Shelves.

I thought the shelves I made would be more than enough room and would allow me years and years to grow into filling them up. Heh. I guess that shows how much of a problem collection I really have.

My next project:

Another collection of shallow shelves, only this will be behind the door. Thanks Erin for teaching me how to something like this!!

<3 <3

Happiness.

I found this card in the archives in picasa web and I realized I never posted it. Probably because it's not not the most interesting card on the block, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

I don't think I have this in my stash so I must've given this away. I wonder who to... maybe my mom?

First I embossed the border stamp on the bottom with super fine clear embossing powder, then inked the entire front of the card with Dusty Concord and Milled Lavender and the edges with Vintage Photo. The labels were from Spellbinders. After I tied the bow on the bottom layer, I adhered the top with dimensional tape.

I like the idea, I just don't like the execution. I like embossing in clear and inking over the stamp, but the colors just don't work for me on this card. Live and learn, eh?

Christmas.

Here it's almost a month after Christmas and I'm just now blogging about it. It was grand. Money is tighter than usual but we were still able to spoil ourselves considering.

Adam really spoiled me, although it didn't seem like it before we opened our presents! Look at his pile of gifts:

And then my pile:

Two! But mine rocked. I got a Kindle Fire with a gorgeous case! I love that thing. It's awesome to take with me to my crafting room so I can look up projects I found that inspired me instead of trying to print the picture in black-and-white and in the worst possible quality imaginable.

Coco even got a present! She loves it, just not when we put it on her.

I got Adam a lot of toys that he loves but they're all video game related so I won't bother you with details except for one. I got him Mario decals for the computer room! I told him that since I made an entire room dedicated to my obsession, he can have the computer room to geek-out as much as he wants. He joked around when we first moved in together that he wanted to have all of his Star Wars figures displayed on shelves in our home. I told him I wouldn't have that... until I took over the spare bedroom for my expensive hobby. I think in exchange, letting him do whatever horribly nerdy thing he wants to the computer room is ok.

 Here are the awesome decals, from left to right.

 

That's Jerrod, Adam's brother

Lastly are a few pictures of some wrapping details. I love wrapping presents!

Tomorrow I will post about our trip to Utah!



New.Best.Friend.

Correction: It is actually -8 degrees outside right now, with a windchill of -30 degrees. Can someone please remind me why I moved to this frigid state?

Back in September I made a new friend and we've become the bestest of pals. Her name is Spray Paint. The most awesome thing about Spray Paint is that not just that she is so much more than she looks like, but she has so many personalities and is up for anything.

When I moved here, I came with nothing but a bed, dresser and computer. Adam still was living at home while he was going to college, so he didn't have anything either. His loving and giving mother gifted everything to us. We still haven't replaced a lot of it, like the couches with big, pink flowers and these lamps.

Even though they were dirty and flawed, I thought they had character and I didn't want to get rid of them.  Enter: my new best friend.

Two light coats later, I had two seemingly new lamps!

I forgot to take "after" shots so I took them last night in my scrapbooking room. I would've taken them outside, but it's 1 degree outside with a wind chill of -20 degrees. 

I still need new lamp shades and I've been debating trying to make them. Any ideas on how to make lamp shades!?

Golden.

The weekend of grandpa's passing was also Adam's golden birthday. We planned on having a golden birthday party for him and after all my work to prepare for it, there was no way we weren't having it!

I scoured the internet and created a pinboard for inspiration. In the end I decided to keep it fairly simple and definitely not go all-out like I did for Halloween.

This was the extent of the decorations. Simple and borderline pathetic, but no one cares.

The food was gold-themed, of course. Golden cupcakes, white chocolate covered pretzels with gold icing, white chocolate covered oreos with gold sprinkles, and candies in gold wrappers. The blue punch was because I put Jerrod in charge of the it and I told him to whatever he felt like. It was all delicious!

Adam had requested filled cupcakes like Jerrod requested for his birthday. I found a fabulous recipe (on Pinterest, of course) for chocolate chip cookie dough filled cupcakes with buttercream frosting. The cupcakes were great, although the frosting was a little.... hmmm... chunky? The buttercream frosting recipie called for brown sugar and I was all out. Improvising, we used dark brown sugar. The consistency wasn't perfectly smooth but it was still DELICIOUS!

I found edible gold star sprinkles on ebay and they added a neat touch!

Adam said he had a good time and a very happy birthday. His big gift from me I will share later!

Stop American Censorship. An Anti-SOPA Post.

Today is January 18th and thousands of sites have gone dark to protest SOPA & PIPA, two USA bills racing through Congress that threaten prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.

Think I'm joking? Exaggerating? Wrong.

THIS IS SERIOUS.

