Papercutting cards…

One of my sisters has gotten married…and so I needed to make some special cards. As always, Cindy had some awesome patterns for me!!! You can get them too – go to Cindy’s website!

I also cut this out of paper…for me! You can find the pattern here…the site is lovely to look at…although I don’t understand a single word…but creativity doesn’t need words…

I have a crazy-busy weekend ahead…thank goodness my hubbie asked me to go fishing last evening. It was lovely.

We’ve gone from ice-fishing to open-water fishing within the same month!!!

Happy Crafting!!!

Seedlings, wood projects, little felt chick…

Can you see??? My tomato plants are starting to grow their second set of leaves! I have them just a couple inches from the light now…and my fingers are crossed. Here are a couple links that I found helpful when starting plants from seed:

Sherry's Greenhouse

Plantea.com

I cut some little chicks out of wood and papered them…nobody knew what they were? Weird!

I stitched up this little chick using the pattern provided by Myrtle and Eunice, thank you so much! Each chick took about a half an hour to make and they are just so darn cute and tiny!!

Then I was able to go to the thrift store with Carmen and found this little gem…it was originally plain medium reddish brown wood…I spray painted it…

I spray painted it badly…I always get too heavy-handed with the spray paint! Too impatient! I traced the pattern and modified it just a bit (narrowed the tail and will center the whale on the wood he rests on, made the mouth a little smaller) and will be making these for the Spirit of Christmas bazaar at my church. Isn’t it cute! Wouldn’t it make you smile to have this on your desk/counter/craft area/kids homework station? I think I’ll just seal the ones I make…no finish…they will have that “Scandinavian” feel that I love so much. Do you think anyone will buy them?

Happy Crafting!!!!

Sprouting seeds and a needle felted chick…

The “great seed experiment” is working! However, I always get the seeds to this point and lose them later on…so the jury is still out…but it looks promising!!!

I have finally finished this little chick. While I’m not totally happy with the way it’s turned out I’ve decided on “good enough”. I suppose I’ll try to flatten her little bottom a bit so she sits better, and perhaps add a couple more polka dots to her hat. This project has taken me forever to finish! Mostly because I just haven’t been spending my time needle felting…but I love how needle felting is a project that you can put down and pick back up whenever the mood suits you! Chick was inspired by flickr user feltcafe. PS: I want that book!

Here is a little Easter egg I felted and hung on a chain and some other’s that I will be giving away to some ladies at church. Don’t you just love to randomly surprise people with little gifts?

I hope you all have a blessed Easter!

Happy Crafting!!!

Starts…and campfires…

It is the start of “campfire season” at our house! Yippeeeee, we love a campfire. It usually falls to me to get the fire started, so I decided to make some fire-starters to make the job easy and smooth…and cause I wanted to use up some old candles…reduce my hoard stash a little!

First I put water in an old kettle and a tin can in the water with the old candle. (Basically a double-boiler)

Then I cut up the cardboard tubes from paper towels and gift wrap into sections, covered the bottom with recycled wax paper, used a rubber band to hold it together, added some cotton string for a wick, stuffed them full of dryer lint, and then poured the melted wax into them. The rubber bands snapped when the hot wax reached them but all was well. They burn beautifully!!!! My hubbie, the volunteer fire fighter, is always telling me how dangerous dryer lint is for starting a fire. I believe him! Oh, it’s helpful to dip the string into the wax to “harden” it a bit before you put it into the tube.

Now for the starts…

I do not understand why I do this to myself every year… it is a true compulsion! Every year I start seeds and I have never actually planted anything I’ve started. It always ends up in the compost because I failed in some way. Sigh. Well, here we go again. This year I decided to try using an old fish tank for a mini greenhouse. Ya, it’s not pretty. We’ll make it pretty if it actually works. I planted seeds on the 15th and today I have my first tiny little sprout! I will keep you updated. This is my idea, I haven’t seen it anywhere else, so if you do try this out please let me know how it works!

