feelin' hot {hot} hot

I did the math the other day. There is actually close to 1000 degrees of extra heat that pumps into the cafe kitchen where I work. 1000 degrees into a small space with literally no air exchange.

We had a handful of super-beautiful, truly ideal summer days last week. Amazing weather - exactly how you want it to be all summer long. That was gone by the time we woke up Saturday morning, it's been downhill since then, and it's supposed to just get worse and worse over the next few days, especially in the humidity arena. I just have to get through 4 days of work and then we have a week of vacation, but I am literally scared about surviving 8 hours in hell tomorrow.

So in the meantime... I had today off since I worked yesterday. I mostly slept in and then sat around, but I did get two cards made. I think I mentioned before I've gotten a bunch of new product recently, but I literally didn't know what to do with it. Seriously. Every time I sat down to try to make something, I started asking myself "Wait, how do you make a card again?" :) Talk about crafter's block! So I started browsing some sketch blogs, and found a couple I liked.

The first sketch I used was a from 2Sketches4You, from last week:

I used the new collection from my new absolute favorite company, Echo Park. It's called A Walk in the Park, and it's really fantastic. The alpha sticker sheet is my favorite - it's these adorable square-ish pennants with coordinating letter stickers - So adorable! The collection feels more like fall colors to me, especially as compared with their uber-summery, bright colored first release. But it's got some really versatile icons with it that I love. They just released a preview of their next release "Life is Good" and it's completely different from their first two collections, but it looks awesome. And I just heard they've got a Halloween collection and TWO Christmas collections in the works. I can't wait! :) Anyway... here's my card.

(I apologize for the quality of this photo. I took it in my favorite spot on the picnic table in the shade, which usually works well. But for some reason it looks really washed out on here. I guess this is why I'm having more success selling cards in person than on etsy!)

I also used my first purchase from Elle's Studio on this card. These little sentiment circles are so adorable! They were a little pricey, but they're pretty handy to have around, and a bunch of them happen to go perfectly with the Echo Park collection.

The second card I made was using CPS Sketch 174:

This is totally not anything I'd ever do on my own, but I was so inspired by the designers' samples, so I thought I'd try it. I used another huge fave - October Afternoon's Fly a Kite collection.

I like the monochromatic-ness of the end result... I really didn't think about it too much as I was making it... I kind of just went with my gut.

I used the ribbon stamp from Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety set from Unity Stamps. I was SO excited about getting this stamp set two months ago, and today was the first time I used it! Why do I let that happen? :) The strawberry sticker in the center is from the Fly a Kite word stickers.

I also used some of the word stickers in lieu of a sentiment. I really like how the blue stickers are so close in color to the background paper, and the look of the larger text on the smaller text paper.

 This one's from the word stickers too. So cute.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you had a great weekend! Stay cool!

:-/

greetings from the sand bar

I recently grabbed a few of the items from Little Yellow Bicycle's new Boardwalk collection. Their canvas borders were in an add-on to this month's Studio Calico kit... I really wanted to grab the add-on, but I just couldn't afford it :( I found them on ebay - the prices of craft materials are usually not any cheaper than retail, but you can save on shipping - and while I was there I got a couple patterned papers and some stickers too. I thought I'd make some beach-y cards to sell at OWFS... What better souvenir from someone's trip to Cape Cod than a beach themed card handmade in town by a native, right? :)

I also used an awesome product - I think it's fairly new to the market - called Mudd Puddles. It's this pre-mixed sand "paste" made just for paper crafts projects and it doesn't rub off or flake or anything! It was definitely a new experience and takes some finesse to apply, especially in the small amount that I wanted. But it's a really fun product and you should definitely check it out!

The Boardwalk "Favorite Pieces" includes the most adorable beach umbrella, but it's way too big for a standard A2 card. So for the umbrella on this card, I actually cut around the sticker and used the Xerox function on my printer to reduce it to 60%. Then I used that image as a template to cut the pieces out of patterned paper. You can see the Mudd Puddles sand around the base of the umbrella stand.

The paper with the flip-flops was also in a Studio Calico add-on this month. I totally stole the idea of embellishing the paper with rhinestones and embroidery floss from DT member Waleska Neris. She's so clever - I love it!

P.S. How do you like my snazzy photography? :) We live like 100 yards from the shore and don't go down there nearly often enough! It's not exactly the beach, but I thought it might be a neat backdrop for my photos. The quality's not great though - it was 7pm-ish when I finished the second card! :)

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July!