Google: https://www.google.com/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

These sites could be banned from the United States viewing if SOPA passes. Read about it here. Or even read about it on Wikipedia, which you may not be able to do if SOPA passes.

If you care about freedom of speech, sign the petition. Click this link. Click it. Fill it out.

Don't want to read all that crap in the links up top? Try this:

Organize.

GUYS.

I. Am. SO. Excited!

I feel like one of those chicas on Crafty Storage with their fancy organizing getups that makes me drool and burn with envy. Only I am SO much cooler because I made my stuff for like... TWO DOLLARS. Heck to the yes.

Since we moved in over a year ago, I've slowly been transforming our spare bedroom into my scrapbooking oasis. I painted the walls from eye-gouging green and I purchased furniture. I've also slowly been adding to my collection of supplies. With those supplies, I found a need for a certain kind of storage. I like embellishments. Ok, I love embellishments. I started accumulating so many that I could never find what I wanted when I wanted it. I didn't have any great way of organizing anything other than large items.

Enter: Pinterest. I found loads of inspiration and ideas. One particular photo I could not get out of my head.

Source

This lady has an entire house dedicated to scrapbooking. It's more like a cottage, but still... /jealous. She says these tiny shelves are picture rails. I don't know where she lives or where she purchased them from, but I couldn't find any picture rails that looked like that. When Erin came to visit me for my birthday, I showed her this picture and asked if she could help me try to find a picture rail or something similar at a local store. Finding something cheap was key. We walked around for over an hour and found a lot of things that could work. Some picture rails would probably work, but they weren't much of a shelf at less than an inch deep. I could just purchase shelves at $40 a pop for a mere 24 inches. I could install an entire wire shelving unit. Or I could build the dang things myself. We were going to buy regular, nice, expensive planks of wood, until Erin found the stash of "utility wood" for 20-40 cents a board.

I could hear the heavens sing.

We picked up wood screws, Erin bought me drill bits, and Adam picked up a cheap drill for $20 that would do the trick. Essentially, yes, they were more than $2.00, but we'll be using the drill for more than just this project, and the screws were super cheap.

When we got home, Erin immediately made the shelves. I just helped her hold the boards together.

Once the glue dried overnight, I sanded  for what seemed like forever. This utility wood definitely was not 40 cents because it was beautiful.

Once I was sick of sanding, I primed them, sanded again, then used leftover paint red paint. After 3 coats and over a month later, they were finally finished. Adam helped me put them up last night!

Once they were up, I threw my supplies up there in no time.

Over the past several months I had been saving up and splurging on these Libby spice jars ($20 for 12 jars) to store my embellies. They fit on the shelves perfectly! 

Once the jars were up, I realized they could also help me easily see my wood mounted stamps, distress stains, inks and reinkers, too!

 

I am SO happy with the way these turned out. Not only are they EXACTLY what I wanted, but they were cheaper than any other solution short of getting them for free!

Sympathy.

Hello my few followers! I missed you! Well, truth be told, I've been here all along, just lacking the desire to post. I have only a few photos over the next several days to share. I haven't been crafting much lately - something I intend to remedy this week!

My first set of cards is what I made for my mother-in-law, her brother, her sister, and her mother on Thanksgiving weekend after grandpa died. I had a good time with these for the most part, and I'm really happy with the way most of them turned out. I made another card but I have it in my stash since I ran out of people to give cards to. The photos are just quick snapshots right after I finished them since I gave them away immediately... I didn't have time to get all fancy. Not that they would turn out much better anyway!

The first two are nearly identical and my favorites of the bunch.

I had to post a lot of what may seem like monotonous shots. There's a lot of detail and texture that my cheapo camera doesn't pick up. The black flowers on the background are velvet, the sentiment is embossed in black opaque embossing powder, and the fancy label die cut (Tim Holtz die called Baroque that I got specifically for this project) is adhered with foam tape under an identical die cut in black to add dimension. 

The "sister" card was made with stamps from the same set that I grabbed from Hobby Lobby, also specifically for this project. I've never had to make a sympathy card or the like. Everything other than the stamps are identical.

The next card is one that I made with leftovers and I'm not terribly thrilled with it. I know now it's the butterfly that throws it off. I used the negative from the Baroque die cut that I used for the above card and used it to frame the sentiment that was from the same stamp set as above.

I smeared glossy accents on the butterfly (another Tim Holtz die) and adhered it with the same.

The last card was simple and easy, which was great because after making the above cards, I wasn't feeling very inspired and just wanted to get it done. Something with a sentiment slapped on it and call it good.

Except for the base, the card was made entirely from scraps. The flower background is from Tim Holtz and the sentiment is embossed with Faded Jeans Distress embossing powder. I finished the look with a velvet ribbon.

I am super excited to share tomorrow's post. It's kind of silly to be excited over something so small... but I guess that's just me in a nutshell.