Waiting for the baby

My cousin is due sometime in the next couple of weeks to have her second child, but they decided not to find out what the child's gender is. Slight problem when I wanted to make a card, so I made two.

Here is a closer view of the girl card using a button and two skeleton leaves. The pink paper is glittered cardstock that luckily doesn't seem to shed. *knock on wood*

Close up of the boy card. I was very limited on the more boy-ish accents and papers, but I think it is simple enough to not be too 'girly'. Hopefully I can get to the store in the next couple of days and get a 'Congratulations' stamp because my handwriting is not the best and I don't want to ruin the card.

I'd love to know what you think about the cards! Have a great day!

New Dies

Yikes, it has been way too long since my last post. Sorry! I actually hadn't been feeling myself for the past few weeks and started some oh so fun antibiotics last Monday to get me all better. The jury is still out on if it will work. Anywho...

I got two new dies recently for my little Cuttlebug.  Labels One and Labels Eight. Don't they look all pretty and new?

Well, I broke in the largest of Labels Eight already working on a little project. Doesn't look like much at the moment, but I'm not posting the complete project until the receiver has well, received it. I also have so many ideas for these shapes so be prepared to see a lot more of them in the coming month or two. And I have to say I am in love with the Spellbinder dies. They are amazing!

Kusudama

I finished! Instead of watching bad movies on Netflix, I noticed that Ghost Whisperer was on and decided to watch that instead. I think this took me around two hours total, but there was some waiting for glue to dry, making sure the cookies in the oven didn't burn, getting rice cooking and a few other distractions along the way. But it is done! And Tangie took a bite out of it, but it was fixable as well! 

The biggest challenge that I ran into while working was that some of the pages were so darn fragile! But I guess you can't expect too much from a falling apart book that was printed in 1844. Yep, 1844. It is one old book. My apologies to anyone who is offended by reusing a book that is already damaged beyond repair and yes, I do know some people who are offended by stuff like this. Seriously though, if I tried to fold some of the 2 inch by 2 inch squares it just fell to pieces. Lucky for me, I cut some extra squares so all was good. I think I am going to use the two ribbon tails to tie a bow at the bottom.

And because I just can't leave you with a single picture, or rather the only one that came out halfway descent (thank you rainy weather), here is a picture of my stays mockup.

I am going to need to take the side seams in a tiny bit from the front piece so I get a gap between center front because it meets and you need the gap to get the lift/shelf effect of the time period. But that's easy and I might wait until after I cut the fashion fabric and get the lining together because it might just be that the mockup fabric stretched some.

An Old Book Gets New Life

The sad condition of the book, which looks better in the picture than in person

I have this poor old book that has seen better days. Like, has REALLY seen better days as the pages are falling out (and missing) and the cover is flaking off piece by piece. It is pretty much unsalvageable at this point and instead of tossing it or recycling it or whatever, I figured that it would make some fun decor for around my place. Well, I'm planning on turing what is still bound into an altered book/altered journal and using all the pages that are loose into fun decor. The first project I'm working on is a kusudama flower ball.

For the ball I need to fold 60 square sheets of paper, five per flower, to make all 12 flowers. Well, I have 7 pieces folded as of this moment, but am going to work on more while I watch really bad horror movies via netflix. Yeah, I will totally admit to that.

Sense and Sensibility Underthings Pattern

I also got my Sense and Sensibility Underthings pattern before I ran out the door this past weekend and managed to whip up a mock up of the short stays in a couple of hours completely by hand stitching. It fit rather well and I'm hoping to cut the fashion fabric in the next couple of days and get going on the project. Sadly, the paper cranes were left at my parents when I went home this weekend, so they are on partial hold until I make it back to snag them, but that won't be for at least a month because I leave to meet my little sister in 16 days!

Decorating Part 2

I feel like there needs to be some cheesy music after that, like the dun dun DUNNNNNN kind of music. I hope you all get what I mean by that. And on a side note, the word cheesy looks really weird today.

So to the point of this post, I have some more flowers made and go figure at first I couldn't recreate how I did it so I ended up with a rose like flower. Then I kind of remembered after pulling out the flower I showed you before. The tally is now original flowers: 5 and rose flowers and buds: 5 (one of the rose buds is hiding out inside of the smallest original flower). And I still have two smaller flowers from the blue to play with.

Close up of the roses minus the bud that is hanging with the other flowers. The big rose still needs a bit of work because it doesn't want to stay in a more closed position.

I'm thinking that orange roses might also be in the crazy flower mix as well as some green roses which are all cut out. Heck I might just make a mix from the odds and ends of card stock I have hanging around. 

And because I haven't shown the trouble maker/my helper in bit

I really wanted to post this yesterday, but I was out all day at a commercial shoot which was awesome! I will definitely let you all know when it airs, but all I can say about it right now was it is funny how long it can take to make a bread wrapper/bag look camera ready.

I might be going a bit overboard

Doodle Parts dies make me think of doodlebugs for some reason...

