Stamp Happy

I use stamps on just about all my projects - on cards, scrapbook pages, gift wrap, clothes for the kiddos. . .

Recently, I've started altering some of my less-than-favorite stamps to make them more useful. Here's some stuff I've done that I've been happy with:

1. Use markers instead of ink pads. You can use just part of the image. I like the "thanks" in this stamp and wanted to use it on a card, but I didn't like the first part of the phrase. (A thank-you card is pretty much everybody's way of saying thanks. . . It seemed silly to claim that it was my way.) So I just colored in the "thanks" with a brown scrapbooking pen and stamped before it had dried. I really like this because I have a lot more pens than I do ink pads - lots more colors to chose from.

2. Another thing I've done is cut up clear stamps. I liked the owl in this one, and it was on sale, so I couldn't pass it up. I would never have an opportunity to use the stamp as is, so I just cut off all the words. I think he makes a pretty cute card.


3. The last thing I've done to alter my stamps is slice off the edges of messy rubber stamps. You know those rubber stamps that don't have very deep images, and it's really hard to get a clean picture with them because the edges always get ink on them and then show up on the paper? No? Just me? Okay, I had that problem with some cheap Christmas stamps, so I just took a craft knife to the edges and sliced off everything that had leftover ink on it. It cleaned it up nicely! (No pictures, you just have to take my word on this one.)

I love stamps. Have I said that? I've ended up collecting lots of stamps, some of which I use, some of which are collecting dust. My favorites are these clear swirl stamps from Oriental Trading Company.
I use them on all sorts of projects, mostly as background decoration. Here are some bags I made, where these stamps sort of ground other images and just provide some texture.


Here's a shirt I stamped for P. It was a white shirt that ended up with stains on it, so I dyed it and stamped some swirls around the neck and down one side.

Here's a card where I cut a swirl out of patterned paper - the swirl stamp just adds another layer of swirliness. (The spell-check wants me to change "swirliness" to "surliness." That's not something I try for in my cards.)

And here's a bonus picture of Mr. Man before I go.

Things That Make Me Smile

I love my little necklace holder. It's hanging in my closet, and it makes me smile every time I see it. I'm a big fan of necklaces and earrings and, well, anything shiny, and even though I don't wear very much jewelry (occupational hazard) it makes me happy to just see it. I didn't have any drawer or countertop space I could use for jewelry, so I wanted to make something that would hang on the closet wall, out of the way. I used a serving tray with shallow, straight wooden sides and just screwed in some little hooks along the top.

I nailed a couple of those saw-tooth hangers into the back so I could hang it on the wall with two nails. Now my necklaces have a pretty little tray to hang out in - it takes up absolutely no space, keeps my necklaces tangle-free and on display, and the tray is a lovely backdrop for my necklaces. (I put a shallow shelf just below the tray to set a small jewelry box on - that's where my earrings live - so all my jewelry is in one place. The shelf is also home to my Precious Moments figurines that I can't display anywhere else but that are, well, precious to me.)
And speaking of things that make me smile every time I see them, here's our new little guy:
Ah, so thankful to be home with him and have all of us together! He's awesome!

Not So Scared of Santa

Penny just went to visit Santa at the Arvest Financial Center - it's the optimum place for her to get lots of personal attention with the most people cooing over her at once. Definitely a strategic choice for a Santa encounter. Last year she was a little afraid of Santa, and this year she was wary, but she at least sat on his lap and didn't cry. We kept trying to get her to look at the camera and smile, but she kept glancing back at Santa like she didn't completely trust him - she's a smart girl, and she can tell this whole "Santa" bit is a little half-baked. But the girl does love accessories - she was a lot more comfortable once she was in a Santa hat.


So Christmas is coming soon, and I thought I'd share a coffee cake recipe that my mom has made forever; I think it came from the Little Rock Cooks cookbook. It's perfect for Christmas morning, or any time you have company for the weekend, or, alright, Tuesday afternoon it's pretty good, too.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
3 3/4 oz box vanilla instant pudding
2/3 cups vegetable oil
3/4 cups water
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp butter flavoring
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped nuts

Filling: 1/4 cup sugar & 2 tsp cinnamon

Mix the first seven ingredients for eight minutes. Grease and flour Bundt pan. Cover bottom of pan with brown sugar, and sprinkle with chopped nuts. Alternate cake batter and a sprinkling of filling mix in three layers. Bake at 350 for 40 to 50 minutes.

Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp butter flavoring
enough milk to thin glaze

Glaze with 1/2 of mixture while hot and still in pan. Cool cake for several minutes, then remove from pan. Top cake with remaining glaze.

The key here is the greasing of the Bundt pan. This coffee cake takes a while, but it isn't hard to do at all, and any excuse to eat dessert for breakfast is, I think, totally worth it.

Quick Camden update: We went to the doctor today, and everything's going very well. Dr. Pickhardt said that if we wanted to start thinking of a date to induce, he was available the 26th. So without any signs that Cam is in any kind of a hurry, it looks like the 26th might be our date! That would be exciting - to know exactly when we were going to be at the hospital and be able to plan around that. . .

And hopefully I'll get pictures posted of his room before he gets here. I'm waiting on our chair to get in, and I have just a few more art projects to do before it's actually finished. So it's coming!

I'm Crazy about a Pillow!

Look at this pillow from Crate & Barrel! I'm crazy about it.

