ormolu

good grief blog: games

A new challenge is up over at the good grief blog and I am one of the guest designers for the month. Go check it out. 

I have been working on orders and favors for my sister's bridal shower...and maybe a little bit of working on getting the baby's room cleared out and putting a crib up (fun stuff!). It is definitely exciting to think about how I want to decorate a boy's room- after only doing girl stuff for so long. At the same time I decided to update Reiley's room a bit. She is very excited about this. 

And...Reiley's birthday is coming up here shortly. So, Justin and I are thinking about any last minute home improvement projects we can do prior to having people over. He caught me in the act this last week when I suggested we move the entertainment center that 'came with our house' upstairs. Apparently we both think the same though because he has been working on getting dry wall finished in the office/playroom. 

So, hopefully I will have some pictures of projects coming up here shortly with all the work we have been doing. 

boo to you!

Okay, so I won't lie- I am not too big on Halloween. I still take Reiley out trick or treating- but we stop by our parents and grandparents and she is pretty happy with the small amount she gets there and always asks to go home after that. She is not too big on it either. We typically have snow here so it is not much fun...and actually as I am typing this out it is snowing a lot. What is the use of getting all dressed up and begging for candy if you have to wear your coat over your costume, snow boots and freeze your butt off? 

My family is way into Christmas. Actually, my mom starts putting up her trees on Halloween night. She is standing right next to the door anyway so she figures she might as well get something done. And yes I said trees (plural). My mom has four large trees in her house for Christmas. So what my family lacks for in Halloween we make up for in Christmas. 

But back to Halloween. 

So, I inevitably skip many Halloween festivities. One would be making anything for my shop. Another might be actually spending anytime scrapbooking it. I do buy a pumpkin...and we carve it. But, this year I thought I would at least do a freebie to make up for the lack of spirit I have. I think they turned out pretty cute. 

There are two downloads here. One is for the "boo to you" tag set (shown above in such terrible lighting) and the other is for the "boo to you" candy bag toppers.

 

Here are the candy bag toppers. All of my candy corn was busted when I bought it- totally did not make me happy since I intended on using it for pictures. 

What I did for the candy bag toppers is score them in half (skipping over the eye section) and then cut the eyes out with an xacto knife. It is a little bit of effort but it sure is worth it. Fold them over and staple them to a regular sandwich bag (because we don't want to search for special sized bags). You can do a snack size bag too. 

 

And to jazz them up a bit more I had Reiley adhere some googly eyes. They probably should have been bigger but what can you do? You don't have to add the eyes though- they already have them printed on. 

 

On the back of the candy toppers is a blank section that you can write a message on if you like. My friend's mom likes to write bible passages. She figures if she is going to participate in this she is going to do it her way...but you can write whatever you want. If you are handy with a computer you could add it in that way- or just handwrite a note...or nothing. No pressure. 

Okay so here are the downloads: 

Download Bootoyoutags

Download Bootoyoutreattoppers

Have a happy and safe Halloween! 

(and bring on Christmas!)

wow everyone...

just wow. 

I had a crazy busy weekend and I am very grateful. Thank you.  

Thank you for everyone on the kind comments with my wall. They all made me so happy. 

Right now I am pretty much buried under orders so I made the decision to shut my shop down just for this week so I can catch up. I want to be sure I can get all the orders out from over the weekend before I take on any others. I am working on orders as quickly as I can (in the order I received them) and am planning on having them finished by the end of this week. 

I have had several people ask if I was going to offer another printable (and free) calendar this year. I am definitely going to try. Last year I never really had planned on doing one but I was looking for something I could give as a quick gift- something usable. I like practical gifts. So, I had made it on a whim. This year I will try to get one done earlier though. 

I do have two halloween printables (freebies)  that I will work on getting up in the next day or two.  

giveaway on AE this weekend & a couple new things in the shop

Doing a giveaway on Ali's blog today. Perfect time to pick up those items for Christmas. 

I also added a couple of new items. Well, one is new- one is kinda new. 

 

For Christmas I did some new alphabet tags. These are printed with the recycled cardstock, soy inks with windpower. I love how the printing turned out on these- the color against the cardstock has a slight gloss. 

 

And I redid the alphabet tags in the shop so they are also printed on the recycled cardstock, soy inks with windpower. Very happy about these as the overall process took so long to get these right. 

Working on orders this weekend- and also my sister's invitations for her upcoming wedding. 

what to do with these walls

When we first moved in I was so excited to start decorating...as is probably everyone. However, with wanting to decorate comes the inevitable needing money to do so. I had already started collecting things prior to moving out but sometimes I can look at a wall and imagine what I would like on it and yet I am so afraid to make that first move and just do it. Other times I get an idea and jump right on it because I am so excited to see it executed- this was one of those projects. 

Let me back up. I am not afraid to paint on walls. 