... on the 3rd! :)

This was the scene in the Town Green/Main Street area this morning, just a few moments before the parade started! And boy, was it a great parade - the best in a few years! Every one really put a lot of thought into what they did.



I hope you're having a great (long?) weekend with your families and friends!

{Christmas} in June!

It's been wicked hot and humid here on Cape Cod. I feel like it came on pretty suddenly too - we had gorgeous, unseasonable warm weather early in the spring, then a cool and rainy start to June. And then summer hit. Add to the miserable weather outside the fact that I work in the kitchen of a pizzeria with no air conditioning... One large oven set to 325-350 degrees from 6am until at least 2pm, plus another 650 degree pizza oven! And the health department decided they didn't want us keeping our kitchen door open. So for 6-8 hours I'm stuck in an airless room with over 900 degrees of heat pumping into it. My energy is completely sapped - 100% gone! - within about 2 hours. So needless to say I haven't been getting much done at home after work! :) Today I really had the best of intentions to fold laundry and tidy up, but then the hubster decided to set up Netflix on our Wii and watch SNL.

Last night I decided to play with the other MFT Pure Innocence stamp that Kimberly sent me: "Merry Kissmas" :) I wouldn't normally be making Christmas cards in June, but I wanted to practice my Copics and my paper piecing. Plus, that's where the design world is focused right now anyway with CHA and pub calls for Halloween and Christmas coming up! I got the idea to use the blue and red patterns from October Afternoon's Thrift Shop collection - one of my favorites ever! I'm really REALLY loving any variation on red, white, and blue right now... especially red and turquoise! I'm pretty psyched with how this card came out!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great Fourth of July weekend if you're in the good ol' USA! :)

one of My {new} Favorite Things

I have to toot my own horn for a little bit :)

Yesterday evening I finally cleaned off my desk and started playing with paper again. I had 3 ideas that I was so exited about... But after completely ruining one (it's still a great idea though, I just have to think a little harder while working on it!), and having another one not quite work out, I decided to walk away for the night. Well, I stayed away for about 5 minutes, but despite the crafting gods not smiling on me, I had the itch and HAD to make something! So I started playing with one of the Pure Innocence stamps that Kimberly sent me :) I know I'm supposed to be practicing my Copic coloring, but I just had to try my hand at stamped paper piecing.

I took a lot of inspiration from the My Favorite Things design team gallery at Splitcoast Stampers. I'm completely new to MFT, and I've never tried anything in the style of the Pure Innocence images, so I really didn't have a clue where to start. My card isn't anywhere near as impressive as what the DT does, but I just have to say I am SO PROUD of this card! Every time I look at it, I almost can't believe it's something I made myself :) Do you ever have that feeling about a project you make? It's so satisfying, isn't it? :)

cute craft for kids

I don't have kids - but you already knew that, right? :) But I went to school to be an elementary school teacher, so obviously I love kids. I've only had one real teaching job - as an assistant at a bilingual school in Cambridge, MA - but I'm always on the lookout for fun projects and ideas... for someday, just in case :) And I have to say I ADORE Family Fun magazine! Check out this adorable oh-so-clever 4th of July t-shirt project... I just LOVE things that make you go "Wow! How'd they think of that?!"

Very Jackie O.

I've been putting my paper crafting on hold recently, favoring instead playing with fabrics! Here's what started it all...

I found this gorgeous vintage enamel brooch on etsy...

... and my very first thought was 'Hmm... I bet I could do that with die cut felt." So that's what I did!
I found some absolutely yummy 100% wool felt from an awesome etsy seller Felt on the Fly. She was so great to work with! I used a Sizzix 3-in-1 daisy die to cut out the flowers. I used a Dritz covered button kit - my new favorite thing ever in the universe! - to cover 7/8" buttons for the centers. Check it out!

The easiest way to cut the felt was to cut all three flowers at once, so I was able to make 6 pins with just 3 pieces of 8.5x11 felt. But the buttons were really hard to cover with the thick felt, so I ended up using Pink Paislee's 365 Degrees collection Bella Brads in the center of 2 of the pins:

Aren't they cute? And so super simple! Gotta love that!

Thanks for stopping by.

friends with {benefits}

(Just a heads up... No photos today!)


Before we were married, my husband used to play World of Warcraft. A lot. (Any of you with friends or loved ones into online RPGs will, I'm sure, understand this situation.) He used to talk about his WoW "friends" and I hated that he called them that. Frankly, it kind of scared me that he couldn't distinguish between his real friends and random people all over the world who he happened to be playing games with and really knew nothing about.


