Tornado and A Chance to Win Somethin'

While waiting for my daughter to finish getting ready for school this morning, I heard on the news that there was a tornado that touched down in Rock Hill, SC overnight. THAT is where my Grandma moved to and lives with my aunt and uncle!! I figured it was pointless to call the home phone, but did anyway and got a recorded message from the phone company. I don't have my aunt's cell phone number, so I called my uncle's cell. He was at work and apparently didn't know anything about it. He works an hour away, so he wasn't near it. He was a bit surprised to hear from me at 7:30 a.m. and then to hear what I told him! Fortunately, everyone was OK and it was nowhere close to the family, just no phone service. Now mind you, right after my grandma moved to Tennessee, they had the really bad floods and she moved to SC 2 months ago and now this! I told my uncle that if SC doesn't work out for her, she's NOT coming up here! LOL!! - jk  He promised me he would keep her down there and keep us safe.  ;^) I called my dad to let him what happened and that everyone was fine, since it is HIS mom. I'm saddened to hear that 3 people lost their lives from the storm and praying for their families and the community.

On a much lighter and happier note: I just seen an amazing give away being offered over at Funky Junk Interior's blog!! I LOVE her blog because she has a certain style that is really me. She made me realize that my house is all wrong for me! I don't like dark colors in my home, but I always seem to end up living in them. Why is that? Ironically enough, my house with first husband was dark with dark trim and cabinetry. I hated it, the wall paper was dark and looked like a dead forest at dusk without the pretty sunset. Depressing! Even though it was devastating at first, our house caught fire one day and it was the best thing to have happen to that house. I left NOTHING dark in there in the remodel. Now, my current home is dark trim & cabinetry again with lots of brick & stonework. I think the rustic shabby chic look works for this house and I'm trying to incorporate that little by little.

Anyway, I regress. My point is that Donna over Funky Junk is having a give away from Katie's Rose Cottage Design. If you love the rustic shabby chic look, then you need to go check this out. It's simple, just check out KRCD and comment on Donna's blog what you liked. If you want another chance, then just post about it on Twitter, Facebook or your own blog & tell her about that too!

 So go get a bib to catch the drool and then go window shopping! (**This drawing is closed**)

God Bless and have a great day!!

More craft show pics and other treasures

I have a bad habit of not taking enough photos of things, usually in the "before" stages because I get so anxious to start on them - even though I fizzle out before they're done sometimes. LOL! I loaded up a few more photos of a couple things I added to my last craft show that wasn't in the first. I'd love to tell you that they all sold, but not all of them did. It might be 50/50 on how much of the newest additions sold. It was a tough crowd group.The few that were buying, were spending, the others were just looking for something to do to kill a half hour out of their day. ;^) I do believe that I created some inspiration in others to go home and just make it themselves. That's the trick key to a successful craft show... provided people show up. You have to make something that they can't/won't do themselves without it being out of their financial ballpark or just so amazing that they just have to have it!

I had more things made that were sold and I forgot to get pictures of beforehand. These are just a couple other things I had in the show:

This is a pocket style pillow that I made to look like the front of Santa's coat. I had 2 that I made for the 1st show that sold, but they were bigger at 18", this one (of a pair) is only 14". They did not sell.
 

 Here is a plastic Charger plate that I picked up last year on clearance and added this copper vinyl design to. It looks gold in the pic, but it's actually coppery. I sold one, but had 2 more made for back up. The coloring in this shot doesn't look good. I tried using the photo program that came on my laptop and I don't care for the limitations it has. My other desktop is getting so loaded down with pictures, that it takes it forever to get from point A to point B. I'm waiting for Black Friday sales to get me a Flash drive to store the pictures on to give me more space and hopefully make it faster.

This is a rustic looking clay pumpkin I picked up yesterday at the Salvation Army store here in town. It half off of 48 cents! Better than garage sale!

This is a wooden milk jug that was 48 cents. I thought it had potential for something cute. I hope it comes to me before next year!

These are a couple of sweaters I picked up for other projects I have in mind.

I didn't think the price of the sweaters were too bad and I would even wear them if I didn't have other plans in mind for them!

