2012 - Looking Back on the Memories

TIME

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I can't believe it's already that TIME! 

TIME to look back at another year passing while looking forward to hopes and dreams of the new year approaching. 

Welcoming new ones into the world with a joyful heart while saying good-bye to those with a heavy one. 

I haven't had the joy of welcoming any precious new packages this past year (myself or anyone else's), but I've had to say good-bye to many - and each one was much too young: My cousin's 14 year old son, another cousin's 24 year old daughter (a mommy herself to 2 tiny ones), crafty friends and step-sisters that were strong & fierce fighters to the end. In 2012, they earned their wings. 

I Miss You.

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I can't look back on the year 2012 and over-look the one thing that makes me who I am.

Creative.

I could load down this post with ALL the things I've made this year, but let's face it, I'm not that great of a blogger to begin with, so that's just not going to happen before the end of this year.


I've been more motivated to be more creative than I've ever been this past year. That's the part I love.

I've also become more of a hoarder than I've ever been as well. That's the part I hate.

Now I need to be more motivated to make the hoarder work with the creative person to get this craziness back into a normal household.

Here are some of my favorite projects this past year. Most of them are craft related, but for sure they are all things I created, one way or another. ;)
 

First off is this barn door I picked up as a freebie that was thrown in when I was buying the front door and barn door to my garden shed. The owner told me I had to take this lonely bottom half if I was taking the others. It was his last day of business and didn't want anything left. If you want to read more about this, check out HERE.

This was a somewhat popular post and pinned quite a bit (by my standards anyway). I loved how this garage sale find basket turned out and even liked how the picture looked, even though "I" took it myself. hee hee You can find a little more about this project HERE.

I so wished I had a picture of this with a rusty drawer pull turned upside down as the chalk holder, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. It fit perfectly in center (under the word "Pile" in the watermark tag). This dry erase board made from a flea market found picture frame and left over bead board went from beautiful to a mess in about 2.2. If you want to learn more about that, go HERE.

I just want to say that I've done crackle painting before & for a number of years, but I just kind of set it aside while I explored new territories. Then one day I went snooping on Ebay, because I got wind that some crackled stuff was going for some rediculous dollars there. Whaaaat? After seeing all that inspiration, I came across some S&P shakers at a garage sale and snatched those suckers up right now, don't think I didn't. I had seen a pair done up on Ebay that looked darling. These were my version. If you want to read about that story and see what awesome blog these were featured at, check out HERE.

So there it was, literally in the middle of July, and I was painting up a snowman chair from a chair I found at a garage sale. I figured if Miss Mustard Seed can do Easter decor at Halloween and Thanksgiving for Easter, then I can do Christmas in July. It's not unheard of. The TV stations do it all the time. I've seen Christmas in July shows on the channel my daughter watches. See where I got the inspiration for this snowman chair from HERE.

The next project that I immediately dove right into was another garage sale find (do you see a pattern here?) I had my eye on making a clockface table top ever since I seen the one at Red Hen Home's blog. I was smitten to say the very least. To say that I was tickled at how it turned out, is only a slight understatement. It's a lucky thing I didn't have anywhere suitable to put this in my own home, or she would have stayed!  Check out her humble beginnings HERE.

Then came this pair of cuties. Totally copied off Pinterest/Etsy from thrift store and garage sale muffin pans. Nuff said. Look HERE. (oh . . . and I painted the bread box you almost see in the background too)

These were what I called the "re-invintaged" chairs that I had to try my hand at recovering, even if it was just the seat of a dining chair. I needed to start small and these were just perfect to learn with and found at a local thrift store. I felt compelled to do a two-tone paint scheme on them & LOVE them. Check out their story HERE.

I didn't do a story on this or any other part of our Disney World trip back in Oct. I was swamped preparing for that trip and immediately after our return, that very next weekend was my first (& supposedly) big craft show. So none of this happened on my blog. But it was a HUGE deal for us!

The arrow is pointing to a picture of our daughter, Brooke. She was specially chosen by Disney to have her photo placed on the actual wall of the Bippity Bop Boutique!! The whole thing even caused my husband to become a bit emotional over it. We were compensated with several photos, and if you know anything about Disney, those pictures aren't cheap! What a day THAT was!

