My mom’s surprise?

For years my mom has sent my cousin Tyler (he is much younger, I am the oldest, followed by my brother 3.5 years later, then my other cousin 3 years later and then Tyler was adopted 9 years later) money for his Christmas/birthday present. But she always does things like hide it between two bricks, tape those up and wrap in a box so it appears to be something really cool as it is so heavy. I am not sure what my cousin thinks of these little “pranks”, he is not the type to laugh about being foibled.

Lately my dad has tried branching out on the creative limb (it only took about 35 years). For their anniversary last week he gave my mom roses, only 5. 2 red and 3 pink. A few days later he asked her if she realized what the colors meant. They have 2 children and 3 grandchildren, hence the five roses. Pink was for me and my niece and red was for my brother, son and nephew. He really got her good Christmas morning though.

 

He made sure she opened this present first and made sure I had the camera ready. Who would have thought I would get that look captured though? Seriously, a roll of toilet paper?

See what is sitting on the arm of the chair next to her? This only being found after he told her to start unrolling it.

50 $1 bills. He unrolled the whole roll of (nice) tp and then rolled the ones back up in it as he went. She was a little disappointed that they were not nice bills. The only nice, clean, crisp money the banks carry for Christmas are 20s and larger.

The “illegal” tree. I just learned yesterday. My dad goes with his boss to cut trees, with permits. They work for BLM. The park ranger double checked they had their permits but didn’t say anything about my mom’s tree being too big. After 5 years of going to cut their trees, this is the first time a ranger has stopped them. 

For being threatened Santa might not visit him, he sure did make out like a bandit.

Pretty Packages

I found a really easy project to add to my substance, or rather to make sure I had enough items for my craft fair when I feared I wasn’t going to have enough. NONE of them sold. =(  Now I am trying to figure out what I can do to them to sell. I thought about stuffing them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
They are the paper Mache bags. I cut off the other handles and added the braided ropes. All but one of them are painted (the pinkish snowflakes is fabric) and I either used masking tape or the circles from the end of the tulle rolls for the designs. I then painted glitter paint or glue on the top of all of them and embellished.

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I linked this up with
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-up Party
Be Different Act Normal's Show and Tell Saturday
Craft Envy's Saturday Spotlight
Me Making Do's Your So Very Creative
Sisters' Stuff's Christmas Link Up

La Cueva Craft Fair

Well, I survived my first craft fair. And now if I ever do one again I also won’t be entirely preparing only the 2 months before. I entered in the largest school craft fair in New Mexico. I got lucky (I thought) and got a cancellation’s spot. They had opened a whole new wing this year so I was amongst other 1st timers to this show and other La Cueva toddlers (the regulars get the prime spots in the cafeteria). I did not do well. No one around me did well, so I know it wasn’t really my stuff. I was so afraid I wasn’t going to have enough stuff or be able to display enough, I am so glad I had the lockers there. I sold out of my small birdhouses so I know what would have done really well. I also learned that people wanted more everyday things, rather than Christmas. Only 1 of my tulle wreathes sold. I wonder if I will sell everything on Etsy but can only list to see. What really saddens me, other than hoping I would make enough to make a payment on my credit card, is that I paid $75 to get in and had to buy a City of Albuquerque business license for $35 so I pocketed less after than just the cost to be there. I can only hope that I at least got my name out there.

The Merry Christmas/Happy Halloween blocks also sold. None of the fabric boxes (made by my cousin) or decorated bags sold. I did have a lady want a bag but she didn’t want to write a check and had no cash. Cross my fingers it works out that she still wants it and then some.

One tulle wreath sold. I heard a lot of those are cute or beautiful and many I can do that (I never say that in front of the crafters) but only 1 sold.

Of this stuff, the small birdhouses sold. The stocking is a candy jar, my mom made those. In the bottom picture you can see one of the yo-yo trees I did. There were 2, they were my first sell.

My hope now, other than Etsy, is also an open house in the garage. My only fear of that is people wanting me to lower my prices.

Now that I can slow down on my production, I am looking into upping my Etsy shop. I also would like to start doing something like Stampin Up. I don’t like the Avon or Mary Kay products so I would feel wrong selling either of those. I know that Scentsy does well but not sure if it is really for me (certain scents make me ill). I saw Stampin Up at the show yesterday and I heard of Creative Memories. So I am looking for any and all advice and or suggestions you all might have. I really need to get to be able to move my son and I back out of my parents so I need to make a living out of the crafting and selling and this is what I really want to do. I would love to make a living out of the blogging but that is a whole other arena.

