Handy Maria

On this week's edition of This Old House...

I decided to play handyman this weekend instead of doing any real scrapbooking work. I know, for shame, I have nothing REAL to write on this way, but I accomplished some things around the house that made me feel better. Well sort of, as it was a long line of small catastrophes, screw ups and tantrums.

Number 1:

My little sweet pea

#1 Sweet Pea, this is the younger wee one. This is post Sears "I'm going to throw the mother of all crying fits because I decided not to sleep ALL DAY" picture. Literally, an hour or so later. Guess she just didn't want to go out. So much for getting her 3 (going on 4) month pictures. Momma's behind already little one, and now you're making me take another half day out of my schedule to do this later just because you refused to take a nap. MAN, I really need to get ahold on my parenting style and nip this in the bud, AGAIN, before she starts teaming up with her big sis.


Number 2:

The Baby Blanket Tapestry

Okay, this was a win. One of my projects in the wings since we moved in. This blanket was part of Oli's layette, and its never been really functional for her. The material was really stiff, figured it would be so even after washing, so I had the bright idea just to make wall art out of it. Among other wall art I'm working on for her room.

I grabbed a flat wooden plank type stick from the unfinished wood stuffs area of Hobby Lobby for somewhere around $3 and painted the ends in a color matching the layette color scheme. With a little help from hubby, stapling the blanket to the plank for me (as a backing) and me attaching ribbon with some hot glue and a few more staples, this is the finished product. I had to doctor the image too. It's a cellphone shot, but it was REALLY green thanks to the curtains in her room casting that hue on everything.

Number 3:

Planned refinishing of the white wooden shelves I picked up at Goodwill, for the downstairs RED bathroom. I've needed some shelves in there for a while. Its an odd cubby hole type bathroom, so where the loo sits = no light. I needed something small that I can either 1) put a touchlight on or 2) trust with votives. Found the shelves while shopping one day and there we go.

However, they had scratches, so I had to refinish with my acrylics. I wanted a glossy finish too, which the acrylics don't give in their natural state, so I hit up Hobby Lobby on the way home with miss fussy butt post Sears tantrum.

Whoever the douche was at Hobby Lobby that took the little spray cap off the bottle of gloss I bought, and me for not realizing it until I opened it on Sunday.... GO ME, and I hope you DIAF Mr.! Now I have to take the thing back for an exchange, or possibly an upgrade. I wasn't so sure about using the spray anyway when there's a brush on version (at twice the price). I'll have to think about it until whenever I decide to return this stupid thing for its CAP.

Number 4:

Haircut! Nuff said. Got some me time and took care of the awful length of hair weighing me down for so long. This was a serious win for me. Guess Sundays have become the "me time" day, which I'm GOOD with for as long as hubby lets me.

Number 5:

My $3 (ea.) flowers!

Yes, I found them ON CLEARANCE. I'm a cheap wench. I had eyed something like this at Michael's for some time now, and when they went on clearance I decided to go for it. That bathroom was so bare that its ridiculous. It needed something. So, after some discussion with my mom about it, I figured that the simplest thing to do would be to get some swaths of flower garland and the staple gun and... yah, you get the picture. I kept going back and forth on if I really wanted to do that too, or if I wanted to do something more... it still needs a shelf or something, but this is good for now. It makes it a little more "homey" to me.

I just wish the craft makers would get one thing right - flower garland needs to be longer than 6ft! I can cut it if I have to, but I have large mirrors to cover (or large anything in this house for that matter). More footage please, I'm willing to pay extra for it too. I had thought about using these same garlands (or maybe just greenery with some gauzy type material) over my garden tub, but considering the lengths of the garland I've seen out there, forget it, its not going to work with that high ceiling in the master bath. I'll just have to stick to the gauze.

If Hancock Fabrics had a store anywhere close to me, I'd bankrupt my husband and I, I swear.

So, pretty productive weekend, even with the good AND bad events.

Older Page explained

After looking through my own gallery from yesterday's blog post, I realized something about one of my older pages I created - I never explained the process! With my gallery on scrapbook.com I rarely made any explanations of my projects. I'm just going to clear that up right now on this one because I'm damn proud of it. Its one of my favorites, even if its the most simple one I've ever created.

I usually spend way to much time thinking about the design of my pages and fretting over them continuously while in the process of putting them together. I tend to second guess myself even after I'm done, as if to say, "Is this IT? This is the best I can come up with?" I do this ALL THE TIME, not just in scrapbooking. Ask my husband, I've done it in programming to, one of the reasons why I stepped away from that side of things. I cannot leave well enough alone, and expect perfection the first time out on anything I do, one of these days I'll get over that and just enjoy the process, as well as not be so hard on myself for the failures.

