printable tags

Greetings....

Well I don't know about you but this summer is shaping up to be a hot one! We have been pushing 100 for awhile now and will be continuing for a good time more. I am grateful for air-conditioning that's for sure. I have been enjoying seeing all the little newborn deer babies lately, I have lots in my area so there are plenty of new babies running around. Been watering what flowers I have everyday with this heat and competing with the deer that do think flowers are yummy to eat!

Because of the heat and my craft room not sharing in the air-conditioning, I have not spent too much time in there. I managed to finish Little Boo's pattern and tried my hand at creating a couple of tags which I will show here. I think summer is the hardest time to settle down and get serious about creating, at least for me it is. I know you are all probably tired of hearing that from me!

I am on week 3 of Nutrisystem and I have to say it isn't half bad to do, not too painful. So far I am able to handle it and haven't been too hungry thankfully! I haven't paid too much attention to the scales over the last couple years and when I finally did I was shocked!! Before you know it the pounds can just pack on, they are sneaky buggers! I wish I had got on this bandwagon about 20 lbs ago but as they say better late than never. I do think the most valuable thing I will take away from this is learning portion control, we eat way more than we should. I will use this newly learned info. to my benefit when I need to maintain the weight loss. Okay enough of this depressing subject...:-)

This is my latest project, a set of tags that gives you three each of two designs. I drew the designs out and colored them. These tags are 2.5 inches by 5 inches, so pretty large. These are fun to embellish with glitter or distressing inks! They can be found on all my selling venues. Here is the samples

 

I have been selling the stuffing forks I love so much, but want to let you all know that I will no longer be able to carry them myself due to shipping cost constraints. I still recommend them however since they will make your stuffing projects way easier!

 

Did you know that E6000 glue is now in spray form? I have not used it yet but for those of you that use E6000 glue may just find this news to be welcome! I will let you all know how I like it when I am able to apply it to a project.

 

I hope you are all filling your summers with family, barbeques, camping and other fun events. Thanks for stopping by!

My latest project, a special gift and fun news!

Hello Ladies!

Where have I been hiding? No where really, just enjoying the great weather and summer outings! Fourth of July was wonderful, we had a bon fire on the beach and watched fireworks over the water for about an hour, it was great!! As the summer winds down I will be designing more patterns I promise! We all have times that we need to step away from what we're doing and enjoy something different.

I am not sure how the blogging will work out now that we no longer have google reader.... but I will post here anyway and hope it reaches some at least. I was gone and did not get around to transferring all my blogs from google reader to my Blog Lovin so I guess I will have to do them by hand!

Okay first up is my latest project.... Her name is Little Boo....Here she is....

She will be my next pattern and the actual doll will be for sale this month on PFATT Marketplace on July 10th.

She is 18" tall, made of muslin and then painted. Her body is made to look like a candy corn. She has a paper cone hat and wired arms.

Here is a close up of her ghost candle. This is a battery operated taper candle that I painted a ghost face on!

Here is a better view of her funny feet and clay candy buttons. She will be available soon in pattern, I am about 3/4 done and should be finished the first of next week sometime.

In other news!!! I got the greatest surprise I just have to share with you all.... LeeAnn Kress of Charmed Confections made me some fun things and sent them to me as a surprise and boy was I!! Okay, let me back up and tell you the stories behind the goodies I am about to show you. LeeAnn is one of those friends we can all only hope to have, she is talented, funny and the best cheer leader when I am feeling down or not so sure of myself. A true friend is always encouraging and loves to help celebrate and share in her friends accomplishments, this describes LeeAnn!! I actually have several online friends like that (you know who you are) .....we all love to share our latest projects, critique if needed and just be there for each other's creative process.

Well.....LeeAnn has been so supportive of me, my work and has shared in my excitement over being in Prim's Publication. As if this was not enough, she made two special gifts for me to celebrate this event as well as a funny I will tell you about in a minute but first let me share my cupcake!