But I got a new set of dies for my little Cuttlebug, which I don't think I've show you all yet. Oops. The dies are swirls! It's the Spellbinder's Doodle Parts which are lots of fun. Sadly, I've pretty much run out of things to decorate and I still have tons of the paper cuts left over from a project I was working on. See?

The picture is deceiving. There are about 25-30 swirls in that little pouch. And there are something like 120-ish flowers.

That is a lot of swirls. I cut them all from small scraps of the main colors I was using or trying to incorporate. I've also started having storage problems for them because I haven't run to the store for any storage containers yet so Tangie keeps trying to eat them all. I've tried storing them on the shelf of the book case, but since my fur baby had figured out how to climb the bookcase I think I'm fighting a loosing battle. I also went a little overboard with cutting little flowers I was going to use on the same project, but didn't and so now those are floating around too. Maybe if I get bored enough I'll string them all up and find some place to decorate in my room. Though I'm quickly running out of spaces. Maybe I'll decorate downstairs. I also had some fun cutting lots of flowers out of theatre gel samples. I have three of the little sample books and have barely made a dent in the first one.

I also really want to get some more of the Spellbinder dies as they are awesome. They are a three in one die: cut, emboss and stencil! Isn't that awesome! Let me show you...

The blueish silver on the little swirl is from an ink pad.

And just so I'm not playing favorites with my dies I also have some Cuttlebug and Sizzix dies that have been used on many occasions. I had let both the Cuttlebug and dies at home with I first moved, but since I know that one of the littles that I babysit for LOVES puzzles and drawing I thought, why not have a day when we make our own puzzles? Sure they aren't exactly the sturdiest things in the world and are probably going to be lost/destroyed pretty quickly, but it give us a few hours of entertainment.

I also got around to going to the craft store yesterday and managed to snag some pretty neat stuff that was on sale. First off one of those hard plastic scrapbook paper storage boxes. And the really awesome thing is: IT IS CAT PROOF! Take that Tangie. She has started trying to eat my scrapbooking stuff so I had to find a cat proof solution and voila! All my pretty papers fit nicely in it as do my tape roller and corner punch. I do have to admit that the box is also slightly me proof.

1 12x12 paper pack, 3 4.5"x6.5" packs, corner punch, glue roller, random loose 12x12 sheets and all my dies fit in the box. Not everything was in it for the picture.

Decorating, decorating, decorating

Take a wild guess what this post is about. I bet you will never be able to figure it out!

Oh, you guessed it? Huh. So as you know know this post is going to have something to do about decorating. As much as I love the fish art in my place, it's not me. So I need to girly the place up. Cue the curtains that I was planning on using for my regency dress. Those are being saved from destruction and are being used as the manufacturer intended. Now I will admit that it is only because I found where I had stored quite a bit of a heavier light weight linen. YAY! Natural fibers!

Ribbon is temporary

Now I couldn't just leave the curtains plain and white cause that would defeat the purpose of trying to girl up the place a bit. I want flowers! But there is no way I am going to buy fake flowers. Yes they are pretty, but I want to customize them. Well I have bright colored card stock, scissors, glue and a host of other items.

It is a bit brighter than the photo

How do you like the flower so far? I have three more cut out of the bright blue that I haven't edged in gold yet and I have some purple,green and pink that I think might look good with them. I'm also thinking about doing a bunch of red flowers for my dresser or to be interchangeable with the blue/purple/pink/green when I want a change of decor. Though if I want to make a LOT more, I might invest in the Tim Holtz Flower dies because cutting that many flowers could get slightly annoying. Or maybe I'll just make a stencil for myself.

Now how is she planning on decorating the curtains? It is a valid question. Am I going to scatter them all over the curtain? Nope, though I did think about it. Am I going to attach them along the bottom edge? No cause I'm pretty sure Tangie would try to eat them. I am either going to cluster some along the top where the curtain is shadily attached to cover that or I will add some to a tie for when I would like to let more light in. As shown by my quick sketch. What do you think?

The scribblies are where the flowers would go.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy 2011! I hope everyone had a great night least night be it having gone out partying all night or crafting away until midnight or sleeping! I ended up going to my friend's party, dropping off the cupcakes, hanging out for about 30 minutes then heading to my place to chill and craft. I'd love to give you some awesome New Year picture, but I don't have any so here's a giraffe.

Picture by my friend Katie!

I'm also working away at one of my ongoing projects that I am determined as all getup to finish this year. I've been making paper cranes for as long as I can remember and I've always wanted to make 1000 cranes in one year and string them together. Now I've made well over a thousand over the past however many years, but either gave them away, they were all different sizes, or left them places. I found a pack of 500 sheet of origami paper and bought 4 so I could make the cranes and some modular flowers. Since this morning I have fifteen cranes to show.

Now 'haw is she going to string all of those and not have them take up a ton of space' you might be asking yourself. Well, I hope this gives you some idea on the size of these guys. I can fit 24 in a foot!

The paper is 1 5/8 inches square. I'm planning on hanging these in along the ceiling about my stairs where the nutcase can't reach them. Or maybe I'll give them away. I don't know.