(enter short side story)

When I was about 13 or 14 years old I loved sea life. I had a sheet set with whales and dolphins, tons of photos on my walls with whales and dolphins- everything had whales and dolphins on it- clocks, rugs, blankets EVERYTHING. One day my mom was headed out the door to work and I asked her, "Can I paint a whale on my wall?" Because obviously I knew the answer was yes I asked it kinda like it was no big deal. She gave me a crazy look and said, "Uh-NO!" 

I was pretty surprised actually that she said no, I am not going to lie. I was certain she was going to say yes. So, she went to work and figuring she was the crazy one for not letting me paint a whale on my wall I set to work on sketching it out on my wall. It took a few hours and then I was scared. I was scared because after all she had said I could not paint it on my wall...and there it was. A whale on my wall. About three feet high (so not too big) and a nearly perfect copy of the whales on my sheets. I waited for her return. 

When she got home I said "hi" (heart beating 3,000mph) "how was your day?" "anything new?"...

Then I could not stand it anymore and said, "Want to see what I did?" 

I dragged her downstairs to my room and assured her I could wash it off (because at this point I had only sketched it out in pencil). Then she saw it. 

Then she said, "Do you want to go get paint?" 

All was well and I painted it and a few days later she told me to paint a dolphin too- and maybe some waves. Then my mom hired me to draw a mural of Beauty and the Beast characters on my baby sisters wall- then Sylvester and Tweety on my other sisters wall. Then we moved and I was so sad I could not take them with me. All in all- it was a good run for only being 14 years old. I still have pictures of the whale & dolphin and Beauty and the Beast but I am totally bummed I don't have one of Sylvester- he was massive. My mom asked me to make him about 3 feet high and I filled up the entire wall. I ended up putting the photos in my portfolio for graduation. 

Back to today. 

I was sitting with Justin on the stairs looking down to our 'playrooms' (his poolroom and my scrapbook room). "What are we going to do with this wall?" I asked. 

We threw around ideas and talked about how it led to a pool room and a scrapbook room. How he wanted it to go with his room- which has an antique sort of feel. My room is more of a eclectic type of room with antiques, junk and Target collections. Of course it is all about scrapbooking too. 

Justin suggested to maybe paint something- like an old tree. That would be cool. 

I suggested maybe hanging small photos on it- like antique photos of our families and newer ones of us (but all in black in white maybe). That would be cool. 

 

photo: me as a child

A few days later I grabbed out the paint and painted the tree. He got home from wherever he was and said he liked it. Then I found some frames I had lying around and painted them and framed some photos to hang. I plan on collecting many types of frames eventually to hang on here- but I had to start somewhere so I used things I had on hand. 

 

photo: my grandmother as a toddler ( I love this photo)

All in all it turned out really great, I think. It is something that ties together our families and the past and present. I guess you could say it is a family tree of sorts but loosely done. Overall, it took up a wall in our house (that we had no clue how to use since it was right at the end of our stairs) and turned it into something interesting. This is my favorite wall so far. I am so excited to add to it.  

 

Here is the overall look heading down the steps. I think it will look even better once it starts being filled in. I thought about adding a quote- but I don't know if that is the overall look I am going for. 

We will see as the tree starts filling up. 

great news and great news

But for the second batch of great news you have to make it to the bottom...okay- go peek and come back up here to read the rest ;) 

First- almost all Christmas items are loaded into the shop. I know- almost right? I have one more tag set I need to load but I have not even received finished product yet. They are extra special. 

 

I cannot even begin to go over each new item and I can't pick favorites because I love them all. It is so hard picking out just a few items to highlight here. So, go check out the shop and make sure you read the information on items because it helps to understand the details of what each item is.  These are Christmas Cheer snip-it's. Because you cut them out yourself- I can offer them at a lower price. I was playing around with these a few weeks ago and they are the perfect size for card making! Perfect! I hope to do more of these snip-its in the future. 

 

For Christmas items I went with two color schemes- an all red and a brights. These are the advent assignment tags. I love them because if you are doing a December daily album they will go along just great. Or- I also think they would be a great way to make an advent calendar. The bright color scheme on these coordinate with the number tags in bright- and also the Christmas Cheer tags. 

 

A month or so ago I received a comment on some feedback that they liked that the packaging was not over the top. I have to admit, I never really thought about packaging too much in terms of trying to be a green conscious company. Being a extremely small business it is difficult to focus on those sort of things. I then started thinking about packaging a bit more and how I can improve it at all. I decided, as many companies have lately, that instead of showing contents on the back I would add an additional tag to cut out. I love it when companies do this- so on many of the new products you will see this. 

 

I love the new number tags! These also come in all red. I wanted to include a space for writing or embellishment and I am so happy with how these turned out. There are numbers 1-31 and throughout the Christmas season you receive three additional tags that say Merry Christmas, Twas the night before Christmas and Happy New Year. Great for documenting your holidays. 

