Paint Chips

Yikes - it's been a while, right? It turns out, having two kids in diapers doesn 't leave much room for creative pursuits, much less blogging about them. But here I go. . .


This is a scrapbook page layout where I used some paint chips tucked into a faux-pocket behind my main picture to reinforce the green theme. (I love paint chips - don't you? I look at them whenever I'm in a home improvement store. And now, Disney has paint chips that are stickers shaped like the Mickey Mouse head in the color of the paint! So now I pick up paint chips for P - that girl is a sucker for stickers. Okay, fine - I am, too.)


These paint chips were left over from when I painted P's bedroom. Now that I'm writing about it, it seems kind of gross that I chose a green color for her room that is the same as the mushed-up baby food peas that she used to smear all over herself. Hmm.

I did another layout for a niece with the orange chips from Mr. Man's room. I never throw anything away. It's ridiculous.


Also, the "green" in the title is made out of Shrinky Dink plastic! I think it's available at Hobby Lobby - I found this stuff in my arts & crafts stash, which represents years and years of never throwing anything away. I used huge stencils, traced the letters with thick Sharpie, then baked them. (Nothing is more fun than baking Shrinky Dinks! I might be easily amused. . .) Then I painted the backs of them with green acrylic paint. (See how the 'g' is broken? Apparently, skinny parts don't bake well.)



In other news, I'm thinking about opening my shop back up on Etsy. I really miss it! I'm trying to figure out the logistics - how to do it so I can enjoy it and not get overwhelmed. Or, you know, neglect the children.

Dressin' Up My Dresser

P has my old dresser in her bedroom. I had it in my room for as long as I can remember - it makes me happy that my little girl is going to grow up with it, too.


For the longest time I've wanted to replace the square wooden handles with pretty girly ones. But I didn't want to spend any money on it. It's pretty hard to find free handles. Restoration Hardware's not giving them away. Neither is Anthropologie, or even Home Depot. I finally found some on Etsy - a set of 13 vintage white ceramic handles that had never been used before. (Thirteen? What an odd collection. . .) For less than $17, including shipping. So that's close enough to free for me. Here's the shop were I found the handles: Castleberry Antiques.

Aren't they cute? P helped me put them on. It's scary how good she is with a screwdriver. Thanks, Handy Manny.

Toy Story

I love looking back at pictures and noticing the everyday stuff - the background mess, the clothes. . . the stuff that I don't usually highlight in my scrapbooks. My favorite scrapbook pages usually end up being about the everyday stuff. Like my little girl's favorite toys from her first year.

For this page I took pictures of all her favorite toys against a white background (the toys were so bright - I didn't want a busy background, too) and numbered all the pictures. In the margin I put the number, then journaled anything important - who the toy is from, it's name, stuff like that.


And I'm terrible with titles, so when I do one I like, I make a big deal about it. I generally don't even put a title on my scrapbook pages; when I do, it's a song title, or movie title, or something like that. Words that aren't my own. I remember agonizing over the title of a Shakespeare report I had to write in high school. Titles traumatize me. I like this title of this page, "Toy Story," because it's a kids movie title that also describes this page, but also because it looks bold and simple. I got the idea to fill in one letter with monochromatic buttons from a scrapbooking magazine. I can't claim it. But I like the way it turned out!

So my resolution is to make more space in my scrapbooks for the everyday stuff, not just the holidays and vacations.

Mr. Man approves. :)

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?