Women Warriors: Technicolor Trio of Tempting Treats Week 1

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.”
― Walt Disney Company, Mulan

LOVE this quote! It makes me happy and makes me feel like a WARRIOR!

Thank you Mulan, the best Disney Princess of them all!

I am teaming up with two fabulous peeps in a mission to make art for art's sake! 

Lisa, Sue & I are warriors because we are stretching ourselves with difficult goals! 

This week's challenge:

Make a creation of your OWN choosing using:  Numbers letters, spoons, a quote and ruler Art.

Maps have lots of letters and numbers, so decided to decorate my gold & frosted salt/pepper shaker bottoms with a bottle cap & map sticker! Do so love maps! 

You may also spy the antique spoons that THE MAN helped me bend & screw onto my long black board. I may have used one or two little bad words....I broke two drill bits and almost got kicked out of the garage! Warrior on baby!

Between you & me they are not REALLY holding on those bottles. They are made to LOOK like it, but honestly they couldn't be too tight or the bottle would not lay flat. It's really all stuck together with hot glue. So don't tell anyone, OK?

I wanted to use a ruler to meet one of the requirements, but I hadn't found one, so opted to go with a ruler type shape. I spray painted my board and then sanded it a bit to distress it.

Here you an see the whole quote. SUPER COOL!

My favorite part of the whole piece is the hardware top I am using to hang it. THANKS DAD for hooking me up with that! The butterfly is hiding the hole for the door handle!

Well, I have chattered on long enough. Time for you to wander over and check out Lisa's and Sue's fabluous creation over at YOU MADE ME INK and SCRUMPLESCRUNCH!

If you head over, tell them I sent you!

Oh and Happy Hump Day!

Baby Tulip Cards for THE CUTTING CAFE & Lent

Do you remember those cards I got the other day at the second hand store?

They were really nice heavy cream colored cardstock and came with envelopes even. See them sneaking in on the side there? I carefully laid them out on my Silly and cut a card from each side! When you emboss & mist something & then add some gold paint, it tends not to matter what the paper started out to begin with, other than being nice and thick! The spots on the front that are more purple is the image showing through. It looks pretty cool I think in a water color kinda of way.

I used the TULIP CARD SET from THE CUTTING CAFE and made them MUCH smaller to make these gift card holders.

I am still trying to decide what I'm using them for, but they will go out shortly as my last Lenton RAK and make someone happy!

Hope your Tuesday is terrific!

Nothing But Blue Skies Card for THE CUTTING CAFE

I made a card for ME! I was in quite the state yesterday.

Head was swirling from visiting 17 houses over two days. Moving 5 hours south means long car rides to stew in both directions! 

Some of the houses were unoccupied so had the distinct smell of yuck. Others were lived in hard and were pig turdish. One lady had carefully prepared her home for us and had candles burning and lamps lit. I wish to send her a thank you across the blog-o-sphere for taking the whole home showing thing seriously and not leaving her laundry in the living room for me to step over. Seriously amazing job...wish I could buy something based on how clean and lovely smelling it was!

Anyhow, the sentiment on the card is a bit of a joke to myself. 

I know better than to expect this whole process to be peachy. Having moved once before, it was the best it could be for what it was. 

However, as you scroll through house listings, it's easy to day dream!

Wanted a dreamy water color feel for my background to match the lovely tulip! That tulip & the cut card base is the best!

Regina hooked me up with her TULIP CARD SET from over at THE CUTTING CAFE and I've had plans of making this card for a while. I also made a few other little cards with the same file that I'll be back to show you soon. It was too windy outside today to photograph little cards. 

Happy Monday! Hope yours has a sparkle to it!

Scallopy Shelf for THE MAN

It's the second time recently that I have reached for scrapbooking stuff to make things that have nothing to do with paper!

This shelf started off life as a very simple board. I wanted a nice thick top with dimension. Can you see the scallop I drew on? I pulled out my trusty scalloped scrapbooky paper and used that! It's been traced so many times! 

Here is a front view of the piece. Can you see the scallopy scallop? I free handed it a smidge from the paper!

I was planning on hanging it in this house, but holy beaners! We're moving! THE MAN says we're figure out a good spot in the next place! 

Have a great Thursday!

Chocolate and Soda for Breakfast

Ok confession time!