I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm fairly new to the scrapbooking world as a community - online and in "real life." I've been crafting literally my entire life, but the world of classes and crops, manufacturers and collection kits, techniques and tutorials is so new in my life... If I'm remembering right, it was just after Christmas 2009 that I stumbled onto all of this. I'm still constantly checking for tutorials on youtube, still looking up acronyms used in forums, still asking stupid questions that I'm sure have been answered a million times. But I realize now why my husband called those people his friends; the blogs I read and forums I participate in have become such an amazing source of inspiration and motivation in my life. I've also started trying to take some classes at my LSS - OK, so I've taken one so far but there's another in August I'm looking forward to! - which is adding another layer of fantastic dimension to my becoming part of this community.


I'll be honest, I can't really bring myself to think of these crafters as friends. It's more like how I pretend to myself that Rachael Ray and Sarah Jessica Parker are my friends :) Even though these crafters often have never met each other, they've built amazing and true friendships over many years, and I know I will never be able to "infiltrate" the community to that extent. I'm honest with myself: I am not a peer to this group of amazing women in any sense of the definition - not in age, not in lifestyle, not in skill level. But, even though they don't know me from a hole in the wall, they have an amazing impact on my day-to-day life for which I really am truly grateful.


So here's the story....


Recently, the lovely lady who writes the first crafting blog I ever found, Kimberly Crawford, did a week-long series of tutorials using the Spellbinders Borderabilities dies. I've had my Wizard for a while but I don't use it a lot because I don't have many dies. I tried a technique she did in one of her videos, but I wasn't a very good student, didn't listen well, and completely messed up. So I commented on her blog asking for help. She, in turn, replied to my query, except she did so through a comment on my blog. So thoughtful - that way I would be certain to see her reply and her comment wouldn't get lost in the shuffle. Plus, I was psyched that somebody as talented as Kimberly had taken a peek at my little blog! :) In her comment, she asked me to email her when I had the chance, and gave me her email address. "That's funny," I thought to myself. "Why can't I just comment back?" But I did as she'd asked and thanked her for her thoughtful response in a personal email. Not long after, I got the following email reply:

"I saw on your blog that you just got into Copics. I was wondering if you would like a couple of Pure Innocence images from MFT? I have a couple that I have used a couple times and would love to give them a new home. If you want them, give me your address and I will send them."

WHOA! Um, hold on, what? Wow! SO amazing, generous, and thoughtful to offer stamp sets to a stranger! And then, a couple days later, I get another email from Kimberly, telling me she accidentally bought a duplicate Copic marker, and if I want it, she'll throw it in the package with the stamps. Amazing. I feel so lucky, so blessed, to have the presence of these incredible cyberspace 'friends' in my life, inspiring me and fueling my own innate creative forces. Thank you Kimberly! This may all seem insanely melo-dramatic, but I want to express how very much the generosity and openness of the entire scrapbooking/cardmaking/papercrafting community means to this newbie.

so excited!

more Father's Day

This afternoon I went into the Orleans Whole Food Store (OWFS) - where I have a small selection of cards for sale - to check out my display. It's right on the checkout counter and it looks awesome! I'm so psyched! :) I guess I didn't really pay enough attention to which cards I took in, because I couldn't tell if any had sold... except I knew for sure I did include two Father's Day cards, and they were both gone! Yay! So tonight I quickly whipped up four more to bring in tomorrow.

This first one is inspired by Kristina's most recent Make a Card Monday project, which you can check out here. I used Show & Tell, one of the new collections from We R Memory Keepers. It's actually a school-themed collection (which I just can't ever resist even though I have neither a teaching job nor school age kids... or kids of any age for that matter!), but the more basic patterns remind me of retro 70s ties, so I thought it would be great for Father's Day.

(I apologize for the poor quality of these photos. I usually photograph my cards outside, but I had to package these up right away to get them to the store tomorrow, but I still wanted to be able to share them.)

The other cards I made were based on this sketch from the March/April 2010 issue of Paper Crafts magazine:

I love it! And I had SO much fun using my Tiny Attacher for the first time ever... I might have gone a little overboard, but I LOVE the finished look!

(using Show & Tell again)

(using BasicGrey's Max & Whiskers collection)

(using Cosmo Cricket's Joyride collection)

So there you have it. Variations on a Father's Day theme :)

Thanks for stopping by!