 

One of LeeAnn's specialties making these fabulous cupcakes, she does them in all sizes and decorates them with so much detail! Some of her cupcakes have spooky characters sitting in them. My cupcake although is hard to see here, is huge! She added some wires to hold tags with mini pictures of the three pages that my bunny had in Prim's magazine. These are exactly the pages, she shrunk them down to fit the tags, now isn't that clever! I was thrilled to receive this to say the least. I display this proudly. The little tags are works of art all on their own! LeeAnn amazes me with her eye for detail. Her blog is www.charmedconfections.blogspot.com if you want to go learn more about her and her work.

 

Here is the store behind my (Friends-N-Beans) clothespin dolls in a bowl of beans! I am assuming most of you are creative so you will relate to this.... there are times when even the most creative minds will just simply go blank, no inspiration or ideas filling that noggin! Well LeeAnn and I joke during those times that we may as well just make clothes pin dolls in a bowl of beans! LOL Or we have said this when we may have something that is just not selling.... we say well gee.... we may as well have made some clothes pin dolls in beans, they may have been the hot seller! My brilliant friend took our joke and actually made them! The thing is.... they are no joke, I have never seen CUTER clothespin dolls and have never seen a cuter bowl of beans ever! Isn't this the cutest? Okay, the friends-n-beans is similar to Frank-N-Beans if you haven't figured that out already (now that is funny)! As you can see she decorated this bowl of beans so colorfully in a green bowl of beans. The doll wearing orange would be LeeAnn, she has been a great cheerleader to me and her sweater has initials of SBCW which stands for my business name! She wears orange because she loves anything Fall or Halloween, I am sure you know this if you have seen her work! These tiny dolls have hair, little pipe cleaner arms and so much detail. Okay now the purple doll represents me, I am holding a miniature version of the publication my artwork was featured in, now isn't that darling? I just wish I was as thin as my clothespin look alike! Well I am working on it, just started on some Nutrisystem, we'll see how that one goes! On the bottom of the bowl there is a nice to and from tag. This is one of my favorite things!!! Thank you for this thoughtful and fun gift, it never fails to make me smile. 

 

Okay, now for some fun news! LeeAnn's talent is unmistakable and I always knew her things were suited to be published, they are in that leaque. I also knew that her things were perfect for Art Doll Quarterly, this is a wonderful publication with the best of the best artists. She doubted she would ever make it into this thing but just like I told her ...SHE DID!!! If we get brave enough to reach for our dreams then we may find them within our grasps. This is the one time I can happily say I TOLD YOU SO LeeAnn's artwork will be featured in the August Art Doll Quarterly, she will have not one but several pieces featured. This is so exciting, the sky's the limit for her and her talent speaks for itself. Here is a picture of the front cover and a sneak peek at the inside. We will have to wait for the magazine to actually come out to see the actual article and all her works. Congratulations my friend!!!!

 

Here is a look at the cover, you really must buy this if you haven't before, it is so inspiring to see all the artwork that this publication features.

 

Look there is one of her pieces right here on the lower right!

 

Well that's it for now, thanks for stopping by!

checking in! Been doing a lot of playing

Hello friends....

Yes I am still alive and kicking, I think this is the longest I have gone and not posted. Once the nice weather finally came here I was more than ready to do some things outside and get away completely. My hubby and I have taken a few trips, have had family come here to visit too. My time has been full but unfortunately my time online and the creativity has suffered. I promise I will get into gear again here. I am thinking a giveaway in the near future may be nice so stay tuned!

So what have I been doing? Well since January I have not been working part time so we have had the freedom to just go as we please. I found a nice boarding place in Spokane for my dogs so we have been able to go more freely because of that as well. We have done some trips fairly close, have gone to see my family and just last week we spent time with friends in Coeur d' Alene in a condo. The muscle car show was going on downtown which was fun as usual, weather was great and we fit in a dinner cruise around the lake one night as well.

Here are a few pictures of our adventures lately. These are pics from my smartphone, the quality is okay but doesn't hold a candle to my DSLR I usually use but you'll get the picture and yep some are blurry. Okay I know that these pictures are personal and not my normal posting on crafts and such, these are family pictures you most likely will not care to see, but this is what I have been doing so we are going to go with it. :-)

This is me and my hubby on the dinner boat getting ready to take off. You are served dinner and get to cruise around lake Coeur d' Alene. This was a very nice evening.

