Yay!!! I finally made it to the thrift store~

Thinking the e-mail said all Christmas items 50% off I went hog wild and bought a bunch of Christmas goodies.

Does anyone know who makes these sickly sweet little buggers?  I couldn't help but buy them, cutesy wootsy isn't usually my thing but I mean look at them.  Don't they just melt your heart. 

My favorite and most coveted item of the day was finding these vintage Gurley candles.  They sold me all three for only $2.00 and after I saw they were upposed to be $5.00 dollars each.  Score!!

Come to find out all the christmas items I bought were regular price.  Even though some vintage Santas, candle molds, childrens books from 1945, more miscellanious vintage ornaments and my first pair of high heel shoes made it home with me.  I know can you believe it almost 30 and never owned a pair of high hells.  I am going to look like a wobbling baby bird in those things. 

I am still steadily working on all my handmade gifts: layered cookie jars, flavored coffee mixes and necklaces for all the girl cousins are done.  The necklaces turned out quite nice I think.

Next up on the todo is the Rum Balls, Ale and Pretzel carmels, jar soups and assorted fudge.  I know it is making my damn head spin.  The one thing that has me the most stressed is shopping for my 9 year old son.  What do you get a boy who only wants video games?

Busy making stuff in my workshop~

Call me cheap but I will be sharing with you gifts I am making that cost me next to nothing.  With my financials being the way they are I am having to really stretch my dollar this holiday season and use items I already have on hand.  The first gift I want to share cost me actually nothing to make because I salvaged the frame from the garbage and already had the chalkboard paint.  If you don't have any on hand Walmart carries it for under $5.00, or you could maybe get it cheaper with a Micheal's coupon.  I love this chalkboard paint because you can use on wood, metal, glass,  etc.

The frame is made from....you know I actually can't think of the exact name for it but a house marker where you put your street number.  I love how it turned out.  The natural patina on it is what made me love it so.  It might just be a gift to myself.

I am heart broken this week our shar-pei Mocha passed away.  She was 16.  Two more years and she could have contended with the oldest living shar-pei.  But she was so sick her liver, kidneys, heart.  Then yesterday she suffered a stroke and went paralyzed in her hind legs.  It was the most heart wrenching thing to witness.  Thankfully my mom and I didn't have any kids at the daycare when it happened so we were both able to go to the vet to be with her.  I am feeling so guilty on top of it because I went through the last two years of pictures and couldn't find a single one of her, none the less she was loved deeply.

I wish for everyone to have a beautiful weekend~

Halloween is huge in my house, we really get into the "spirits" of things. ~Dee Snider

But I am in the same situation as last year too busy or lazy to go to storage and get the decorations.  So I made a quick banner and want to share it with you.  If you are interested you can print out these and make a banner of your own.  I made mine with some miscellaneous background papers I had made and Dollar Store twine.  Now that it is done though, I want to make another out of just the book pages.  I think I would like that look better.  The skull image came from The Vintage Moth, the banner outline from Dover, and I am not quite sure where the scarab beetle came from but I sure do like him.

 

You just need to click to enlarge then right click and save image as.  Print, cut, and glue.  Hope you like it!

To see last year's lazy decorations see this post ~

Dang another week's almost gone by....slow down already

I saw this video yesterday where Claudine Hellmuth and Tim Holtz were using his masks and embossing the sticky side of her Sticky Canvas.  Well wouldn't you know I had some cheap sticky back foam that didn't sell at my garage sale a couple weeks ago.  So I took a break right then and there to see if it would work the same and it did. Now I am glad it didn't sell.

Uncover the sticky side of the the foam.  Lay whatever mask you have laying around and start working the embossing powder all around the mask.  Knock off the excess powder and remove the mask.  Make sure to remove the mask.  Heat with the heat gun.  Now place a coordinating color of powder on the rest of the sticky area.  I love the way they turn out and cheaper than heck to make custom embellishments. 

I am sorry.......

It has been very hard for me to get back in the swing of back to school things.  Kiah has been having trouble staying focused.  This caused a lot of problems last year.  I thought we had it pretty much controlled by the end of the school year.  The doctor said if he did have ADD it was a slight case and he didn't need medication.  The school said he didn't qualify for any support because his IQ was too high.  Well here we are this year and the teacher is already hinting at putting him on medication.  Not those exact words but I am not dumb.  He is always trying to get me to let him stay home, saying he hates school.  He has a lot of friends and does well on his work.  We just got some of the standardized testing scores home and he is basically in-between basic and advanced.   In math he is so close to being advanced; so what the heck!  We have started him on a vitamin regime and I am in close contact with his teacher.