Look at this cute little vintage Santa face!! He was half off 78 cents! He was kinda dirty with some brownish splatters on him, but he cleaned up real nice! I think he's actually a napkin holder because he has a slot thing in the back, but I don't think he'd be very effective at keeping the napkins upright. I like him just the way he is and I'm keeping him for myself (unless I see something that he would be good for in a craft show piece)!  But, I'm thinking he sure would look sweet amongst an all red and white vignette, wouldn't he? Perhaps on a table next to one of those Santa coat pillows....

I really should be getting back to a few projects that were put "on hold" before the crafting craziness. I still have the Senior year pages and back cover to finish of that pink and black high school mini album I started back in May. It's not a surprise now, and I sent her grandma some sneak peaks, but they have no clue what all it holds in store. It's not as crafty as my friend Tracy over at Tracy's Treasures does with her mini albums, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. IMO. The girl's grandma is tickled at what she saw already. Like I said in my previous post about her being my biggest cheerleader, it's so true! I have a few close 2nd's in my cheer squad though, but she can make my head swell. hee hee!

Well, it's about one week until those of us in the United States celebrate our Thanksgiving holiday and the Christmas holiday officially kicks off. I was going to offer to have the dinner here at our house, but my dad and step-mom beat me to it. That's OK, even though it would force me to get all the craft junk put away much faster! Sometimes I need those kinds of kicks in the ol' hiney to motivate me. I should just pretend everyone is coming over anyway. LOL!!

I'm linking up to Funky Junk Interiors and Shabby Art Boutique

God Bless and have a great day!!

Craft shows DONE!!

As much as I love creating and making things for myself or to sell, I am happy to say that I am done with craft shows for at least one more year. It can be quite stressful getting enough stuff made and then worrying about whether or not you'll have a decent turnout with people buying your stuff. I had a very successful show with the first show! They advertised like crazy with a little help from my friend and myself. But this last show was not so good. Not many people showed up and those that did, weren't buying too much, if anything. I made half of what I made at this same show last year. I am seriously reconsidering doing this show next year. I hate to say for sure that I'm not, but I know many other vendors were not happy either and they made considerably less than me. Maybe it's what you sell and maybe that tiny little town is not the market for what they have. What I had barely had a market there either!

So anyway...I wanted to share some of the last minute things I made that I didn't have a chance to post before. I think I was doing pretty good by getting 2 posts in one week while working on 20 projects. LOL!

 

This is a really bad picture of this chalkboard I made from an old mirror. The mirror was broken in half a day, thanks to my 7 yr old daughter's own vanity. We just won't even go there right now.... anyway, the chalkboard is actually a dark teal blue color and no matter I tried to get the photo adjusted, it just wasn't showing that. With the larger chalkboards, I included a little basket that I attached along with the necessary piece of chalk and coordinated eraser.This one did not sell.  :^(

I swear, I can't write in a straight line! geeeez! Here is the other chalkboard that is also made with the dark teal paint. It's not the best color representation either, but it's better than the one above. If you notice, there is a stenciled frame design done in the paint. I seriously don't know what I was thinking when I thought this was a good idea in a time crunch situation, but it worked out and didn't really take me all that long. The hardest part was getting the design in a consistent size that worked for all 4 sides, since it's a little taller than it is wide. It wasn't perfect, but it did sell!  :^D

This is a sleigh light that I put together. It drew a lot of attention, but I guess the price wasn't "garage sale" low enough for the ones that were looking at it. Sorry if I'm being just a tad sarcastic in that last remark, but I will say that there are quite a few people in the smaller towns that come to these craft shows and think they're at a flea market or garage sale. Ohhhh, the stories I could tell! It makes me want to put up a sign that reads, "Reminder: this is a craft bazaar and not a garage sale, so please be considerate. ~thank you! Do you think that might offend?

I don't know that I've ever showed one of my skates on my blog before. I didn't want them to be copied all over the place, including craft shows that I'm in. Had that happen before.

I made one last year and just happened to send a photo of it to a friend in Chicago. She in turn sent the photo to her sister, who went nuts over it, I guess. So my friend bought it as a gift for her sister. She says her sister gets all kinds of wonderful comments about it when she has people over. I think she's one of my best cheerleaders of what I do.

I think I'm feeling a bit negative after having a dismal turnout for this event that felt like such a let down after the "high" of a successful first show. It was kinda like the crash after coming off a sugar high! LOL! I will say that I'm still in a crafting mood and have been working a few other projects that still didn't manage to get finished for either show. I don't want things left undone.