It's a couple of days PAST Easter and I still have 5 Random Acts of Kindness left to do for my Lenton Experience.

I'd be worrying, but I am cutting myself some slack due to listing our house to sell, doing two showings, and also doing the whole Easter thing. Did I mention showing the house for two and a half hours on Easter? It's all good, they wanted to walk the property and there is nothing better than a long walk in the woods to work up an appetite for Easter Dinner!

It's very important to cut yourself some slack once in a while or your head will spin off and things go whirly and you are no good to anyone. They will find you hiding in the closet eating the ears off a chocolate Easter Bunny humming to yourself. The owner of the chocolate rabbit will become outraged and it will be all down hill from there.

It is also important to take your stomping boots to the second hand store and see what you can scheme up!

Of course I found three extra things that had nothing to do with the task at hand.

That little alarm clock WAS an egg timer until my son and I started taking it apart. Still trying to figure out how to cut out that metal piece so I can have an EMPTY alarm clock. Don't worry I am on it.

The one salt or pepper shaker is adorable! So what there is only one and it's missing a cork! I see it filled with glitter...and I have lots of small corks...

And then there is that cute Harry and David gold box...again, it's gold. Not much more to say there! LOVE IT!

I did also find a HUGE stack of cards that have really nice envelopes....I hate what's on the front but I have a game plan for repurposing them into something for Lent. Fun times!

oh! And I didn't have chocolate for breakfast OR soda! That was Patrick, the naughty coworker who started the whole Lent thing for me. He is MUCH nicer now that he has gotten his vices back!

Happy Hump Day!

Ole Cannon Head: Layout of Fort Desoto

My kids crack me up! We had so much fun mucking around this old fort when we were in Florida!

The second amusing thing was getting mistaken for Lexi numerious times by people looking at our photos later.

She is taller than me these days, so I can imagine how they would get mixed up!

Here is a little side view of my page. You can see the shadow of the big fat cardboard coasters that came home in my suitcase from a terrific lunch we had. They worked great for lifting my photos off the page!

A close up of my journaling so you can see what terrible parents we are! We suggested that our children put their heads in a cannon! Anything for a goofy photo!

Fun times! I think this just about wraps up our trip there! It seems ages ago and so much has happened since!

Happy Tuesday!

Enjoy 480 Card for THE CUTTING CAFE

THE MAN:  What are you doing?
Me:  Making a card for the new owners of this house!
THE MAN: We don't have a new owner yet...
Me:  Hey, I am a planner!

Yes, it's official. There is a sign out front of my house. As THE MAN likes to say, the Mothership has called and told us to come back.

Which makes us aliens? Nah, just kidding! Honestly aside from seriously missing this house, things do appear to be rolling right along for our move to Southern New York. More on that later. ;-)

I LOVE this cutting file from Regina and THE CUTTING CAFE. They are called Number Window Cards and the set includes 1-9! I made mine our house numbers...which is easy peasy in the Silhouette software.

I purposely left some of the excess paper around our house numbers because I wanted a shabby look to my card. I cut a plain piece of white card stock in my Silly after printing a photo of the house all lightened up.

Here is what I printed before cutting:

Obviously this is during SUMMER, since our grass is just starting to show signs of turning green!

The inside is tricked out with some patterned paper and you can see just the ends of an old rusty cotter pin sticking out from under the flower. My tie dye ribbon is tied to that and the cotter pin was found here. Likely on some piece of equipment that was farming this land at some point. I loved the rust and the orange ends.

Wish us luck on our sale and our move! With two project managers running the show, things typically go smoothly aside from the things you can plan. It's the stuff you can't plan for that is rough....missing neighbors, friends, and your old place because it was awesome!

Have a great Monday!

Baby Pussy Willows and an Upcycled Turtle Box

I hopped onto repurposing this DeMets Turtle Box even before the chocolate it contained was all eaten! I had a yellow one to work with. It was in the midst of being spray painted white when I realized I had not taken a before photo of it! 

I have a fondness for Turles anyhow. Besides the fact they are amazing, I once worked next a Turtle Factory. 

I was all excited when I heard they were opening a chocolate factory next door to where I worked. I had visions of smelling chocolate in the early morning as the dew was sparkling on the grass and I was heading into the glass doors to the office.