Don’t ya just love these phone-photography-apps!

Happy Crafting!!!

Yard cleaning…

 

Before…

Cell phone photo…I know, it’s awful isn’t it! Not the picture, the yard! This is a corner of my yard that is between our shed and our fence. It doesn’t get much light. It is very shaded by pine trees and oak trees…note the needles and leaves on the ground. So when we had a nice day last week I decided to tackle it! In the foreground of the picture you can just barely see a burn barrel that has been here since we moved here…around 12 years ago! I have always wanted to get rid of it as it is UGLY! Well, I put on my gloves and big girl pants and tackled it. I emptied it into three different garbage cans and have them on a trailer ready to be hauled away. It was filled with rotten carpet pad…yuck!

The chest in the back is my compost bin. That had to stay…and I added a lawn chair for some color…and you can sit here on a hot summer day and be in the shade and also be totally private…

After…

The leaves that are left were frozen to the ground. The little stump left is now a foot rest. I have that piece of plywood there to give me an idea of how some stepping stones would look in here. Also once the ground unfreezes we will bury the rest of that cable. I think some stepping stones and moss would make it look kinda cute? Maybe a colorful bird house on that stump in the back corner? My yard will never be pretty…well…pretty ugly…but not pretty. I hope to get to “neat and tidy”.

This is one reason why…my boys dig holes. BIG HOLES! You can’t really tell but this one is at least 5 feet deep. I came out and took this picture and then made him fill it in. He thought he could easily dig his way out if the wall collapsed…uh-huh…10 year old logic. I like to let them dig holes, it’s good play for them…and they are outside!

Well, I have to tackle other areas of the yard when the weather gets warm again…and I’ll show you…cause it motivates me to do a good job! Just wait until you see our pile of bikes!! (Picture 50 bikes in a tangled mass…that is gonna be fun!)

For crafting I’m still working on that needlefelting project that was started a couple weeks ago…and I’ve started a paper cutting/quilling project for my youngest sister…but for now I am babysitting my adorable two year old niece…crafting has come to a screeching halt! It’s OK…she’s that cute!

Happy Crafting!

Ice Fishing In April…

There is a lot of interesting things to look at when you’re ice fishing. See the darker ice in this picture? If you just walk across it you’d think it’s just regular ice and if you walk the way you normally walk you’d leave no tracks. However, if you twist your foot a little as you walk, you make the tracks that you see above.

Look at those tracks a little closer and they are so cool!

Look even closer and you see that the ice broke into little tubes! Weird and fascinating!!!

Then as I was walking I saw this…it looks like it came from another world…

See how each stalk had it’s own tunnel in the ice? Cool!

It was the same with all the flotsam and jetsam on the lake.

You look at a scene like this and think there isn’t much to see…well, look closer! We had a great time ice fishing. It was a balmy 50 degrees and the wind was calm. It is really peaceful…(and there was still a good foot of ice on the lake…)

I didn’t get any crafting done this weekend, and I’m not sad. I spent a lot of time with family and friends instead.

Happy Crafting!!!

Spring is in the air!!!!

I saw a post about making Scrapbook Paper Branches and had to try…

 

I used the new handy dandy hot glue gun and within about ten minutes was done. If you go to the original post (click on the words in pink) you’ll see that she used a lot more branches…or a bushier branch…but I just didn’t want to give it that much time. (But I like hers better) I got the branch to stand up nice and straight by filling this little crock with pea rock that Julie brought me…it seated it in nicely! (Please forgive my cruddy picture…no sunlight in that corner of the house…)

Another quick project for the week was to recycle an old flannel sheet. I tore it into squares as quickly as I could and now have a pile of rags and since my youngest has a cold he uses these to blow his nose. Then we throw them away. The sheet was going to get thrown away anyways…this way we can use it one more time. When you blow your nose with torn sheets you don’t get the red and chapped nose you get with tissues. Love it! (Picture taken with my Droid)