That's it for show and tell today. I hope to have more later on this week. I'm trying to find my house underneath all the craft stuff right now. My family is happy that the Laundry Fairy decided to make a trip in and leave some clean clothes behind. Whew!

God Bless and have a great day!

I am linking up to House of Hepworths

A Treat Banner

 I feel as though it's safe to show this by now. I had a treat box banner published in the Cricut "Holidays" magazine back in October. I haven't received my copy yet, but I had to have sneak peek at one of the issues in the rack at JoAnne Fabrics to see what they did with my project. You can only imagine how thrilled I was to see MY treat box banner as the FEATURE project for the Treat Box section of the magazine!! How cool is that? They don't show it as a banner, but it's still very pretty in print! ;^)  Here are my photos of the project - and don't forget that you can click on the pictures to get a larger view.

Here is a bit of a close up of the front of the treat boxes. I just love this striped scrapbook paper by Best Creations for this! I don't know what it is about pink with lime green and red that looks so fun and festive for Christmas, almost child-like, ya know?

                                          

I think this banner is a cute thing to do for a party since you can easily untie each box from the banner. I thought it would be fun to put a different surprise in each container, then you could put each letter in a hat and have a drawing for the letter on the container; the "s's" could be S1 and S2 for the 1st S and the 2nd one to eliminate confusion for that duplicated letter. Did that make any sense? :^/ Random thought here...Wouldn't it be cute with curly streamers hanging down? I should have done something like this for my daughter's birthday party, but I didn't make time for it.


Speaking of my daughter's birthday party, I never did get to share pics of that. It's been so crazy around here these past few months. I'm only a few weeks late on posting these since her birthday was Oct 23.

~The Table Setting~

It's not a Pinterest worthy design, but the girls were in total awe and that was all I cared about. My daughter had asked for a Tinkerbell themed party. Neither her friends nor her realized that the only thing Tink at this party was the tablecloth, but they sure thought it was a Tink theme because of the colors I used.

For the cupcakes, I used this is 2-tiered plate holder that I've only used maybe twice in 8 years? I was glad to bring it out again. I just wished I would have thought of it earlier than on the day of the party, then I could have looked for cuter colored plates. That was OK too, because I think the darker blue really set off the bright pink and green cupcake tulip wrappers. Those were from Wilton, by the way.

~Pink Lemonade?~

How cute are these drink glasses I made up? A friend of mine found something similar to this online and showed them to me back in May, but the ones she found had metal daisy cut lids. After a long drawn out process of finding those exact lids at the cheapest price I could, when they arrived, I was disappointed to learn that they were too small for these jars. hmmmm...that's ok, I'm sure I'll find a use for them somewhere down the road, but I had to come up with something else and quick! So I turned to my trusty Cricut machine again & made my own custom daisy cut lid inserts that was a little more color coordinated with the party theme. I put the glasses on a cake plate I picked up at a garage sale this summer for $2. I found the daisy designed paper liners a couple of years ago on clearance at the local Walmart thinking I would use them for scrapbooking. LOL!



I found the turquoise and green polka dotted straws on Etsy at Hiyoyo's store (I think that was the name?). She had smaller quantities and great prices and the fastest shipping I've ever seen. She was a treat to work with too. And did you notice the lavender colored drink in the glass? That's just pink lemonade Kool-aid that I added one drop of blue food coloring to a pitcherful.

~Let Them Eat Cupcakes!~

Hee hee hee! I wanted to make a full blown layered rainbow cake, but that wasn't going to make it in time with me. I seen on Pinterest that some people were taking a shortcut with them and just making cupcakes that they layered the colored batter all at once. It was a tedious task, yet still simpler than the layer cake, if you ask me. I know Brooke loved them....I swear her favorite color is rainbow! She colors everything in rainbow colors. LOL! I would have added rainbow sprinkles to the frosting, but Brooke doesn't like that stuff on her frosting. She likes them on sugar cookies that have no frosting though. I know, I have a quirky daughter. :)

~And MORE Cake!~

This is the bunt cake version I made for her actual birthday dinner when grandma and grandpa came over. I thought it was quite interesting to discover that it actually bakes like the shape of a rainbow! Brooke said the white frosting drizzle looked like white clouds. This is a terrible photo, since I had some major issues with the cake sticking to the bottom of the cake pan and I don't know how to cut a cake to make it photo-op worthy. You still get the effect tho. ;^)

I've been trying to catch up a little on my blog, but that's it for me today. I'm still trying to get more things made for my next craft show on Sat. I need to get more on the ball for this one since I sold so much from my show last week! That's a good thing!