One of the reasons I absolutely adore this particular project is:

It was the easiest page I've ever produced!

YEP! One of the few moments where I came out with a finish product that I was happy with, no tinkering. I went into it with an absolute idea of what I wanted too. Pizza party = pizza picnic, or something like that. The idea was a top down view of a covered table. My favorite part? The handmade pizza. I cut, inked and created that piece all out of my head. No scraplifting, no looking at a thousand design pages to get ideas. Just BOOM, there it was, clear as day.

Alright, so onto the process.

Silverware, simple. I took captured images from somewhere out on the web, or clipart, can't remember and printed them out. Traced them to chipboard, then cut that out, covered it with aluminum foil. VERY simple. Very cute. The gingham paper was obviously cut on the bias. Did that to make it look like it was a table cloth over a table. So, now we have our table set with silverware too.

Next was the pizza. (I seriously love this piece, can you tell?) Very simple as well. After searching through my cardstock for just the right shade of "pizza crust" brown, I started with a drawn circle, freehanding the waviness around it to make it look "crust" like. After this, I decided it needed some shading so, I grabbed my inks. Chestnut Roan chalk ink for the win! Love Colorbox. I use that particular shade so much that I've been through three of the pads in one year, no lie! It looks great on everything, almost.

Shading done on the crust, we move to the next layer, the "cheese." The again, appropriate shade of yellow cardstock chosen, cut with either my EK Success circle cutter or my Silhouette digital craft cutter. I'm not sure if it was an 8" or 10" circle now, and that makes a difference because of the tools used. EK can't go beyond an 8" circle if I recall correctly. I made have used my Silhouette to cut two halves due to the size limits of the EK too. Either way, you get the idea. After this, again with the shading. I dabbled a bit with my red colorbox inks, took a while to get the right mix, but I had magenta in there definitely, and a bit of maroon I think. Also with the chestnut roan to give it that cooked look.

From here, the "pepperoni" were added, again with the same tricks. I used my Silhouette to save me the time on batch printing the circles needed. Colored them with a little chestnut roan and other darker colors for that cooked effect and then assembled it as you see above.

Just to break up the monotony of a whole HALF pizza on both pages, I cut the other half into several pieces and used some of my shape scissors to cut "Bite" marks into them.

The chipboard took on several layers of straight black ink before they came out looking right, to me. Black just seemed fitting against the bright colors of the background, and it went well with the accent colors used against the photographs. I finished that part before I thought about the rest of the page, so it was a good way to tie it in.

Simplest design, and still one of the most loved. Good thing the daycare director liked it too. This was the first time I had been kinda sorta commissioned to do anything like this. It was part of a larger collection of pages for my older daughter's daycare (at the time), to document their summer outings.

New Gallery Editions

For lack of anything better to put up, I added older card projects to my gallery. There are several more things I need to update to that site, but its way too late in the evening for me to get to that.

On a side note:


I managed to finally get my Better Homes and Gardens sconces up, now I just need a mirror to go between them. Check one little to do off my list of a zillion. Yay!

Weekend Warrior Project

This has been an odd weekend, just to put that out there first. Normally, I'm playing Suzie Homemaker and catching up with whatever household stuff didn't get finished during the week. This weekend has been utterly L-A-Z-Y. Kids didn't feel like doing squat, same with hubs and I. Today however, I decided I had put off the much needed me time, so I went out on the town. This equates to just hem-hawing about any store that catches my fancy at the moment, for as long as I can get away with it. Four solid hours of this, and I only spent about $40 on the absolutely do-not-need, even if its our last dollar, sort of items. Hubs should be appreciative that I'm a bargain (read: CHEAP) shopper.

Most of my finds were odds and ends to start making this new home of ours, well, OURS. And then I ran across some really cute things in Michael's. I think over the years, I've personally paid someone's salary, they love me! One of the things I found and decided to spend some time embellishing were some wooden phrases. They hang out in the wood working aisle, with all the unfinished shelves and pre-cut balsa wood pretties for home decor. They're about 1/4", cut out of MDF and are already semi-gloss painted. Cost me a whopping $1 a piece.



The second I saw these, I knew exactly what I would do with them and where they would go. My little area of the office/game room, over my scrapping desk. Fitting place, they can provide inspiration there.

I thought of a quick idea and already had embellishments picked out in my head. I remembered that I had several items at home already that would go decently enough with the color scheme and I didn't need anything overly dramatic, it would have deterred from the words themselves, so K.I.S.S. If you don't know what that stands for, let me help you. Not being derogatory there, just stating the method, don't hurt me!