Besides that things are picking up at work.  Which is good I was really starting to worry.

Here are a couple of crafting things I have done to stay sane along the way. 

A soldering class with my friend Raquel.  It was a fun technique to learn but will take a little more practice and a new higher powered soldering gun.  Oh my God when I typed that I heard the Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunting sound.   Yeah baby more power.

My Orange mixed media canvas

And some cards I made for a challenge at Stampington & Co.

I wasn't sure about the top picture at first but now I really like it.  She is the Goddess of Our Burning Desires.  The butterfly and image of the woman came from The Graphics Fairy.

These photos are from my camera phone that's why they look so washed out.

Hope all is well in your land

How to use left over beauty care items for scrapbooking~

So I have been meaning to post this tutorial all week, but with my sister in the hospital I never got to it.  Finally I found time today  to take pics and such for it when my friend called and said she was in the hospital all morning.  Um.... okay all you guys I care about, just chill out with your weird afflictions. 

If ever on some off chance you broke your eyeshadow and were down to the dregs of your nail polish.  Don't throw it away make a couple cards with it and call your self eco.  Using eyeshadow can be a cheap alternative to pigment powders.  You will also need a VersaMark pad need to make this technique work, it will act as the binder.

 Take your broken eyeshadow and break it up in to separate containers.

Stamp your paper with a stamp inked with VersaMark.  Then brush the eyeshadow over the VersaMark ink with a soft brush.  This is a close up of it.  It creates a soft sparkle. 

You can also add a border with that nail polish you have.  You know the one it's so far gone that it leaves clumps on your nails but you still keep it around.  Put it to good use before throwing that sucker away.  It won't matter about the acidity because you are using it for cards and they're temporary, so just go with it.  You will want to be sure to spray with a clear sealer to set it all.

There you have it, a makeover for your paper.  Enjoy!!

Linking up to ~

I have been a baking fool lately.....

First off I think I found the best chocolate cake recipe.  I am more of a vanilla lover, but this cake may make me cross over.  I made it by altering this recipe I found at allrecipes.com. With over 800 reviews it couldn't go wrong

I altered it by adding coffee and using dark unsweetened cocoa instead of regular unsweetened.

This is their recipe with my changes.

Coffee Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup hot coffee
1 cup boiling water
1 cup unsweetened Hershey's Special Dark chocolate cocoa powder
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  Grease a 9x13 inch cake pan.  In a medium bowl, pour boiling water and coffee over cocoa, and whisk until smooth.  Let mixture cool.  Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla.  Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture.  Spread batter in the 9x13 pan.  Bake for 35-40 min.  Allow to cool.

 

My mom and I made it for my grandmother's birthday.  I was our first time using fondant.  They make it look so easy on those baking shows.  We hand placed each of those damn little pearls all around the cake.

Oh!, I am forgetting the best part the frosting. To use underneath the fondant.

Sweet Butter frosting

Ingredients:

1 pound butter, softened
3 cups confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Directions:
Combine everything in a medium mixing bowl.  Mix everything together on low speed until well blended.  Then increase speed to medium for another 3 minutes until totally smooth.

This recipe was actually made by mistake.  I accidentally put in a pound of butter instead of a cup.  At least it doesn't have shortening in it- *gag*.  I like it, but then again one of my all time fav foods is creamed butter and sugar. So it may not be for everyone.  It passed my families inspections though; so all is good.


My goals for this week are pretty much the same as last week.  I had a lot of other things pop up that took presidence over last weeks goal list.  Gotta roll with those punches. 

1. Finish canvas
2. Try to get stain out of dress
3. Vintage Thursday
4. Art Walk
5. Catch up on Kelly Rae's class
6. Gussy up my facebook fan page

This is the vintage dress I wanted to add my etsy site last week.  But on closer inspection I noticed that some of the red trim had bled a bit onto the fabric.  Does anyone know of a way to get that out?  Any stain remover suggestions?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Mom for modeling!!

Hope you all have a nice week!

I do not know why it was so hard to get pictures of my journal and bag.  I could not get them to look right.  But here they are the journal and bag I made for the artistic mothers group.

I decorated the journal using scrap pieces of paper, fabric, my background papers from week 1, and paper torn from a Boho magazine.  The fortune underneath the picture says "Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it.  Autograph your work with excellence."  I thought it was fitting for an art journal even though I am trying not to be a anal perfectionist all the time and just have fun in the process.

