My First Craft Fair

I'm off today to participate in my first craft fair. It was a last minute thing -- at first they said they were full, and then called yesterday with an opening. Fortunately, I expected to be in one next weekend so I had everything pretty much ready including my account to take credit cards and a credit card machine.

I've spent most of the past year creating premade scrapbooks which is what I hope to sell.

The pictures above are what I'll be selling in addition to that -- vintage cards, some mini chipboard albums, etc.

Note to Tag Tuesday Participants: I'd like to do a "Colors of Christmas" challenge for a couple weeks. I'd appreciate your ideas for colors or color combinations.

A Year in Review

And now, in no particular order, are some of my favorite things I created last year.

I saw this on a couple of different blogs and thought it was a good idea. If you are a blogger, it's a very cool exercise to go through your blog and review all the art you've created this year.

A Vintage Bonanza

I've started to organize the box of vintage cards my sister-in-law gave me yesterday. There appears to be over at least 700 in all. It seems her mother saved every card given the family going back at least 50 years.

I really love the vintage Valentines. That's how I started my collection of vintage cards a few years back.

It used to be shower cards were always these mini type cards. I will make great use out of these wedding and baby shower cards.

This & That Part 1

If you are wondering what I've been doing with all the Halloween Art I've created? Well, it's being used to decorate my craft space!

Got a free issue of Oct/Nov Stamper Sampler which had three of my Christmas cards in it.

Below are two of them.

I was really impressed with a couple things I found at Michael's recently. Namely, these wood mounted $1 stamps. Very classy I thought!

Also found these blank embossed note cards. They were in packs of eight for one dollar, with envelopes. They are sturdy cardstock too. Great for making sets of gift cards -- and you can't beat that price.

Time Flies

So here is my one-and-only child graduating from Kindergarten sixteen years ago.

This weekend he is graduating from college.

So what has this mom been doing this week? Well, crying her eyes out looking at these pictures and listening to this song. (Caution - audio here)

When I told my son that I've been having myself a good cry this week but that I planned to get it all out of my system so we could just celebrate this weekend and have fun, he responded, "That's a good plan, Mom."

The last few lines of that song really get me, but they are from my heart:
"I'm here for you whatever this life brings,

so let my love give you roots and help you find your wings...
It's not living if you don't reach for the sky,

I'll have tears as you take off, but I'll cheer you as you fly...."

Oh, where's the Kleenex....

Mother's Day

I just realized yesterday how quickly Mother's Day is approaching, so I made a few cards to send to some special mothers I know.

The background text on this card is from StampinUp. I stamped that in purple Brilliance ink and then applied some purple chalk over the text to make it really stand out. With a purple dye ink I stamped my flower from Paper Inspirations over the text. The image is from Crafty Individuals. I also added a flower rhinestone and monogram sticker to each card.

Just found out what I'll be doing this summer. My soon-to-be-college-graduate son

e-mailed me this week with the following: "Mom, I've got about 600 pictures from the last four years. Do you think you could make me a scrapbook like you did for high school?"
Scratch the "this summer" part. Edit that to read "the next year."

Free Ephmera

When I was in the post office last week I found this booklet on stamp collecting that holds images of various postage stamps issued in the U.S. They are perfect for collage work! You can cut them out and use them as is -- or you can copy them and use them again and again. This booklet I picked up several years ago. I don' know if it's still available, but it's the reason I keep my eye open when I go into the post office. What a great source of military stamps. I have used these stamp images many times in collage work. I cut out some of my favorites and made a sheet of them and then photocopied it.

A Book Review & Household Hint

I rarely buy crafting books. I did when I first started stamping and scrapbooking, but found the ones I bought were ones I never seemed to refer back to. But I was very intrigued with this book by Julia Andrus called Paper Transformed that I spied during my last trip to the book store. After a thorough look-through I felt it would be a good investment and purchased it. I was right. This book is filled with loads of different techniques (some I've tried, but a lot I haven't.) to transform your paper. It's a great basic how-to book when it comes to using chalks, watercolors, alcohol inks, perfect pearls. beeswax, batik, bleaching, and on and on.
I've already created a few alcohol ink backgrounds I learned from this book, one of which is included at the end of this post and one I used yesterday for my Wednesday Stamper piece.

To create the background for this ATC and the one shown in yesterday's post the book suggests applying drops of alcohol inks randomly onto glossy cardstock. Then apply your alcohol blending solution and watch these cool circles develop.

Now for the household hint: Picture yourself playing with your alcohol inks and all of a sudden you drop the bottle of plum alcohol ink on your carpet? What to do?

Well, when it happened to me yesterday I stared in horror at this huge plum streak across my beige carpet. I racked my brain trying to think what would remove this stain. And then an idea came to me -- well, if you use the alcohol blending solution to lighten the alcohol inks, why not try it on the carpet! I proceeded to squeeze a very generous amount of the blending solution to the carpeting and then blotted it up. Voila! Stain removed!

This and That

My prize goodies arrived from Art Impressions yesterday!! And since a few expressed interest in seeing what I picked out, here they are. After considerable deliberation, I found that with these sets I got the most with my prize winnings, even though I already had a few of the images. I also picked out a couple other small unmounted stamps as part of my prize which I didn't include in the picture.

This is a quick thank-you card I made to send to Art Impressions to express my appreciation for the goodies. I used one of their clear sets. I see why I love these so much: As much as I love to stamp, I knew from the time I started stamping I would never like the process of coloring a rubber stamp with different color markers and then putting my image to paper. But with these sets you can build your image as you go along, stamping with different colors from your ink pad. And because it's clear, there's no problem with positioning. I like this process a whole lot better.

Finally, here are the Spring Inchies from Joanne's Inchie Swap. Mine's in the middle. To find out more, visit Joanne's site.