I roughed them up a little too, but you can't really see it well in the pictures. Only just slightly ran over the edges with a little course sandpaper, and scratched up the base, just to give it a "distressed" look. I love anything distressed looking, not sure if its part of "Shabby chic" but both are starting to become a part of my home decor style.


Embellishing started with color scheme matching fake shape rhinestone things, I really don't remember the true phrase for these. They are my daughters, we bought a pack on sale from Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago and now she bedazzles everything she OWNS with them. So, a couple of the above in random places, little bit of hot glue and we're good to go.

As you can see from the pictures, I picked up these flowers a few weeks ago from the clearance centers of Wal-Mart. The wally world closest to my place has decided to go through renovations to their updated store design, so of course, everything is being shifted and sold off, the great mass exodus of products that do not fit their style anymore. So, I lucked out. Popped a one of these in coordinating colors on each phrase and viola, instant pretty!

Great color scheme don't you think?

With all the embellishing finished, I hot glued some ribbon to the back to hang it from, and that was it. All finished. I'm considering messing with more of the ribbon to add a bow as the glued on ribbon strips look a little plain, but I'll figure that out later.

The finished product!

And here's the set, hanging above my scrapbooking desk. I'm going to rearrange this later (and level it out, now that I look at it), maybe add a shelf or something else to make it my own, but for now, I think it looks okay. Its a start to finally making this little piece of the house my own, and inspiring future projects.

Throwback Thursday

Sometimes I like play around with the products I have on hand just to see what I can do, or if I have a need for it, I try to make it rather than buy it. Results are varied, and sometimes quite interesting or they just downright fail and I feel like I've utterly wasted good money, despite the learning process. Much like my programming debacles, I have scrapbooking failures, I accept neither easily. The deeper recesses of my brain still thinks I'm a perfectionist.

I encountered one of these such incidents a few weeks ago. Mind you, I have been stuck on building the page that these were intended for, still putzing about wondering if I should use them. At least I have the sense and time to put off a page for a while and come back with a fresh head later.

A little background on the page, since there are no pictures. I only take them when I have a finished product. This page is intended for my youngest daughter's baby book. Its a 2 page spread with inks of her feet at 2 weeks old. Title: 10 fingers & toes. Solid color background with accenting pattern strip across the middle. Purple and pink hues.

My problem was/is, (and always has been) accents. I tend to love to put as many embellishments as pictures when that is really not the point. I'm learning to curb that urge. However, I needed flowers to accent. Side note: LOVE flowers, and its a girlie girl book, its expected. I didn't have a single flower in the hue of my chosen palette. I often run into this problem with my embellishments and lately have fought the urge hard core to just run out and buy something. I refused to give into that this time.

So, here's what I decided to do:

I looked through my huge stockpile of random things I own, found these. I picked them up at Target sometime back only because they were on clearance. Side note 2: If its not on sale or I don't have a coupon for it I -try- not to buy it, unless I really, really, really (yes 3 really's) need it.

Okay, so I discovered these. White fabric flowers. Fabric, not paper. I had paper, but I wasn't so sure the thoughts in my head would work on paper flowers, so I opted for this.

Pretty, cheap fabric flowers

Better to start with a white base than some other odd color that I'd have to mutate somehow. Alright. Next thought in my head was, INK. I didn't have any pigment inkpads that would work for color and my Adirondacks seemed a bit to watery to work for the situation. I'm not good with fabrics, so I couldn't guess what they were made out of (wasn't written on the packaging either). All I could think of was to grab my Tattered Angels ink in Rum Raisin and try it. I could at least have some bling on there too in that case. I think I eventually mixed in some of my Adirondack ink as well by the end, and the shimmer of the TA ink didn't stick.

So first off, I tried the TA Rum Raisin, not too much, just a couple of sprays. I figured I would let just a splash of purple catch on it, and the white of the fabric would still stick out on my page design. So I tried that, and it didn't seem quite right. So I took to the Adirondack ink (I forget what the name of the color was), dabbed a few drops, added in some blending solution (few drops) and let it stew in that.

Once they dried out (next day) I decided they needed something more. Another layer of color, dimension, something, ANYTHING. Since I also had pink in my color palette for the page, I decided to dig through the pigment inkpads again. One of my Colorbox ink colors seemed to fit the bill, so I tried it lightly, just hoping to catch the raised edges of the fabric. It worked decently.

Pretty Little Flowers

Kinda. I'm still not sure about using them in the page, but then again, the page is still one I'm mulling about. Not so sure I like the visible ink edges where it "bled" out as it soaked up the ink it stewed in. I could always cover those with other bling, or stack them. Honestly though, not one of my worst failures in either field I know. I'll make it work with something, someday. If nothing else, I learned just exactly what ink can do in this case.

Burn Baby, Burn!

Not to hijack my own blog already, but, yep, I'm going for it. My brain is too fried to concentrate on the wonders of technology or scrapbooking.

I have lots and lots of favorites, but I haven't managed to get around to listing them on my profile, I know, I'm lazy. I like to pride myself on not watching a whole lot of television. At the very least it becomes a soundtrack to whatever I'm really doing at the moment, but I have to say, I LOVE BURN NOTICE!

Hubby can have his TV any other time he wants to catch up on DVR'd episodes of Mythbusters, American Pickers, PawnStars or whatever catches his fancy at that particular moment (don't get me wrong, I like those too, but again, -background- music), but he better steer clear come Thursday nights. I started watching this show as a fluke, it sounded interesting, included eyecandy and best of all Bruce freaking Campbell! Talk about being hooked instantly.

Now to the point. Unreality has taken a pot shot at the show. At first glance, I did LOL at the image. Paul does have a point on their "formula," but really, just for once, look beyond it. That is what caught me each and every time. But I really do soak up the MacGuyer crap easily, I feed off of it, I like feeling like I've learned something when I watch a show. This one has it, with whole lot of sexy and a splash of comedy (Thank you again Bruce!) not to mention the spy angle.

The show is greater than its silly "formula." You take away a lot of little bits of knowledge about the general covert ops field. That is really common sense tactics, that could be applied to things like neighborhood watches or keeping yourself safe. That tangent of the show really outweighs the structure of the series, at least for me, but, again, that's ME.

Back to the critique. I'm not so sure adding Jesse was a great idea though either. 4 seems a little crowded for the team, and Jesse's penchant for thinking outside the box so much might just land the team in trouble eventually. It changes the dynamic just enough to take the focus off the "formula" IMHO, but why mess with a good thing? What they need to step away from is the constant interruptions of a sub-plot (the side job clients) and focus on the larger arc. Heroes fell into this too, and look where it got them.

However, once Jesse really learns what happened to his past (and I wonder how many seasons they will be allowed to drag that out among), Michael is in for a rude, painful awakening. I'm just saying, Paul, dear Paul, look beyond the formula and just enjoy the content! At least we know it'll be renewed beyond Season 4, unlike Heroes.

For the Love of Chipboard

I started my adventures in scrapbooking with one sole purpose, making a single, ever expanding album for my mother of my (then) only daughter. 4 years and one more daughter later I find I can hardly keep up with all the projects in my head or on paper. I have also moved away from the traditional album/page design that originally addicted me to this. Those projects get pushed to the back burner, a lot, driven by a muse that would rather create cards and home decor right now.

In the past few weeks I have fallen in love with chipboard decor letters. 8" high, 1" thick layered raw paper goodness in an end display at Hobby Lobby. I even picked up the project idea booklet sitting with the display of letters in all its $1.99 glory.

I'm never one to copy ideas straight from the books though; I am what you call a scraplifter. I take the ideas presented, mesh them into something of my own with slight twists, and viola, project all my own! This is exactly what I set out to do when I first rested my eyes on the selection of chip decor a few weeks ago. I knew I wanted to make something for each of the girls for room decor (new house, still decorating, etc.), but I wasn't sure exactly what, so I hit up the accompanying project booklet for ideas. 

This is the mesh that resulted for my oldest:

This is the culmination of several projects from the idea booklet. I wanted her to have something somewhat functional (the practical side of me) but yet cute, homespun and fun (yah, that -other- side). It now currently resides on her wall by her closet adorned with hats, scarves and what peg she has left over for her many handbags. How I grew a fashionista I'll never know.

I plan on expanding on this particular project in the near future, with a series of images and steps on how I created it. For now, its just enough for me to show it off and hopefully inspire someone else out there.

As I said before, cards are another route I take with scrapbooking. I really feel like I'm doing a disservice to the women who raised me if I don't remember a card on the proper holidays or personal celebrations. (And yes, I have forgotten them occasionally, or circumstances prevented me from hand creating them. I'm not perfect.) I'm also not the type who is satisfied buying something off the shelf to fulfill that request. This also comes from my heritage, as all the women on both my mom and dad's side of the family are crafters of some sort. If its from the heart, it means something more to the recipient (I would hope!), so that's always my intention, though I still am my own worst critic.

That being said, and having two birthdays this month (one now past, sorry Sis!), I hand tooled their birthday cards. Albeit the "gift" wasn't all that inspiring (gift cards), I hope the cards will be for someone out there.

Spawned from an idea in a magazine passed down to me, each has their own unique take. Enjoy!

My sister's version of the card:

















And my Mother's version of the card: