ormolu

I took a break this weekend to work on a few projects. First I finished up our advent calendar for this year. I decided to keep it simple and something we could use each year. 

 

I used items I already had on hand. The backing is a metal piece I received from one of Jenni Bowlin's monthly kits a while back which I had spray painted with chalkboard paint. The tins had been organizing a bunch of alphabet embellishments- which I ended up mixing altogether in a glass jar (which totally freaked Justin out- he said I would be regretting that move later). The ribbon I had on hand also (but only in two short pieces which I knotted together). The star is a nail I picked up at a local antique/flea market a few years ago. 

To make this a little more interactive I plan on typing out a bunch of quotes and/or quick projects for each day and tuck it in with a small candy (of course). 

I also got a chance to work on my December Daily album this weekend- which was a great accomplishment since in past years I had never gotten my album ready and worked on it in pieces each day (which does not really work out come December). I am excited to share- I just have a few loose ends to tie up. 

In other news Reiley had been battling with a loose tooth for several months now. Yes, it was quite a drawn out process from the point when her dentist pointed out it was loose this summer. Then it started breaking off. So, she was collecting the pieces of it for the tooth fairy over the last few weeks. Finally Saturday night the last piece came out. I frantically searched for something to put under her pillow (and ended up getting too creative). I photoshopped a tooth fairy image to stick on a dollar bill (the tooth fairy always gives her 'special' money- like gold coins). Then I grabbed out the glimmer mist. 

BIG MISTAKE. 

Reiley plays with glimmer mist all the time. She uses it more than I do. 

Sunday morning when she woke up she was all excited- thought the dollar was awesome- wow it sparkles...I am going to add this to my collection...

Then she came downstairs while I was working and asked if I did it because the dollar smells like glimmer mist. I could not help but give her a awkward smile and she knew I was the culprit. 

Later we worked on our December Daily albums together when she began questioning about Santa...

So, I guess we are all cleared up now since the Easter Bunny was never something she believed in. She did say she was happy I was her Santa and Tooth Fairy- and even mentioned she would do the same thing for her kids when she grew up because it was important for them. All in all it was a very informative day for her. 

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and...

Julia Sandvoss  recently contacted me about using some of my Thankful paper chains for a Thanksgiving project for Show Me St. Louis on  KSDK St. Louis. Check out what she made with them and her other projects here- or watch the video

a beautiful mind, anyone?

Reiley started off the weekend by cleaning off the chalkboard wall in my studio and drawing a whale as we watched a documentary about whales...while I worked. 

Then she went on to start doing some math. 

By the end of the weekend my chalkboard wall looked like this and each time I came down I could not help but be reminded of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind'. Kinda creepy- but cool to see she is enjoying math so much. Not sure if all the answers are correct yet. 

It does not surprise me too much because at the last parent teacher conference I was asking why they did not have as much homework as last year. Her teacher explained that it was just at that particular time they were not giving as much homework out- but that it would start up soon. Then she asked if Reiley would like extra work to do at home. I took her up on her offer and told Reiley- who was so excited to do extra math work at home- and then for the next week while her teacher gathered up worksheets for her she complained each day about not having her extra math packet. 

She finished her math packet her teacher gave her over the weekend and turned it in. Then she had to wait a few more weeks before receiving a new math packet (which she also made mention of several times) so I picked up a workbook for her to go through. 

She said she needs to be able to do math like a 'math magician' for when she becomes a scientist when she grows up. 

good grief blog: games

A new challenge is up over at the good grief blog and I am one of the guest designers for the month. Go check it out. 

I have been working on orders and favors for my sister's bridal shower...and maybe a little bit of working on getting the baby's room cleared out and putting a crib up (fun stuff!). It is definitely exciting to think about how I want to decorate a boy's room- after only doing girl stuff for so long. At the same time I decided to update Reiley's room a bit. She is very excited about this. 

And...Reiley's birthday is coming up here shortly. So, Justin and I are thinking about any last minute home improvement projects we can do prior to having people over. He caught me in the act this last week when I suggested we move the entertainment center that 'came with our house' upstairs. Apparently we both think the same though because he has been working on getting dry wall finished in the office/playroom. 

So, hopefully I will have some pictures of projects coming up here shortly with all the work we have been doing. 

boo to you!

Okay, so I won't lie- I am not too big on Halloween. I still take Reiley out trick or treating- but we stop by our parents and grandparents and she is pretty happy with the small amount she gets there and always asks to go home after that. She is not too big on it either. We typically have snow here so it is not much fun...and actually as I am typing this out it is snowing a lot. What is the use of getting all dressed up and begging for candy if you have to wear your coat over your costume, snow boots and freeze your butt off? 