Double Holiday blocks

I found these really cute Halloween letters from Leelou’s Blog. I decided I wanted to make blocks with them. I also realized I could put Happy Halloween on one side and Merry Christmas on the other. I bought a piece of 1x4 and marked squares, my mom cut for me. Only thing was, I read the disclosure on the Halloween letters and the company put for personal use only. I will make me my own blocks with those letters later.
(I had during pictures but it appears when I uploaded the pictures from my two cameras yesterday one set over-road the other set. I hope there was nothing else important in there.)
I started off by painting the edges of the blocks a forest green. Then I covered one side of the block with a few different Halloween paper squares with Mod Podge. I cut out Happy Halloween on my Cricut and Mod Podged each letter on a different block. I flipped the blocks around and repeated the process with Christmas papers and Merry Christmas. I sanded down the edges. On the Halloween side I stamped the edges with a brown ink and on the Christmas side I went around the edges with Silver Extreme Glitter.


Easy project to get two holidays out of but the cutting and pasting of the papers and letters was rather time consuming.

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I linked this up with

Tatertots and Jello: Weekend Wrap-up Party
The Speckled Dog: Favorite Things Friday 
Somewhat Simple

A little experiment and a few Christmas projects

Long title. I was going to put this is a test… but it didn’t sound as good as it did in my head.

My birthday/Christmas present came today. I might add finally. Apparently they shipped it to the wrong address the first time, and that was through USPS so it was slow going anyway. I thought I would spend the day playing with it but I had to go get a new surge protector for my computer because I was having withdrawals (my laptop wasn’t cutting it).

First my experiment. Each picture was taken at the same time, in the same place and none have been edited.

iPhone 4                             Canon Powershot SD750                            Nikon d90

Can you tell the difference? Of course I wanted them side-by-side for the comparison so making them bigger didn’t work. I think the iPhone has too much light in the picture. And there is definitely more detail in the Nikon. Ooh, can’t wait to see how the rest of the pictures come out. The Nikon was my present.

I have been making these birdhouses for my show.These are the Christmasy ones.

I have had the most fun making the wintery ones though, they are also my favorite.

The two with the pedestals I just used wood pieces from Hobby Lobby and spindles. I drilled a hole into the wood block and then a hole in the bottom of the birdhouse. Used a little glue to keep them in place. There are more birdhouses in the works also. And I found a new one at Michael’s today that I really liked. A fenced one like above but bigger. I didn’t have my coupon so that will have to wait.

The tree in the background was made with one of the paper Mache trees from Hobby Lobby. One of the bigger ones, next time I think I would like to try the smaller ones.

I started off by painting the tree green. I cut the paper strips about 1/4 inches and rolled them, then taped the rolls together. Then glued them in place. Added some other strips in places. Sprayed the whole thing with adhesive and sprinkled a lot of glitter on.

It was a very time consuming project. I had to put off working on the other 2 trees.

Hope all is well. I am off to work. A lot I still need to do. In case I don’t post for awhile, I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving.

Sweater wreath and snowman

When I saw that the Iron Crafters’ Challenge’s secret ingredient was sweaters I thought there was no way I was going to be able to enter that contest. I had no idea how to use a sweater that wouldn’t entail sewing. I saw some wonderful projects out there in my blog following of pillows and others using a sweater and I kindly let all these lovely ladies know about the contest and that they should enter. Then one night when I should have already been asleep an idea came to me, after an idea came to me how to make my mom’s birthday present even better. I was so giddy I laid there quite some time trying to fall asleep. My excitement didn’t make my project so dandy though. I am disappointed in my snowman.
First I found some different shaped balls at Dollar Tree and pulled out a wreath I had gotten at Dollar Tree previously (I can’t find those wreathes now and I need A LOT more of them, 5 Dollar Trees later I have only found 5 more). My plan was to make the smaller balls as snowballs to cover the whole wreath. But it didn’t progress that way. I then found a sweater at Savers.
A nice white, not a shade of white, and I liked the different stitching on the collar. I washed the sweater and let it air dry over night before I started cutting into it. I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I just started wrapping sweater around the wreath, stapling it to the back as I went. When I was all finished with that I then went over where the two sides came together on the back with hot glue. I then used part of the collar to make a little design part to cover where the ends met.

That was about the time that I decided I wasn’t going to do snowballs but just the snowman. With pieces of sweater and LOTS of hot glue, I covered the 2 silver balls and 1 Styrofoam ball to make the snowman. As I was putting him together, I also used pieces of the sweater to make roses that I glued onto the wreath.

I am actually very pleased with the wreath. I attached a sparkly red ribbon to the top and some tiny pinecones and leaves to the roses. I think it came out very pretty. It can be used as a winter, or just Christmas, wreath. It was once I got the snowman together (as lopsided as a real one) that I realized it wasn’t going to make it on the wreath and I would have to figure something else out for it.

I pulled out a picture frame I had previously purchased for another project and printed out a snowman sign. Attached that to a bigger piece of paper. Painted the black frame copper and then topped that off with Silver Extreme Glitter and glued the snowman to the finished frame.

The snowman’s hat, belt and scarf are made out of pieces from another sweater I forgot to take a picture of before cutting up. The rest is buttons. Maybe some stick arms would top it off better.

Even though I am not so pleased with the snowman, I am still entering this in