We are on the top deck, my son took this picture of us and our dear friends from the Coast Tanya and John. Even though we now live so far away from each other we will always stay close friends.

Here is a picture of our son Tyler and friends Tanya and John. The lighting was not great here but as you can see we were having a great time!

Okay, here I am with Tanya. This is a stretch here for me, I do not like ANY picture of myself so this is a rare for me to even be sharing like this. 

Well as you can see even though we do get older, we never really do grow up. If we did not stay kids at heart what fun would life be? Here my son Tyler, John and hubby Dan decided to see if this gal would give them a ride! Hmmmm I would love to have this thing in my yard!

More playing.... Tanya and I really did play on this thing, went down the other spiral slide too! 

This was coming back in to the docking area, you see the Coeur d' Alene resort lit up in the background.

My sweet parents.... this was our recent trip to the coast at their house.

My parents just did some yummy stuff on the bb-q, the day turned out to be pretty great! I wonder if parents are normally this cute or is it just me being prejudice? I may have gone home but my heart is still there with them.

 

This is my older son Mitch with Dan my hubby, he lives in Bellingham near where we used to live. It is hard to not see him and the rest of my family on a regular basis. The decision was made to move away, but the consequence's were not fully realized until we actually did it. All I have to say is the price was high. I miss you Mitch...

Tyler and his new BMX bike.

I do have three dogs but I thought this was a cute pic of my little girl Ellie... just thought I'd throw it in. 

Here is our new ride! We have been taking the hot rod on all our trips and I must say it has been fun! We figured that just because a person grows older there is no reason one cannot buy and enjoy a fun car. We vow to never buy a granny car just because we may not be too young anymore. What is a granny car? well I am sure without pointing to any one type you all probably know what I mean anyway. 

I could not end this post without at least one crafting picture! This is the early start of my next pattern. As you can see this doll has the body of a candy corn, black funny boots on silly legs. Nope don't have arms yet or obviously only have the sketch of eye balls but she will be coming along soon. I haven't totally ignored the craft room lately, it has just been very slow going with all the playing and visiting I have been doing. 

I will stop here with this picture sampler. As I look at these photos I know that I am blessed to have those that I love and know they love me too! Now that is what makes living this thing called life worth it...

Thanks for stopping by

Decorate your smartphone cover with mod podge!

***Tutorial***

Don't throw away your boring smartphone cover! Add your own artwork and bling with mod podge, paper, paint and crystals! I will show you how I did it... I have a Samsung Galaxy 3, this cover is a cheaper one I had bought at Wally's, the brand was Body Glove. I am not sure I would do this on the more expensive Otter brands however! This case I had used awhile and it was getting a bit abused looking. I decided to try some artwork on it, now that is one sweet looking phone cover!

 

Before I get into the tutorial I want to talk about Mod Podge and some accessories I found! Firstly, is there anything at all not to love about mod podge? It is amazing stuff and can be used for so many things. I use if for many applications. It comes in gloss, matte, for paper and more.

 

Look what I found at Hobby Lobby! This is a silicone matte that you can be messy on and mod podge, hot glue etc.. will just peel off of it for easy clean up! I love it.... here I show it and the box it came in, the price was 9.99.

 

 

This is a nifty way to roll mod modge on a larger project, just put mod podge in the bottle, screw on the roller and start in!

Oh I love this one!!! These are little silicone finger protectors so that hot glue won't burn your fingers! I cannot tell you how many times I have burnt my fingers when I use hot glue. You can even use these for other applications as well, whatever you use and do not want your fingers to get into.

 

 Here is some of the mod podge types there are. I bought matte paper mod podge for this, but next time will buy the gloss as well. For the smartphone case I ended up liking the gloss over the matte.

Here is how my phone cover looked before I started the decorating process! Again, I would buy the gloss mod podge for paper instead of the matte you see here.

 

I wiped the surface down with some alcohol to give me a dirt-free surface to work with.

 

 

Next I found some pretty scrapbooking paper that went well with the color of the phone cover. I thought this blended well!

 

Turn the paper upside down on the part of the paper you liked the best.