My family is way into Christmas. Actually, my mom starts putting up her trees on Halloween night. She is standing right next to the door anyway so she figures she might as well get something done. And yes I said trees (plural). My mom has four large trees in her house for Christmas. So what my family lacks for in Halloween we make up for in Christmas. 

But back to Halloween. 

So, I inevitably skip many Halloween festivities. One would be making anything for my shop. Another might be actually spending anytime scrapbooking it. I do buy a pumpkin...and we carve it. But, this year I thought I would at least do a freebie to make up for the lack of spirit I have. I think they turned out pretty cute. 

There are two downloads here. One is for the "boo to you" tag set (shown above in such terrible lighting) and the other is for the "boo to you" candy bag toppers.

 

Here are the candy bag toppers. All of my candy corn was busted when I bought it- totally did not make me happy since I intended on using it for pictures. 

What I did for the candy bag toppers is score them in half (skipping over the eye section) and then cut the eyes out with an xacto knife. It is a little bit of effort but it sure is worth it. Fold them over and staple them to a regular sandwich bag (because we don't want to search for special sized bags). You can do a snack size bag too. 

 

And to jazz them up a bit more I had Reiley adhere some googly eyes. They probably should have been bigger but what can you do? You don't have to add the eyes though- they already have them printed on. 

 

On the back of the candy toppers is a blank section that you can write a message on if you like. My friend's mom likes to write bible passages. She figures if she is going to participate in this she is going to do it her way...but you can write whatever you want. If you are handy with a computer you could add it in that way- or just handwrite a note...or nothing. No pressure. 

Okay so here are the downloads: 

Download Bootoyoutags

Download Bootoyoutreattoppers

Have a happy and safe Halloween! 

(and bring on Christmas!)

wow everyone...

just wow. 

I had a crazy busy weekend and I am very grateful. Thank you.  

Thank you for everyone on the kind comments with my wall. They all made me so happy. 

Right now I am pretty much buried under orders so I made the decision to shut my shop down just for this week so I can catch up. I want to be sure I can get all the orders out from over the weekend before I take on any others. I am working on orders as quickly as I can (in the order I received them) and am planning on having them finished by the end of this week. 

I have had several people ask if I was going to offer another printable (and free) calendar this year. I am definitely going to try. Last year I never really had planned on doing one but I was looking for something I could give as a quick gift- something usable. I like practical gifts. So, I had made it on a whim. This year I will try to get one done earlier though. 

I do have two halloween printables (freebies)  that I will work on getting up in the next day or two.  

giveaway on AE this weekend & a couple new things in the shop

Doing a giveaway on Ali's blog today. Perfect time to pick up those items for Christmas. 

I also added a couple of new items. Well, one is new- one is kinda new. 

 

For Christmas I did some new alphabet tags. These are printed with the recycled cardstock, soy inks with windpower. I love how the printing turned out on these- the color against the cardstock has a slight gloss. 

 

And I redid the alphabet tags in the shop so they are also printed on the recycled cardstock, soy inks with windpower. Very happy about these as the overall process took so long to get these right. 

Working on orders this weekend- and also my sister's invitations for her upcoming wedding. 

what to do with these walls

When we first moved in I was so excited to start decorating...as is probably everyone. However, with wanting to decorate comes the inevitable needing money to do so. I had already started collecting things prior to moving out but sometimes I can look at a wall and imagine what I would like on it and yet I am so afraid to make that first move and just do it. Other times I get an idea and jump right on it because I am so excited to see it executed- this was one of those projects. 

Let me back up. I am not afraid to paint on walls. 

(enter short side story)

When I was about 13 or 14 years old I loved sea life. I had a sheet set with whales and dolphins, tons of photos on my walls with whales and dolphins- everything had whales and dolphins on it- clocks, rugs, blankets EVERYTHING. One day my mom was headed out the door to work and I asked her, "Can I paint a whale on my wall?" Because obviously I knew the answer was yes I asked it kinda like it was no big deal. She gave me a crazy look and said, "Uh-NO!" 

I was pretty surprised actually that she said no, I am not going to lie. I was certain she was going to say yes. So, she went to work and figuring she was the crazy one for not letting me paint a whale on my wall I set to work on sketching it out on my wall. It took a few hours and then I was scared. I was scared because after all she had said I could not paint it on my wall...and there it was. A whale on my wall. About three feet high (so not too big) and a nearly perfect copy of the whales on my sheets. I waited for her return. 

When she got home I said "hi" (heart beating 3,000mph) "how was your day?" "anything new?"...

Then I could not stand it anymore and said, "Want to see what I did?" 

I dragged her downstairs to my room and assured her I could wash it off (because at this point I had only sketched it out in pencil). Then she saw it. 

Then she said, "Do you want to go get paint?" 

All was well and I painted it and a few days later she told me to paint a dolphin too- and maybe some waves. Then my mom hired me to draw a mural of Beauty and the Beast characters on my baby sisters wall- then Sylvester and Tweety on my other sisters wall. Then we moved and I was so sad I could not take them with me. All in all- it was a good run for only being 14 years old. I still have pictures of the whale & dolphin and Beauty and the Beast but I am totally bummed I don't have one of Sylvester- he was massive. My mom asked me to make him about 3 feet high and I filled up the entire wall. I ended up putting the photos in my portfolio for graduation. 

Back to today. 

I was sitting with Justin on the stairs looking down to our 'playrooms' (his poolroom and my scrapbook room). "What are we going to do with this wall?" I asked. 

We threw around ideas and talked about how it led to a pool room and a scrapbook room. How he wanted it to go with his room- which has an antique sort of feel. My room is more of a eclectic type of room with antiques, junk and Target collections. Of course it is all about scrapbooking too. 

Justin suggested to maybe paint something- like an old tree. That would be cool. 

I suggested maybe hanging small photos on it- like antique photos of our families and newer ones of us (but all in black in white maybe). That would be cool. 

 

photo: me as a child

A few days later I grabbed out the paint and painted the tree. He got home from wherever he was and said he liked it. Then I found some frames I had lying around and painted them and framed some photos to hang. I plan on collecting many types of frames eventually to hang on here- but I had to start somewhere so I used things I had on hand. 

 

photo: my grandmother as a toddler ( I love this photo)

All in all it turned out really great, I think. It is something that ties together our families and the past and present. I guess you could say it is a family tree of sorts but loosely done. Overall, it took up a wall in our house (that we had no clue how to use since it was right at the end of our stairs) and turned it into something interesting. This is my favorite wall so far. I am so excited to add to it.  

 

Here is the overall look heading down the steps. I think it will look even better once it starts being filled in. I thought about adding a quote- but I don't know if that is the overall look I am going for. 

We will see as the tree starts filling up. 

great news and great news

But for the second batch of great news you have to make it to the bottom...okay- go peek and come back up here to read the rest ;) 

First- almost all Christmas items are loaded into the shop. I know- almost right? I have one more tag set I need to load but I have not even received finished product yet. They are extra special. 

 

I cannot even begin to go over each new item and I can't pick favorites because I love them all. It is so hard picking out just a few items to highlight here. So, go check out the shop and make sure you read the information on items because it helps to understand the details of what each item is.  These are Christmas Cheer snip-it's. Because you cut them out yourself- I can offer them at a lower price. I was playing around with these a few weeks ago and they are the perfect size for card making! Perfect! I hope to do more of these snip-its in the future. 

 

For Christmas items I went with two color schemes- an all red and a brights. These are the advent assignment tags. I love them because if you are doing a December daily album they will go along just great. Or- I also think they would be a great way to make an advent calendar. The bright color scheme on these coordinate with the number tags in bright- and also the Christmas Cheer tags. 

 

A month or so ago I received a comment on some feedback that they liked that the packaging was not over the top. I have to admit, I never really thought about packaging too much in terms of trying to be a green conscious company. Being a extremely small business it is difficult to focus on those sort of things. I then started thinking about packaging a bit more and how I can improve it at all. I decided, as many companies have lately, that instead of showing contents on the back I would add an additional tag to cut out. I love it when companies do this- so on many of the new products you will see this. 

 

I love the new number tags! These also come in all red. I wanted to include a space for writing or embellishment and I am so happy with how these turned out. There are numbers 1-31 and throughout the Christmas season you receive three additional tags that say Merry Christmas, Twas the night before Christmas and Happy New Year. Great for documenting your holidays. 

 

Arrivederci! I have been wanting to do a travel themed tag for quite sometime. Those of you who know me, know I am very fond of vintage and new items- mixing things up. I am not afraid to purchase something from an antique shop and head on over to Target...in fact those are my two favorite places. I think these have that look to them. There is also another set of tags called excess baggage that go along with these. 

 

I have the sweetest model to help me out with these. Paperchains! I skipped halloween, I know. But I have a special surprise coming on my blog in a couple of weeks to help you guys out with that. These are for Thanksgiving. I came up with the idea to do a Thanksgiving themed paperchain that was more interactive. I have many requests to leave these half blank and have guests at weddings write on them in lieu of guests books. So, with these- set out a little jar full of the strips and have each guest take one and write what they are thankful for. At dinnertime, go around the table and have each guest read what they have written and build a paper chain as they do so. Kids will love it! 

 

I was kinda torn on doing this one. I wanted to include the entire story- but I did not want to make people buy 11 yards of chain! So, a listing is good for one yard of chain- but I have an option available for you to purchase the entire story worth if you just convo me. 

 

Everyone has a favorite Christmas song and O holy night happens to be mine. But I also have a basic Christmas carol chain available in the shop that is in colors of red and green. Both are printed on a music sheet inspired background. 

 

You will notice with the new tag sets (non-Christmas) I did a combination of sizes in one listing. This is something new I am trying as I was trying to think of how I like to buy things. Sometimes we just want a bit of everything, right? This is the baby mine line. I have baby on my mind lately. However, I know everyone does not- so I only included one image of a baby carriage because I picture these being used for everything and anything. Lots of flora and fauna going on here. And speaking of baby... 

We found out yesterday that we are having a boy! We are all super excited- although we would have been excited either way. Since I come from a family of lots of girls I am looking forward to having a boy in our family. I picked up Reiley from school with a blue cupcake in my hand and an ocean water from Sonic because she felt left out of going to the doctors office. She was so happy to find out she is going to have a baby brother! The ultrasound tech and the doctor said everything looks wonderful! In fact the ultrasound tech said he was cooperating so well and she even loaded us up with photos because they were great shots. Then she told us to keep them hidden because typically we would only get 2 or 3...we ended up with a lot more. I told her I appreciate it because I am a scrapbooker ;) 

october special

October special is listed in the shop finally. All three tab sets (45 tabs total) for only $8! 

Still working on getting new items up in there...so close. 

try it with tags: inking and bottle cap magnets

          
     

If you have ever bought some of the tags from ormolu (since earlier this year) you know they are high quality. They are professionally printed by a local company that uses recycled cardstocks, soy inks and is their facility is wind powered (how cool is that?!). They do a wonderful job plus they are so friendly! 

So, because of the quality, they have a lot of flexibility. I have glittered these guys up, dabbled in watercolor, inked them and distressed them. The other day I tried a few other techniques including alcohol inks, glimmer mist & diamond glaze. Which brings me to my next project...

Lately, I have been thinking about organizing, new products in the shop, working on projects of all shapes and sizes and the inevitable Christmas. Trying to think of gift ideas. Things that are not too much excess ( I don't like excess). Well, here is something I created while working on a few of these tasks lately. 

If you remember a few years ago Ali posted some bottle caps on her blog she made into magnets. Well, I had noticed a basket full of these bottle caps, at my local scrapbooking store, that had been sitting on the ground for way too long. I ran down there and grabbed handfuls so I could try out these at a later date (and I was right in doing so because the next time I went in they were gone...it only takes Ali to show off a product).

Shortly after picking them up there was a blizzard and I was stuck at home for several days in a row (disadvantages of having a small car). Reiley and I spent our time working on Christmas projects because Christmas was only a few days away- and we were stuck at home. I still use and have some of the magnets I made that day. They are my favorite magnets because they turned out so cute and the memory of making them together. I stumbled upon an extra handful of these guys a few days ago and thought...these look like they will fit a tag inside. hmmm... 

So, I ran over and grabbed some new tags and sure enough- they fit! I decided to try my hand at making a few extra magnets to see how they would turn out and perhaps revisit the simplicity of a nice handmade gift. 

First, use a little bit of diamond glaze or glossy accents to adhere the tag. 

Let the tag dry. 

Then fill her up with either diamond glaze or glossy accents. Before you fill it up you could add more to it (buttons, jewels, beads...etc) but I am kind of a plain jane. 

I rimmed the outside first and filled in the center using the tip. If you have bubbles then just lightly tap the bottom of the bottle cap on the table- the bubbles should rise and pop right out. Then let them dry overnight before handling them. When you are finished just hot glue a magnet to the back. I used some really strong and flat magnets last time which worked great because I was able to package them up in metal cd cases as gifts. 

The tags shown here are a little sneak at what is coming later this week in the shop. Just tying up a few loose ends before I list... 

I was able to find the mega sized bottle caps I used in several places- just google 'Maya Road Mega Bottle caps' (they tend to be around $.50 a piece). 

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Tomorrow I head to the doctors for my 20 week ultrasound. I am super excited about the possibility of finding out if we are having a girl or a boy (yes, I am one who cannot wait). It will be fun to start planning the baby's room and getting ready to meet our newest member of our family. I will be back on Thursday to let you know what it is...