent brand would be good to learn with because water color pencils are softer.  Softer means easier to layer and blend and much easier on my budget.  She exchanged the plastic eraser that I had in my hands for a putty type of eraser and said that I don't need the waxy type of blender pencil I had picked out.  She even showed me how to color using different directions give differing shades and showed me what was meant by "light source" highlights.  


I played around with my new color pencils a bit last night and yes! so much better for me.  I'm very excited about my color pencils because this leads me to a Paper Piecing technique that I've been wanting to use.  


Paper Piecing for cards and scrapbooks is pretty simple.  Take a rubber or acrylic stamp and stamp on both  white card stock and whatever patterned paper you choose.  For example if your stamp is that of a person, say a young girl, cut out the part of the stamp that would comprise of her dress which is stamped on the pattern paper and use the stamp that is on the while card stock to color her face, hair, etc.  then piece her dress on the card stock.   This gives a finished item that is part drawing part cut out and looks beautiful!  Once I get my first paper piecing done, I'll post it here.

Decorating for Halloween

     Thanks to a photo I saw in this month's Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, I now have my very own Bat Wall in my living room.  I used the Cricut, Happy Hauntings, cartridge to cut out several bats and I folded their wings upward and then used the October 31st Cartridge and cut out the floating candle and candle sticks and attached then to my wall, it's looks spooky cute!

     I then cut out the scary eyes and attached "googly eyes" to them and stuck them along the porch posts, and above the door bell and inside on top of the light switches - so much fun!

Store Closing

     I've finally made a decision to keep my online store open or not and I've decided... Not!  I've been with Store Envy for about 6 months now and I have not made a single sale there.  It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to keep putting forth the effort and getting no benefits from it.  I will keep selling my products in my physical area of The Craft Shop as I actually am seeing a small profit there.  Thanks to every one who have supported my efforts in my online store - you are most appreciated.

Spooky Halloween!

     I'm busy, busy, busy playing with my Cricut and making Halloween decorations.  My current project is a 3 panel set of  Halloween pictures that I'm going to hang along my porch wall.  I'm making these on Canvas Panels that are 11x14 inches.  I've taken my black stamp pad and squished, rubbed and dabbed it all over the white canvas to give it a blackish, gloomy look to the background.  I then cut out a bunch of different images using my Happy Hauntings, October 31st and Mini Monsters Cricut Cartridges.  I then put some store bought die cuts on the the panels to just give it more of a "Pop", such as the bridal couple - soooo cute!  I had a lot of fun and so far, I have 2 of the 3 panels done.

I finally got the third panel done, here it is: