Fall Crafting

Some of you might remember the button tree I made last Christmas. Well, when I saw this cute little pumpkin at my local scrapbook store, I had to make one for myself, too! Just painted a Styrofoam ball orange, glued the flowers on randomly, then glued orange buttons on randomly. Used craft wire to make the tendrils of the stem, glued on 2 green flowers then stacked a bunch of green buttons to create the stem.

Have you seen the Good Sheets at Starbucks that offer little tidbits of information relating to election issues? I found/read my 1st one the week before the election and devoured it almost as heartily as I devoured my tall nonfat no foam latte. By then, they were already on Week 7, so I missed 6 little cool factoids wrapped up in a tidy little newspaper. Well, I decided to take my week 7 Good Sheet and reuse it to make ATCs. Since then, I got Week 8 and 9 and have created stuff with them, too. I had gone almost 2 months w/o a Starbucks fix, but now I have to get my tall nonfat latte no foam and a good sheet once a week.

This photo was taking a few years ago, but I just made this scrapbook page last month. Jimmy and Miss A are at the San Francisco zoo, laughing at all the silly things that were happening.

Made this very labor intensive card during one of my stamp club meetings this month. You stamp the stamp 6x onto blue cardstock, emboss in silver, then glitter and intricately cut each layer to create this snowflake card. It's very dimensional, 6 layers high, and very glittery! Beautiful, I must admit, but wow, a lot is involved to make just 1 card. I made 2 and said, "ok, i'm done." Imagine the mess of glitter I had on my floors afterward. uh yea, the cat had glitter in her fur for days. Well, I send out 60-70 cards every Christmas, so those 2 weren't gonna cut it. So while I was sick, I made 58 more Christmas cards. But the hardest part for me is addressing the envelopes. I refuse to use labels, but hand addressing envelopes is just a task that is always so tedious to me. Not exactly sure why. Why can I spend 20 hours making cards gleefully, but 2 hours of addressing envelopes seems overwhelming?

Speaking of Christmas...anyone start their Christmas shopping yet? Not me. Last year, I was done before December 1st. I suppose I better get cracking if I wanna be as prepared as last year. I suspect that's not gonna happen.
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Dallas ATCs

 

Lucy ATCs

Memories of childhood, curled up on the couch with my mom watching "I Love Lucy". 

Justice ATCs

Posting to Photo Tuesday's Justice theme inspired me. Posting those ATCs from 2004 also inspired me. So I created 4 new ATCs today with the Justice theme. All of the images used were taken in or around our Nation's Capitol building. Each card was painted and stamped on canvas paper, colored with lumiere paint (the platnium one) or oil pastels (orange/yellow). The rubber stamp is from Limited Edition and is a quote from Susan B. Anthony:
"We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever." 

ATCs

I should start making ATC's (Altered Trading Cards) again. I made these in 2004 for a theme exchange with Phin. They're a nice compact size - 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" so they 'can' be easy to accomplish. Figuring out the design you want is always the hardest part.

I was reading the Top 10 issue of Creating Keepsakes and there's an article about completing a layout in 10 minutes. I typically take 45mins to well over an hour to complete 1 page. When I can dedicate an evening to creating scrapbook pages, I average 5 pages in 8 hours. So I was very interested in reading this article. However, she outlined 3 things to do before you can start counting the 10 minutes. Figure out the Content, Color and Scale of how you want your page to be designed. Well, those are the things that take the longest!! Of course, after you've done the hardest part, the actual layout will be finished quickly. It was an interesting article, but misleading IMO.

I'm currently working on Valentines day cards and finishing up a bunch of class kits I purchased from my favorite scrapbook store. I have 5 or 6 stores closer to me, but SB Dreams is by far my favorite. Not like it's far - it's only 9 miles away, but that's how saturated the SB market is in my area. Anyhoo, the girls who work there are so personable and helpful and FUNNY!!! Back in November when I had pneumonia and hadn't been in the store for over a month, they were so concerned because they hadn't seen me in so long. And once I told them why, they were always checking up on me. One of the ladies calls me the Pneumonia Girl. A funny nickname, but I love it because they just pay attention to their customers.