I'm taking a break from working on my last batch of Boppy covers before I officially go on maternity leave (I think I'm going to miss them!), and I was thinking about what I wanted to put in the middle of the kitchen table, now that it's not going to be adorned with my sewing machine and yards of fabric all the time. I'm really looking forward to having that as an actual table instead of a work space. You know, for things like eating meals there. And sitting down to look at a magazine. Or even read a book! Well, I can dream, right?

So looking for centerpiece inspiration, I headed on over to Crate and Barrel's website, and I found this pillow. I have to make it. Just a pillow cover and some felt buttons sewn on. I can do that!

And it'll look perfect for Christmas! I was wanting to switch out some botanical pillow covers that I've had for forever, anyway. So that's my next project. Well, not my next project. I have to finish about six other things before I can start on it. But it's totally on the list now!

And yeah, this is an entire post about one pillow.

Well, I have to add that Penny's with me at the desk and I just looked down and she was gnawing on the corner of the desk. So I don't know what to do with that. Any parenting advice?

Little Bits O' Fall

Just wanted to share a couple of pictures of the mantle, all dressed up for fall. The cake stand, pitcher, and trifle bowl were stuffed in a back cabinet in the kitchen. The fleur de lis, French books, coasters and stripey ribbon were in different places in the house. Most of my decorating comes from cannibalizing other arrangements in the house. Some people call it "shopping your house." I like the word cannibalizing. So that's what I call it.


In general, I'm not a fan of fake botanicals, but I have to make an exception for fall-colored leaves. I found these branches at Hobby Lobby (for half-off, of course), and I liked that they have sticks and acorns and little pinecones in them. I'm thinking that for Christmas I'll just pull the leaves and replace them with some red berries. And maybe I'll work in some sparkly, spangly sticks, too! Christmas is a great excuse to glitter-up the house.


And, if you're going to be making/decorating gift bags this Christmas, here's the easiest thing in the world to do to make a personalized bag. These are just plain kraft paper bags with scrapbooking paper cut out just smaller than the front, then inked around the edges and glued on. I cut green strips of paper and just stuck letter stickers on top. I used left-over letters, so I ran out of some of them. Instead of buying more letters (I'm totally cheap) I cut out the outline of where the letter used to be and stuck it on red paper, then cut it out. Insta-letters! (The J an S in Jason and the S and C in Jessica are done like this.) Before I glued the green name strips on the paper, I lightly traced where they would go, then stamped on the background paper so the stamped images would be peeking out from behind the strips. Super-easy, and I just used a few sheets of paper and left-over letter stickers.

Next up: we worked in Cam's room this weekend, so as soon as I get pictures up, I'll show off all the owls. Here's a sneak peek:

Corner-of-the-Living Room Makeover

We're in the process of turning our living room/playroom into a living room/playroom/office. Whew! That's a lot of stuff going on in a little room. The original plan was to do Cam's room half-nursery/half-office. There just wasn't enough space in his room. So we had to find a new home for our computer; we ended up sticking it in the corner of the living room, which totally threw off the balance of the room. I'm hesitant to post this before picture; could my home really be this messy? Am I so used to it that I don't even notice it until it's in a picture I'm considering sharing with the world? In my defense, this was taken at the end of a long day that came at the end of a long week.
Bleh. Not pretty. I'm a big believer in arranging seating in a way that's conducive to conversation, not just against walls, but to do that you have to have things against the walls to draw the eye to the edges of the space - otherwise, your room would be visually reduced to the space of your seating arrangement. So I added some Pier One curtains (on sale, of course), a hand-me-down lamp from my parents, a Lowe's shelf and a printed canvas from Hobby Lobby. I also had to take a hard look at how many toys we were keeping out in the living room. It's a daily battle. Where do they all come from?

Here's what we ended up with:

So now the office space is kind of it's own defined area, and the curtains make the cornice box look more intentional and not like it's just floating at the top of the room.

I'm not in love with the lampshade. I wish it was a dark color. And I would love to have toy storage that blends with the living room, instead of being primary-colored plastic. For that matter, I don't love the computer in the living room. In my ideal world, the living room would be free of screens of any kind. (Don't tell D. He would not approve of my ideal living room.) But this room is a work in progress, like everything else in this house. I know there are crafty things that one can do to change the color of a lampshade, but I'm hesitant to jump into that one. Besides, it would be number 28 on my list of projects to get done in the next five weeks. Speaking of winding down all the projects, I'm going to be closing up my Etsy shop sometime in November in preparation for Cam getting here. So if anybody's thinking about ordering Christmas presents, now's the time. (Or if you're a Short, now is the time you're in full-out Christmas present-buying mode, anyway.)

Here's a fun slipcover I just did for a friend of my sister's. I love how it turned out. I'm thinking about doing an owl one for Cam.

Etsy is Good for my Ego

http://thismamablogrocks.blogspot.com/2009/10/mel-short-shops-review-and-giveaway.html

Check me out! This is a review of a nursing pillow slipcover and onesie that I did for a sweet stay-at-home momma who just started the neatest blog. We're doing a giveaway for one slipcover and onesie set, and there are lots of things you can do to enter; they're all painless. So head over, and check out the other stuff she has - I'm so impressed with all the different information and useful stuff she has on her blog.

Here's a mint green all-minky slipcover I just sold on Etsy - sometimes when I make one of these, I just want to keep it. This is one of those. I think Cam needs one just like it.

www.melshort9.etsy.com