God Bless and have a great day!

I'm linking up to Funky Junk Interior's Banner Sat. Night Special link party!

Wheeeeeeew!!!! Pic heavy post

I am breathing just a little bit easier today, but not much - I have to make more stuff for this Saturday's show too. I had my first craft show on Saturday and I have to say that the show was a phenomenal success!  My only disappointment was that I didn't take more stuff!! I never thought I'd hear myself say THAT! I took less than half of what I did last year and make almost as much!! Now THAT'S how ya do it!  ;^) I can finally show you some of the things I made for the show, since every one of the specialty items that I was holding back on sold.


Here are some of the signs that I made that sold. They were each made from a cabinet door. The lettering was all done with my Cricut. This first one was made using the Billionaire cartridge.

This was made from a really cool looking large fishing lure that has usable hooks. The font used on this was one of the early Cricut carts called Stamped. It has a rugged primitive look to it that I really like. The little story behind this one and the next is that my husband is so "over" seeing the "Live Laugh Love" quotes on everything and just made a little joke about how I should do that with these fish signs, but put Fish in there for the last word instead. I thought he was onto something there, so I went with his idea and they both sold. The funny thing is, I had these for 2 years now without being on a sign & they obviously wouldn't sell, so it was a good gamble that paid off. And yes, I charged even more for adding the sign work. ;^)

Sorry about the poor photo quality on this image. This is another large fishing lure and it also had the same Stamped cartridge used for the font, with a slightly different quote.

Sorry again about the bad picture quality. This is a wooden box that was originally painted creamy ivory with foam stamped Christmas trees and heart on it. This is what it looks like after I finished distressing it and adding some cute canning jars with candles, painting the lid rings a rustic brown and adding some greenery with berries. 

When I found this, I thought it so cool and so BIG for a tea strainer ball in the shape of an acorn. I painted it with some metallic spray paints to actually look like an acorn and added some more cute greenery with berries. Oh! And I put a little jingle bell on the inside too!

Here is one of my pride and joy creations. I just love how it turned out! It's a Holiday/Winter themed birdhouse on a rusty and distressed pitchfork that I found at a flea market. The handle was broke, so my dear sweet hubby made me a post and being on the frugal side that he is we are, he used a piece of oak log we already had instead of buying a 4x4 post. He has  a ton of some other left over lumber and made some decorative top and bottom caps and I painted them. It drew quite the attention at the show, but didn't manage to sell until much later in the day.

Here is a small Dutch shoe I found last week at the local Salvation Army. They only had one, so I made it  into an ornament. I was kind of perplexed on how to go about doing the design since the hanging hole is on the one side of the shoe, it causes it to hang at an angle. So I put the larger snowflake design slightly off center and did the border around the opening. It didn't sell though, but I love the colors.

 My friend and I have our booth space(s) on the stage in the facility that holds the show. Here is one corner of my portion by the stair entry. My hubby made me a large pegboard display wall that works out really nicely for my signs.

This one is hard to really make out since it overlooks the main floor booths, so it's hard to  make out what's my stuff and clutter. I didn't take nearly as much as I should have, but it worked out good and it was less that I had to carry back home!

This is another one of my tables that was next to a walkway ramp. Again, I didn't have enough stuff to fill my area, but at least you could see everything I had. (And no, I didn't miss a word on the chalkboard, it was hidden behind the star organizer.)

 I even had customers request that I make some additional items for this week's sale. One lady remembered the ice skates I made last year and wants one. Another lady wanted me to make another faux grain sack pillow for her. It's almost done and the skates are half done.


This is a sign I started to make for the last show, but it got messed up in the process and the "patches" didn't help, so needless to say, it didn't get to go with the rest of the group. However, after a little thinking and another discussion with the hubby, he sent my little ADD brain in another direction than he was actually going and I came up with really good fixes!

How do you like it? I think it's very striking. I'm trying to decide if I should change out the rusty jingle bells for red ones instead. That was my 8 yr olds suggestion anyway. You see, when I did the masking for the letters, some of the painters tape peeled off tiny bits of the white paint. Grrr! Hubby told me to touch up with the same spray paint using a brush. It worked OK, but not great by any means. Plus, I must not have had the tape down good in a spot on the frame and had a bit of the red paint bleed through onto it. Ugh! Well, I had some sparkly white snowflake buttons from my scrapbook stash and used those to cover up the dots and I used the red and white rope cording to fill in the ridge that had the red paint on it. You can hardly tell a thing. It's still not perfect, but I think it's good enough to make it's debut for the next show!

Here is another sign screw up I had that I managed to re-invent the night before the show. This one was a total mess before it got to this! I won't even bore you more with what all went wrong with this poor thing. BUT! I think I did it justice in a delightful way. I like it so much, I might just make one for myself too! This one sold early in the day. The letters were again cut with my Cricut using the Cindy Loo cartridge.


OK, so this was long, but I had lots of photos for you to see. I know it's been a little while since I've shared anything worthwhile on here and as much as I would love to spread it out through the week, I have more things to get made and a lot of space to fill!

I am linking up to these parties: Funky Junk Interiors and Chic On A Shoestring and Coastal Charm
and House of Hepworths

God Bless and have a great day!

It's Scramble Time and another pillow!!

Well, I'm in crazy scramble mode this week. My first craft show of the season is Nov. 5th and it's usually my biggest one. It's the one where I have people tell me that they only come to that show just for MY stuff. THAT'S a HUGE deal to me! It's also a pretty small venue in a tiny little town of less than 800 people, so for me to have a following of customers and my sales are several hundred dollars and mind you, my stuff is CHEAP compared to other vendors and other shows. I have to be selling a lot to make what I do in 6 hours. I even split my booth space with a friend and she makes just as much as I do. We will probably call each other every day this week trying to calm each other down and scream to each other all the things we've ruined trying to get more product ready for this show, and the one that's the next weekend also. I think we are fools, but it's kinda fun, at least as long as we're making good money anyway. My $$ is going for our Disney fund for next fall. We would like to have more cash to spend on fun stuff and enjoy more sit down dining the next time around than just the snack places we hit the last time, all just because our daughter is a picky eater. Plus, we'll want to celebrate Halloween while we're there and that's extra. My daughter was a little disappointed that we didn't participate in that the last time. We kinda were too. ;^)

We also just got back on Sunday from our 4 day camping trip to Brown County. We do it just about every year. This time around, we managed to drive down to French Lick, IN, which is the home town of the basketball legend Larry Bird. We took an old steam locomotive train ride that goes right by his boyhood home.

We stopped at the coolest antique shop in a tiny, and I mean tiny little town called Bean Blossom. I found so many things that I wanted, but didn't have any funds for at all. I had to borrow $3 from my hubby just to buy a large aluminum tea ball strainer. They had some grain sacks that I was peeing all over myself for. They were more money than I wanted to pay, but IF I would have had it, I would have bought one anyway. It was still waaaaay cheaper than what I seen on Ebay.

They have the funnest looking junk car out front, but they claim it actually does run, even though the spark plug wires are nothing but a barbed wire fence hooked up somehow. My husband seen it, so I can't explain how it looked in detail. Just kinda funny how it works anyway!

We primitively camper camp in the Yellowwood State Forest and it's very pretty back there by a picturesque lake and the prettiest trees that were showing off outstanding color this year! Must have been from all the rain in the spring and summer. Here is a picture of my daughter on the dam wall for the spillway. the water is only a foot below the top of where she's sitting. The water hasn't been that high in several years. We've been able to walk on the top of the dam wall just last year.

I have managed to make another pillow that I didn't screw up on. (rolling my eyes at myself). The ruffled side.


The pillow on the right is the front of the ruffled pillow. I was hoping for a more vintage look to the image, but it didn't turn out as dark when I printed it on the iron on transfer paper than it did on my computer monitor. Oh well. It is what it is. I just hope it sells.

Gosh, I just have so much to catch up on and yet no time to get it all in one post. I also need to figure out how to widen the text area of my blog. There's so much unused space! Perhaps after the holidays, when the snow is blowing and I have nothing better to do but keep the fires burning all day long. Ahhhhh....

God Bless and have a great day!