Otherwise I’ve been working on a needlefelting project that still has a ways to go. Today I’m going to muck out our front entry and pack away the winter gear and replace it with the summer toys!!!! Geez I hope I don’t jinx us and we get more snow…

I said a while back that I’d pass along any weight loss tips and here is another one…if you have a smart phone you can download the Cardio Trainer app. (free) This app will tell you how fast you’re walking (minutes/mile), how many steps you’ve taken, how far you’ve gone, it shows you a map of where you’ve been, and how many calories you’ve burned. My only gripe is that at the end it will say “You’ve burned 103 calories that equals 2 peaches!) Who in the helicopter cares about how many peaches you’ve burned (do you know anyone who gained weight from eating too many peaches?!)…I want to know how many Doritos's I’m walking off my hiney!!!

Happy Crafting!!!

Using up paper scraps…and an organizational idea…

I got to review another product from CSN a while back and I chose this cordless glue gun! Oh happy day!!! I love this glue gun, it heats up pretty quickly and holds it heat nicely. Back in the day, I had one of those cheap low-temp glue guns and based on my experience with that I thought glue guns were way overrated. Well not anymore! This is easy and fast and the glue is strong! I’m in love.

Now for the paper scraps. I have tons and tons of paper scraps. (OK…I have pounds and pounds of paper scraps…about 10 years worth…) Well, now that I’ve been making notebooks I also have quite a bit of cardboard scraps..so by combining them together I’ve started making tags.

I have an idea for these tags that I’ll be writing about later this year. I also think they need some glitter…don’t you? These measure about 2” by 3” so you can use some of the tiniest scraps you have to cover them. The hot glue came into play when I attached the flower. I have quite a few of these tags in various stages of production and while I want to see all of them I didn’t want them spread out all over the table. (Think jelly and syrup) So I came up with this idea-

This is one Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine. I folded each page in half and then in half again. Here is a larger version-

This is two magazines folded only once per page and then the magazines were glued together with…the hot glue gun! This works great for mail. When the holders start looking tattered and old just throw them in the recycling bin…cost…$0.

In other news my oldest and my youngest each had a great report card so we went to see the movie Hop as a reward. It was cute. There were some very funny parts and I loved hearing my kids giggle. My hubbie and my middle child went fishing up at Lake Of The Woods and on the Rainy River…Hubbie came home with a BIG fish story that he had a picture to back up!

This is a 52 Inch and 38 Pound Sturgeon! It looks like it was pretty heavy!! He’s struggling to hold it still for the camera, he said it doesn’t have scales like a crappy it has “skin” like a catfish and was slippery. Ewwwww. He released it back into the river. He did catch enough other fish for a couple fish suppers around here. Heck, after this trip fresh caught fish only cost us about $488/pound…(it’s a running joke around here…after he’s purchased everything that is necessary for ice-fishing the actual fish are pretty darn expensive! Um…I get it…I do have three sewing machines…)

Happy Crafting!!!

Hello again and an epic craft fail!

Over the weekend we went to a concert and saw Aaron Lewis from Staind, and Scott Stapp from Creed. Awesome shows!! We were in the fifth row and had a really good time! If you ever have the chance to see Aaron Lewis GO. There were people who drove hundred’s of miles to see his show and now I know why. His show was entertaining with GREAT music. He spontaneously sang songs the audience yelled out…he sang Purple Rain by Prince better than Prince sings it. There were a few hecklers in the crowd and he threw back one-liners that had us roaring with laughter.

While there I couldn’t help but notice the rug in the lobby…here is a picture taken from above…

Here’s a closer look…

Dots!

And here is my epic craft fail:

What is it you ask? It’s supposed to be resin jewelry. You see it wasn’t hardening properly…so I put it in the oven at a very low temp…and this is what happened. Good chemistry lesson though!

In other news I’ve gotten completely sucked into the books by Stieg Larsson. I have just started book three: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. Needless to say I haven’t been doing much crafting this week. Will have to rectify that this weekend!

Happy Crafting!!!