This is a wooden floor lamp I got from my neighbor's garage sale that I remade. I absolutely loved that printed burlap fabric that I covered the shade with, and thought the black trim finished it all off nicely. 

This almost entirely hand made Christmas hanging was another Pinterest inspired creation.
 
And then there was this other decor piece I was inspired by something found on Ebay to create. You can find these projects posted HERE.

This is another project that I don't think I did a post on, but I loved just the same.The slat wood star was from a garage sale & so was the wreath. The bells were thrift store finds I repainted & I made the banner, plus rusted the bells & pins myself.

I don't think I made a post about it because the wreath was too low and I was too lazy to take it back outside and get another picture of it after I fixed it. Yeah, I'm lazy like that...

   And FINALLY, this is probably my most favorite piece of   
   anything I've made so far (well, besides my babies). 

    It has received the most pins of all my projects and still draws 
    in a bit more traffic to my blog because of Pinterest. If you want 
    to see where it began, check it out HERE.

   So, that's my recap of my personal favorite projects for the year 
   of 2012. 

   Thanks for taking a walk down Memory Lane with me as I looked back on those who will continue to be missed into the new year and the projects that have come and (mostly) gone.

God Bless to you and yours and Wishing you ALL the best of 2013!

 
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Little Purse Card

I'm just tossing a quick post on here today. I know the kind of time crunch everyone is in right now, myself included! Ugh! But if I don't do this now, then it will not happen.

I will be going to go pick up my sister in just a little while. She's older than me, but she has Down's Syndrome so it's more like I'm the big sister and there are no other siblings.

After I pick up my sister, then we're all heading directly to my dad and step-mom's house for a little family get together. Not a big deal, we just get sandwiches and pizza for dinner. Her son and his family are going to be there and so is the husband and son of her dearly departed daughter. This will be the first time that we will all be together for Christmas time.

Another reason is that my step-niece is having a birthday tomorrow! I have not ever done anything special for any of my step-nieces. We have not had the chance to be very close since they live about 2 hours away. It's not far, but our parent's getting together happened after everyone has become adults, so we don't really feel like "mixed siblings", even though we all get along great. Since it's Christmas and it's my step-brother's oldest daughter's birthday, I wanted to do something for the younger girls too, but I doubt that they'll do anything for my daughter (& that's OK-not expecting anything), I didn't want it to be much so that they felt bad for not getting anything for Brooke. I had these little gifts sitting around for just this occasion, but so far none has come up... until now.

But for the birthday girl, I made this. (sorry, but the pictures always look much clearer on my camera screen than when I put them on here.)

I used some inexpensive jewels that I got at JoAnne's and an old acrylic stamp image that I got from Walmart years ago.

I cut the purse design with my Cricut from the Accent Essential cartridge. It was two images of the same design that were over-lapped and welded together in Design Studio. I also embossed it with a criss cross pattern, but you can't tell in these pictures.

I hope she likes it. I filled it with scratch off lottery tickets. She's turning 11 and I don't even know what she has, I just know she has better taste than me. LOL!

In case I DON'T get back on here before December 25th.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Unplanned Post

I was going to post this on Thursday, but since I woke up at 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday with an excruciating back ache, I figured I might as well be a little productive, considering that I don't feel like moving much. It will be the one thing I get done ahead of schedule. I'm so far behind on everything else this year, it's not even the slightest bit funny.

Since I finished up all my craft shows for the year, I thought I would take it easy on the creativity part so I could focus on Christmas and decorating. It turns out that I got motivated to work on more craft stuff, even though none of them are finished (you knew that was coming, right?). I started to work on some small rustic looking table top trees. If I know me, I'll get them done AFTER Christmas and no one will be interested in seeing them at that point. I guess that's how I roll...a day late and a dollar short - always. I told myself that I was going to focus on finishing up all the projects that are sitting around in my dining room floor before I started anything else new, so that's why it's Christmas trees (among other things)

However, I had a nice surprise one day last week when a shopper from my last craft show called to place an order! At that craft show she had seen an item she liked in my booth, but held off making the purchase, only to discover later that it had been bought by someone else. She inquired about being able to get another & I said I could make one if she decided she wanted one. I was totally shocked when she actually followed through! That almost like never happens.

