top {five} reasons I'm excited for CHA

... not that I'm going or anything :(
Someday...

But anyway, everybody's doing previews and I'm having so much fun (although my checkbook is wincing already)! Here are my top 5 (so far) new releases that I just can't wait for...

No. 5

 

Sew Easy by We R Memory Keepers (this better be as awesome and convenient as it looks!)

No. 4

Dear Lizzy Christmas by American Crafts (I want the stamp set nowwww!)

No. 3

Modern Homemaker by October Afternoon (and, I guarantee it, whatever their other releases are that they haven't previewed - oh yeah, they'll make the list!)

No. 2

 

Elementary by Studio Calico

No. 1

 Mitten Weather by Cosmo Cricket (scroll down for L-O-V-E!)

AND... I'm not sure it's technically a CHA release, but have you see OA's new Seaside collection?!

I pre-ordered the entire thing and I'm just dying for it to be released and delivered to my door! I especially love the stamps... I've never used such realistic stamp images before but it will be SO perfect for Copic coloring! :)

a night at the movies

Well, we're back from Maine, jettisoned forcefully and somewhat brutally back into the relative frantic-ness of summertime life.

As wonderful as our vacation was, I was itching to play with the new craft materials waiting on my table at home. It's actually quite nice not having the money to do "exciting" things on vacation... It's one of those simple, lovely pleasures to be able to just do what you normally do day to day (except go to work, of course - but that's the best part!) but in a different, beautiful setting. So all week I was keeping up with all my normal blogs in my beloved Google Reader, glancing occasionally over the top of my computer at the sparkling cove.

One of the items in my Reader feed was a post by the lovely and inspiring Lisa Spangler. She did a wonderful tutorial for the Hero Arts blog on how to do Japanese bookbinding on a mini-book for keeping cookie fortunes. (You can see the original post here.) She did a fantastic video, which I watched, starred to maybe do something with later, and then kind of forgot about.

On Friday, we went to the movies in Brunswick to see Inception. It was AMAZING and you MUST see it NOW, if you haven't already. But afterwards I thought of Lisa's book, and how fantastic it would be to save movie ticket stubs. After DH and I got the office cleaned up this afternoon (it had been the house's dumping-ground for a few days before vacation), I dumped out my new SC kit and, in the same frantic manner that my mind has been going in since we got back last night, standing at my paper cutter, I whipped up a quick cover for my movie ticket book. Then I popped the tv on, punched some holes, and did the play-pause dance with Lisa's video while I sewed the biding.

My pages are more utilitarian and much less adorable than Lisa's (mostly because of her use of fabulously fun washi tape), but I really wanted to put the first page together so I just used what I could find.

I used this stamp set from We R Memory Keeper's Old Glory collection (I love these little $1 stamps and more and more manufacturers are making them these days!) to do the rating stars. You can see on the photo above that they came out a little wonky when I tried to stamp the 5th star; I didn't leave myself quite enough room and so I had to stamp the stars on a little bit of an angle. It kind of bugs me, but it's ok. And I colored in the stars with a coordinating dark blue Mr. Sketch smelly marker (hee hee!)... Doesn't matter that it's not an acid-free marker because neither is the ticket stub and this book isn't likely to gain family-heirloom status.

You've gotta make this project - It's SO fun! And to help you out, I've got the video for you right here! :)



Thanks to Lisa for the great inspiration, and thanks to you for stopping by!

{Christmas in July} on etsy!

Today marks the start of etsy's 3rd annual Christmas in July SALE! My shop, Little Olive Designs, will be participating through the end of the month. EVERYTHING is marked down AT LEAST 15%! I have a ton of great stocking stuffers including adorable embellished hair elastics - if you're someone like me who likes to buy great gifts when you see them and squirrel them away for birthdays or Christmas! :)

Please check out my items at http://www.etsy.com/shop/littleolivedesigns. You can see a sample of my offerings in the right-hand margin ----->

Thanks!

more {Maine} days 2-3-4

I tried posting this earlier in the afternoon... tried using Picasa for the first time thinking it'd be a quicker way to post a bunch of photos to Blogger. But I couldn't really figure it out. So now it's almost 9pm. We just finished dinner (hotdogs, sauerkraut, baked beans, corn) and I'm sitting with my legs dangling over the side of the front porch of our cottage. It's wicked quiet out here.

We haven't been up to too much the last couple days, but I've got some snapshots to share nonetheless.

baloney lunch on the wharf

hazy lunchtime view of the cove

late night (that's anytime after 8pm here!) ice cream cone at the Island Candy Co.

the Little Dog Cafe on Maine Street in Brunswick

They have the best mochas ever there; sadly, it was too hot today so I got an iced tea lemonade.