Sadly, the most exciting thing that happened chocolate related was when a batch of freshly made turtles showed up in a basket by the door and I found them. A smart person would have just hidden them in their car and not told anyone. Instead I shared the most amazing fresh from candy making heaven stuff with the ingrates I worked with. 

The best part of making this box is the little scene I added where the window is in the box. I had the bottom of a cardboard cheese box that was very skinny and would work to create a little diorama in. That also got spray painted white and hot glued in after I created the scene. 

I found baby pussy willows down by our stream and got the bright idea they might work along with some moss. I added a few crazy dimensional Easter stickers I had hanging around from Easter's past and voila! 

Love the basket hiding behind the baby pussy willows like the little Peep in the Egg is searching for it. 

My other favorite part of this box is the brass & bead foot I added. It was super simple to just punch a hole in the button of this piece and add a screw with a nut to hold everything together. Makes me happy!

Hope your Easter is fantastic and you have some yummy treats! Enjoy!

Blossoming & Chick Pics

To mess with me (I found this out at a later date) THE MAN asked me where the little heart ornament went that hung in the bathroom. The very fact he noticed anything that was a decoration blew my mind. I may have stuttered in fact.

I had been contemplating a small project with my little favorite quote until he said it would hurt his brain if it looked any different than it did now. Like I'd ruin it. ;-) And he said he looked at it every time he started to...and then I stopped him. Marriage is better with less sharing sometimes and bathroom exploits are on the top of that list.

To give you some background, I purchased this little heart years and years ago at a craft show in Vermont and it has followed us bathroom to bathroom.

I personally read the quote on a bad hair day or on one of those days where I mistakenly burn my forehead with a curling iron and think crawling back to bed is a better option than facing the world. I also read it when I have to go be a rat bastard to someone at work and it makes me feel slightly better. I mean, I am getting paid to be one sometimes, it just isn't a task I relish.

My favorite part of the quote though is just quietly doing the right thing. Blossoming, if you will without expecting anything back from the world.

Sian over at From High in the Sky has the most unassuming way of blogging (you should check out her chick pics, they are cracking me up and sorry to use a word that reminds one of an egg...but it was intentional). She hosted Story Telling Sunday for a few years and randomly thanks to Google, a guy is now going to publish my Dad's stories about Peace Corps in his newsletters. We were sharing his stories on her blog because it was a lovely happy place with good things to read.

I have a little package to send over THE POND to her in thanks. Can you hook me up with your addy, Sian! And accept a huge thanks from my peeps here!

Happy Hump Day and yes, the little heart is hung back up in the throne!

Rockin' Robin & the Rock Star Layout for Another Freaking Scrappy

At the start of this semester in school, our Lexi starting learning guitar in Music. Randomly (we are not a musical family) she really started enjoying herself.

She declared she was earning up for a guitar.

Lexi does not take money lightly.

We started taking her seriously when she started shopping Craig's List for a used guitar.

Now, we do live in a musical town. Very musical as in the local college is known for The Crane School of Music and if you shop real estate listings around here you'll come across people with music rooms in their house. Which also means there is a huge store downtown who specialize in helping people purchase instruments.

THE MAN suggested nicely that a cheap guitar would be a waste of money and that perhaps they should go take a peek at some at Northern Music.

She opted for this lovely acoustical guitar and has set about mastering Rockin' Robin which she now knows by heart. We have spent the last month listening to her practice and self teach herself. We offered lessons, but really she is content to pick up her guitar daily, sometimes multiple times daily and just play.

A friend of hers got grounded for not practicing (see told you we take music seriously around here) so perhaps she just doesn't want to turn something fun into a chore.

I usually try to reserve design team layouts at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge for pages about me as I am working on an album, but this layout couldn't wait.

Anne provided us with a sketch to use. Being so super simple, it was easy for me to jump off and go to town, hence the wings, drips, raised plaster, flicks of paint, and mixed media look! I also snuck in an extra guitar pick and some purple tattered flowers from Helen over at Scrap Addict. I pulled a Helen trick and cut one in half. She is always doing clever flower extending tricks like that.

I used gold spray paint on my wings. I probably will continue to use it on every single project from here on out until I use up the can....

It has a great shine here in this photo where we have real sun & no snow! I know, can you believe it!

Hope your Tuesday is going fantastic and you have a bit of shine to your day!