Here is what she ordered... 

It's one of those covered round cheese boards that's fixed to a large candle holder. I've painted it black and did a beige crackle with some primitive stars. I sealed the top with Polyurethane, because I read somewhere online that was food safe, considering they use it on kitchen table tops I figured it must be the right stuff, and the rest is done with a matte sealer.

I hadn't intended on using that candle holder for anything like this, but ya know what? I got it off my pool table and I liked how it turned out better than the first one I sold. I just have to sand down a couple of uneven spots on the bottom that make it rock a little and it's good to go!

And the table it's sitting on is hopefully going to be a project in the near future, but I think I want to get some scrapbooking done in January, so maybe not just yet, or perhaps in between pages. It seems like multi-tasking is the name of the game.

Here's hoping you stay creative.

 

Wrapped Peppermint Candy Pillow

What I have to show you today isn't anything spectacular and I don't even remember who I "borrowed" the idea from, but when I seen it, I knew that it was something I could do with a sweet pillow I found at a garage sale. 

 

The one I seen actually had their pillow wrapped in a piece of cellophane and, as stinkin' cute as that was, I thought it could be somewhat noisy and easily finger printed up. You would need to replace it yearly. Since I'm basically lazy & cheap frugal, I wanted something that would last - especially since this was going to be sold at my craft show, I wanted it to make it worth the price for whomever purchased it.

I came up with what I thought was the perfect solution. 

I wrapped the pillow in a piece of tulle and just tied it on the ends even though I thought the pillow was darling just by itself. My daughter wanted to keep it, but unfortunately, you can't make any money if  you keep everything you like and you will run out of room in your house too. Trust me on that one.  And as tempting as it is to cheat and just sell it the way I found it, it helps to add some little something to kick it up a notch. I like to call it "simple with a WOW factor."

It turns out that my daughter must have the same taste as many other little girls close to her 9 years of age because every one of them that walked by it at the craft show wanted it. The one that ended up with it must have visited it 4 or 5 times before finally making it hers. I felt kinda of guilty for not letting my own daughter enjoy it, but goodness, she gets so much as it is. You have to draw the line sometimes. I'd like to believe it's in good hands.


 
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Craft show craziness is OVER!

Over for this year anyway. And what a crazy year in the craft show biz it has been too. The one show I had anticipated being my biggest yet, ended up being a slow stinker for me (kinda). And the 2 "little" ones ended up being busy happy surprises!  I have some orders in the works that I need to get going on too, so I'm still staying busy with stuff. And that, my friends, is good too!

I have to say that I've gotten so many wonderful words of encouragement from people at these shows about how I should have my own shop, that I'm actually trying to figure out something in my head to get one started. My husband has actually been my biggest supporter with that. Truth be known, secretly he's hoping to become my full time "picker." Who can blame him either? I mean, who hasn't dreamed of being another Frank & Mike from "American Pickers?" Can I have an Amen here?

So anyway...I had my 3rd and final craft show this last Saturday and it was pretty good. Well, the show itself was a tad on the slow side, but since I made a huge sale during the set up the night before, it's considered a good show.

 {image source}

I made some of these cuties (NO-this is not mine, I forgot to take a photo of them) and all 4 of mine sold to the first 3 customers of the day. And to think, I've had these mugs for about 10 years waiting for some kind of inspiration to use them.

Then, I made these pretties

 They drew a lot of attention, but I only sold one of the small ones.

This is a chalkboard I made, but even though it was pretty enough with that cute frame, I couldn't/wouldn't leave well enough alone. Oh. no.  It needed a special title - to be worn like a necklace on a pretty dress. Unfortunately, it didn't sell either, but I did sell a magnetic chalkboard that I did in all black. And, of course I didn't remember to take a picture of that one, did I? Geesh. You'd think this was my first month of blogging wouldn't you? I keep thinking one of these days I'll get good at this whole blogging thing, but I can't even keep my kitchen cleaned up after every meal. What makes me think I'd be good at keeping my blog up to par? 

One can only hope!


 
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