Isn't their logo cute? I got a t-shirt from them years ago that I just wore into the ground. Waiting for them to start carrying long sleeves again - We might have to make a trip up in the winter! :)

Pretty much the best, and definitely the biggest fish sandwiches ever at Holbrook's in Cundy's Harbor.

The view from Cundy's Harbor.

YUM!

Probably wondering why I'm taking a picture of him eating.

Not afraid to get my hands dirty... ;)

Hope you're having fun too, whatever you're up to this week!

{Maine} day 1

So here we sit on Orr's Island, just south of Brunswick, Maine. Thanks to hubby's uncle Brad for installing the wireless internet... the signal doesn't reach into the house, but it's better than nothing! We really can't afford to do much of anything exciting while we're on vacation... It's just nice to not have to work, to be able to sleep in, and to enjoy these glorious surroundings, even if I am still on my computer just like I am all the time at home! :)

I'm currently sitting in my sweatshirt, sipping a very welcome cup of tea. After getting up very late and getting an even later start, we drove all around Brunswick today, checking things out and getting some errands (grocery shopping, etc.) done. And let me tell you, even though it's generally cooler overall here than it is on Cape Cod, we were glad for the air conditioned car today. But by the time we got back "home" around 4pm the fog was rolling in, and fast! We're no more than a couple hundred yards from Lowell's Cove, but you can't even see the water from where I'm sitting anymore! Breezy, damp, and chilly!

So let me start my story with last night...

We got a much later start than we had hoped, hitting the highway no earlier than 5:30. This is my 5th summer coming up here with my hubby, and I don't think there's been one trip where we haven't gotten lost or took an unexpected detour. So last night, we'd made it through Boston and were driving along on I-95. DH said he was starting to get uncomfortable driving along... maybe he thought he'd gone too far or something, who knows! So he took a random exit. We ended up driving through Wenham, Hamilton, and Ipswich, before realizing we had to get back on I-95. (On a side note, I could easily see myself moving to Hamilton, MA!) On our way back to I-95, we were stopped at a light and I noticed an old-style diner on the left. I joked that we should stop, and before the light turned green we decided we would. (...which is weird because we never randomly stop at places like that.) It's called the Agawam Diner and it was so much fun - and the food was perfect diner fare too. I got chicken pie with mashed potatoes, and the whole thing was absolutely covered in chicken gravy! :)

Here's Tyler, my hubby, contemplating his meatballs

And of course pie! Yummy strawberry rhubarb!

It turns out the original Agawam Diner dining car was moved in the late 1940s to Cook's Corner in Brunswick, which is just up the road a ways from where we are now! Unfortunately, the family that bought and moved that dining car didn't do very well, and it didn't stay for more than a few years. But we thought it was SO cool that we happened to stumble upon this diner. :)

Today while we were driving around Brunswick, we came across a bunch of sheep, which I wanted to visit. DH didn't want to pull over, but around the corner there was a driveway with a small parking lot so we pulled in to check it out. It's partially a privately-owned farm, but part of the land is part of the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, and there are a few trails that run through it. We walked one of them, but it's not terribly well maintained, so when it got a little swampy we decided to turn around. But it was a really neat discovery - They have a farmer's market there on Saturdays and we're hoping to check it out on our way home.

Time to go get supper started. Thanks for stopping by!

what a whirlwind!

Holy cat! I have been super busy lately! Worked 37 hours the last two weeks... which may not sound like much but is way more than I'm used to! Plus, in the heat... Ugh. I really feel like I haven't had the time to thoroughly check my computer (email, facebook, Reader, Twitter) in days; I feel like I haven't seen my cats in weeks; I feel like I haven't cleaned an inch of my house in months! And now we're leaving for a week in Maine! ...and leaving the kitties behind which I'm feeling really bad about :( 

As if all that wasn't bad enough... my Studio Calico kit was waiting for me when I came home on Friday. I got the chance to open it and look through it quickly, but then DH and I went over to my parents' house to clean out all the stuff I still had in my old bedroom. We were there for a few hours, and when we got home we stayed up until almost midnight pricing things for our table at my friend Sarah's yard sale. So that was where we were all day yesterday (Saturday), and the we had to rush over to my sister-in-law's birthday party, and we stayed way too late there too! We were up early again this morning, and spent a couple hours at the yard sale. (We made $2, which I spent on a bagel and cream cheese.) Then the dump, lunch, and now I'm home, where I really really need to be packing and finishing laundry. And we're hoping to leave by 4pm. Yikes!

So no playing with the new SC kit for me for the next week... Sad :( I thought about trying to lug my crafting things to Maine, but I've never been to a crop or anything and I really wouldn't know what to bring and would inevitably leave too many requisite items at home. So I'm going a whole week without crafting... OK OK, I've only really been this heavily into crafting for 6 months or so, but still... :)

Enjoy your week!

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!