Come play with us over at AFSC!

Configuration Box from THE CUTTING CAFE & Nicecrane Design Images

Eeeek! This box makes me so happy! And I made the WHOLE THING MYSELF as I cut all the pieces for the box and assembled them!

Yes, I have proof!

I wanted it super sturdy since I was planning on displaying it on the wall with that black glittery metal scallop so I folded the edges in half and stapled them. Then I stapled the whole thing together and used tissue paper and modge podge to cover up all the edges. A coat of gesso with some brown mist completed the process. I knew I was going to gesso it, so used some extra cardstock I had in this mustard color. :-)

The blue edge is a larger sized box that you cut and then use to nest all your boxes in. I painted the smaller boxes first and then added the blue box after it was dry. I used hot glue and glitter to further seal the edge. 

One of my favorite parts of this box is the crazy hand made bird nest at the top paired up with a white Birch stick. Has to be a robin's nest, those loopy birds will build their nests anywhere!

The configuration boxes are very simple to cut as Regina at the Cutting Cafe has them numbered with very clear instructions & a diagram. Of course, they are normally much deeper than mine since mine are folded.

Deeper ones mean you can add all kinds of cool little trinkets & found items. I am thinking about one like that in my future!

I knew I wanted to show case some really pretty graphic files I got recently from Nicecrane so that was the second reason I folded down the sides. The French Post Cards Mixed Media images are AMAZING! Nice job Ignacio!

Here is a bit of a side view so you can see more of the blue edge and a little of the drippy hot glue that has been sprayed a bit with some gold. 

And a close up of the images:

They are really quite lovely!

Huge thanks to Regina and Ignacio for some great products!

Happy Monday!

Creepy Gold Legged Chooks

I usually have a display on the top of my hutch. Mainly for my own entertainment purposes since I am not sure THE MAN ever looks at it or cares.

Today I have out my Stove Pipe Trim Mirror, those crazy white chickens (chooks for your Aussies) I got on a recent Junking Trip, various frames, a silver tray that hangs out there a lot, and a couple of new projects.

The crazy chooks have been given spray painted gold legs in an effort to make them look less real and creepy. My oldest came home after school one day and was upset to find chickens on her kitchen counter until she realised they were not real. She says they are still creepy!

Lexi also says these little white love birds that came home in the same batch of stuff from the second hand store are also creepy despite their new gold nest with pearls and Prima vine. 

She however has no issue with the gold spray painted bottom on this mushroom. ;-)

One of my favorite weird pieces on display are the naked baby candlesticks. It's real brass and not honestly all that pretty. FUGLY as THE MAN would put it. After cleaning it, I gave it a coat of patina so it wasn't quite so bad. Here's a before shot.

I'm off tomorrow to do a bit more Lent!

Wish me luck, I'm handing out these at the store tomorrow. Little seed packets to usher in spring!

Happy Friday!

Hugs!

Nearly Oval Frame Revamp for LESSology

I had a nearly trashed plastic gold frame that was begging for an overhaul! I still wanted to display photos but in an easier way to change them up.

It was also slightly warped due to it's age and being in the sun at the last house. So, it was needing a change & a bit of a disguise in the form of hand rolled flowers!

Here is what I started with! Patti wanted you to see how sorry that frame looked....she was quite embarrassed with all the really old photos!

I removed the glass, ditched most of the old photos, and hot glued in the black backing. You can also see the old vintage lace that I modged podged in.

The black background was also spritzed with Lindy's Stamp Gang Moon Shadow Mist giving it a bit of a shimmer. Also spritzed the lace just a bit with mists and used gold shimmer modge podge.

One of my favorite parts of this whole project was adding that lovely JOY tag gifted to me from Helen over at Scrap Addict. It goes along nicely with our newest challenge over at LESSology to use a tag or tags on your project.

I actually have used quite a few tags on this piece. I had some that were over ten years old!

If you look behind the school photos, you'll see the edge of a tag that says "report card" that was used with a die cutting machine and cut along with other scraps in a scallop. I am using those as place holders for my photos with my dyed clothes pins. I downloaded a digital image from Etsy called Faded Roses that really helped pull those scallops together. 

Here is my new recently old frame on display in our bedroom! The rolled roses & black background go along with my other frames. I hope you'll play along with us this month over at LESSology!