 

 Trace around the phone case, this can be rough, no need to be picky here since we only need a general outline now. Cut out...

 

Now.... lay the paper over the case and take a ball point stylus like shown here and go around the inside edge where you want the paper to be. This will score the paper and give you an outline to cut on. This will be your template.

 

Here you can see that when I lifted the paper from the phone case the score lines are clearly visible. Cut this out on the score line with sharp scissors.

 

This picture shows the scissors I use. It looks like the fit is nice! I will go with it.

Brush on a layer of mod podge to the back-side of the paper. As you can see I am not worrying about being messy on the mod podge matte since I can peel it off later!

 

 The paper is glued onto the phone case, smooth out any air pockets etc.. with your fingers and let this dry for a couple of hours. I did not cut out the smaller holes yet, once it is dry it will be easier to take an x-acto knife and cut them out.

 

Once dry, I took my stylus and rand it around the edge, I seen that I had a bit of excess paper where I did not want it so I cut if off with a sharp knife.

I also carefully cut out the holes on my phone case with the sharp knife. It is time to decorate this. The sky's the limit here, whatever you can think to do here is fine.

Here were some of my considerations, a paper butterfly I had painted and glitzed up, some dried flowers, rhinestones. Hmmmm not sure yet.....

 Perhaps these flowers, glass beads, glitter....??? The painter in me is now wanting to paint on this paper!! If you are a stamper you could stamp this as well and decorate.

 

I am going to do a simple one-stroke flower using Donna Dewberry's method. I have two puddles of paint together one in white, the other in purple to load my brush into. Donna Dewberry has many painting books on how to make one-stroke flowers, I highly recommend them if you want to learn this. Like I said earlier, you could stamp and color if you like stamping.

I practiced a few strokes on my foam plate as you can see before actually doing it on my phone! Once I had it I made my petals. I used acrylics, they seem to work just fine on paper!

I used two colors of yellow and some white to make the flower center. Use a dry scruffy type brush like shown here to do it. Pounce the color in.

 Center is in! I also floated some purple on the edges and around the holes.

 

 

 

I took an angle brush and loaded it in green and dipped the tip in some white to stroke on the stem. I loaded a flat brush in green and white and did some one stroke leaves as well.

I painted on a happy flower face with some black. I added some pink cheeks and used a liner to make the mouth, eyebrows and nose. This is a quick and simple face, not too much fussing here. I added a small float of purple where the yellow meets the flower to add more depth.

I had a cute paper cut-out of this bee so I added some mod podge to the back and stuck it on. I now brushed on a coat of gloss mod podge, before it was dry I lightly sprinkled on some glamour dust glitter.

Let the coats of mod podge dry 15 - 20 minutes between coats, add more glitter if you want. I added three good coats mod podge until it had a nice heavy glossy finish. Add as many coats as you like, the more coats the more durable it will be.

Look! the mod podge really does peel off....:-)

I wanted some glitter on the side design so I brushed on some mod podge and before it dried sprinkled on some purple glitter.

 

I did the sprinkling over a plate so I could put the excess back in the bottle when I was finished. Once dry add another top layer of mod podge and let dry.

I am liking this, I do think I will leave a hint of the original phone color by leaving the top and bottom free of mod podge or glitter. I have some Swarovski crystals I think need to be on here! We love our smartphones so nothing it too good when it comes to making our phones a fashion statement.

You will need some crystals or rhinestones (cheaper) , a tweezer and some grrrip glue. I like grrrip glue for setting the stones because it is flexible clear glue that glues like the dickens. It says on the bottle that one of the applications is for decoupage so I feel this will work great. It is important with whatever you are doing to use the right glues for the application you are working on. Pick up a stone with your tweezer's and put a good layer of glue on the backs with a toothpick, lay them in position and let them dry well. NOTE: This craft glue is usually not found in local craft stores but you can find it online.

 

Isn't this fun!! Try to make your own custom phone case, I guarantee you will have a ball doing it. I wish you could see how sparkly my custom smartphone cover is in real life! I hope this gets the creative juices flowing, the ideas for this are endless.

 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, now go and create!!