The inside cover-

The inside back cover which has a expandable pocket.  Total Bonus!!

I forgot to get a pic of the back cover which I accidentally put on upside down.  Oh yeah, I also incorporated my collection of chinese fortunes by gluing them down on random pages.

The bag turned out especially cute, but was harder to do than I thought.  Next time I will not use the interfacing for the handles, because now it makes this annoying crinkly sound when you hold it.  I used scrap fabric, discounted decorator fabric samples, and vintage sari fabric to make it.  It makes a perfect little camera bag. 

 

One of my fav flickr contacts- Saibh tagged me for the 10 things challenge.  I thought it would be fun to share it here.  It was hard to think of ten things but once I did, I started thinking of a bunch of different things so every month I am going  to do a new installment of 10 things about me.

 

1. I am 28 and still don't drive. I attribute that to the recurrent dream I had as a child that I was out of control in a car. Getting hit by a car when I was 13. And driving into our house when I was 16 and pushing our house back by an inch. This year will be the year though, I swear.

2. I am supposedly related to Jean Lafitte the pirate. But that might have been one of my dad's drunken tall tales.

3. My man and I have been together for 12 years and have yet to get married. He has issues. I think I am going to surprise him with a New Years Wedding.

4. I have always had a camera with me since I got my first one when I was 10. And I still don't know how to shoot in manual.

5. I carry around way too much stuff in my bra. Any given morning I can wake up and find toys, money, receipts stuffed down in there. Yes, I sleep with a bra on, I was traumatized when I saw how low my grandmother's go and she used to pride herself on not wearing a bra.

6. My son's name is Kiah. It is Hopi for "Wise One". But everyone wants to call him Kia, like the car or they automatically think he is a girl. With all the different names out there nowadays, I don't think it is that difficult. Kiah with an ending like Jeremiah.

7. I love anything vintage. Which has turned me into a borderline hoarder.

8. I only have 2 best friends. One lives in Oregon and we talk to each other everyday over coffee, the other lives in the area and we see each other a couple times a week.

9. I hate scary movies and roller coasters. If I watch a scary movie I literally cannot sleep all night. I have terrible anxiety to begin with, so I can't handle anything that adds to it.

10. I was almost a certified herbologist, but dropped out and didn't finish. Went to college for child development and have worked for a daycare for 10+ years. But really just want to have my own business (Yeah, don't we all).

If you want to join in. Please do so,  post yours on your blog and a leave a comment here so I can check them out.  It is fun to read little tidbits about people.  Hope everyone has a good week!

Well actually.....

Made this headband for sister today. Totally rocking the cheapness with this one.  The whole thing cost under $0.75 cents to make and is so damn cute.  I can't really get the pic to look right since I am still using the camera phone.  The flower is the one I made out of pages ripped from a Boho magazine.  The headband was a 4 pack from the dollar store, and the leaves were ones I had lying around for crafting.  Glued it all together with E-600 from Eclectic Products.  This glue is great for pretty much everything and is even safe for photographs.

This week Kiah has the week off for spring break.  It has been busy with all the older daycare kids home from school.  But I have had extra time in the evening, to make more background papers for the Artistic Mothers Group.  This is so addicting and has been so fun.  I have a huge drawer filled with stamps that I never use because I always mess up.  For some reason when I was stamping my background paper I was able to stamp the whole dang thing without messing up.  I think I was just so engrossed in the art aspect of it.  I was able to just let go and create.  It felt so good and I absolutely love my papers.  It didn't even matter to me that I got paint on 2 of my favorite skirts.  I will post pics of them tomorrow.

Getting my hands dirty......

 

Who knew getting your hands dirty could be so much fun.  This is the background paper I made for the Artistic Mothers Group over at Artistic Creations With Trudy.  I love how gesso and some paint turned nasty color cardstock that I probably would have never used into something so pretty.  At first it was hard for me to let go of trying to make it perfect and just enjoy the process. But I did and it was surprisingly easy.  I am planning on making more.  But only have room to do 1 or 2 at a time.  Also pictured is a flower I made out of pages ripped out of Boho Magazine.  Tinted them with glimmer mist and stuck them together with a brad.  If you have never read Boho magazine, it is really good eco, grassroots, fashion, beauty mag.  Very fun to look through the pages alone spark my creativity somethin' fierce.

Boho magazine