 

Arrivederci! I have been wanting to do a travel themed tag for quite sometime. Those of you who know me, know I am very fond of vintage and new items- mixing things up. I am not afraid to purchase something from an antique shop and head on over to Target...in fact those are my two favorite places. I think these have that look to them. There is also another set of tags called excess baggage that go along with these. 

 

I have the sweetest model to help me out with these. Paperchains! I skipped halloween, I know. But I have a special surprise coming on my blog in a couple of weeks to help you guys out with that. These are for Thanksgiving. I came up with the idea to do a Thanksgiving themed paperchain that was more interactive. I have many requests to leave these half blank and have guests at weddings write on them in lieu of guests books. So, with these- set out a little jar full of the strips and have each guest take one and write what they are thankful for. At dinnertime, go around the table and have each guest read what they have written and build a paper chain as they do so. Kids will love it! 

 

I was kinda torn on doing this one. I wanted to include the entire story- but I did not want to make people buy 11 yards of chain! So, a listing is good for one yard of chain- but I have an option available for you to purchase the entire story worth if you just convo me. 

 

Everyone has a favorite Christmas song and O holy night happens to be mine. But I also have a basic Christmas carol chain available in the shop that is in colors of red and green. Both are printed on a music sheet inspired background. 

 

You will notice with the new tag sets (non-Christmas) I did a combination of sizes in one listing. This is something new I am trying as I was trying to think of how I like to buy things. Sometimes we just want a bit of everything, right? This is the baby mine line. I have baby on my mind lately. However, I know everyone does not- so I only included one image of a baby carriage because I picture these being used for everything and anything. Lots of flora and fauna going on here. And speaking of baby... 

We found out yesterday that we are having a boy! We are all super excited- although we would have been excited either way. Since I come from a family of lots of girls I am looking forward to having a boy in our family. I picked up Reiley from school with a blue cupcake in my hand and an ocean water from Sonic because she felt left out of going to the doctors office. She was so happy to find out she is going to have a baby brother! The ultrasound tech and the doctor said everything looks wonderful! In fact the ultrasound tech said he was cooperating so well and she even loaded us up with photos because they were great shots. Then she told us to keep them hidden because typically we would only get 2 or 3...we ended up with a lot more. I told her I appreciate it because I am a scrapbooker ;) 

october special

October special is listed in the shop finally. All three tab sets (45 tabs total) for only $8! 

Still working on getting new items up in there...so close. 

try it with tags: inking and bottle cap magnets

          
     

If you have ever bought some of the tags from ormolu (since earlier this year) you know they are high quality. They are professionally printed by a local company that uses recycled cardstocks, soy inks and is their facility is wind powered (how cool is that?!). They do a wonderful job plus they are so friendly! 

So, because of the quality, they have a lot of flexibility. I have glittered these guys up, dabbled in watercolor, inked them and distressed them. The other day I tried a few other techniques including alcohol inks, glimmer mist & diamond glaze. Which brings me to my next project...

Lately, I have been thinking about organizing, new products in the shop, working on projects of all shapes and sizes and the inevitable Christmas. Trying to think of gift ideas. Things that are not too much excess ( I don't like excess). Well, here is something I created while working on a few of these tasks lately. 

If you remember a few years ago Ali posted some bottle caps on her blog she made into magnets. Well, I had noticed a basket full of these bottle caps, at my local scrapbooking store, that had been sitting on the ground for way too long. I ran down there and grabbed handfuls so I could try out these at a later date (and I was right in doing so because the next time I went in they were gone...it only takes Ali to show off a product).

Shortly after picking them up there was a blizzard and I was stuck at home for several days in a row (disadvantages of having a small car). Reiley and I spent our time working on Christmas projects because Christmas was only a few days away- and we were stuck at home. I still use and have some of the magnets I made that day. They are my favorite magnets because they turned out so cute and the memory of making them together. I stumbled upon an extra handful of these guys a few days ago and thought...these look like they will fit a tag inside. hmmm... 

So, I ran over and grabbed some new tags and sure enough- they fit! I decided to try my hand at making a few extra magnets to see how they would turn out and perhaps revisit the simplicity of a nice handmade gift. 

First, use a little bit of diamond glaze or glossy accents to adhere the tag. 

Let the tag dry. 

Then fill her up with either diamond glaze or glossy accents. Before you fill it up you could add more to it (buttons, jewels, beads...etc) but I am kind of a plain jane. 

I rimmed the outside first and filled in the center using the tip. If you have bubbles then just lightly tap the bottom of the bottle cap on the table- the bubbles should rise and pop right out. Then let them dry overnight before handling them. When you are finished just hot glue a magnet to the back. I used some really strong and flat magnets last time which worked great because I was able to package them up in metal cd cases as gifts. 

The tags shown here are a little sneak at what is coming later this week in the shop. Just tying up a few loose ends before I list... 

I was able to find the mega sized bottle caps I used in several places- just google 'Maya Road Mega Bottle caps' (they tend to be around $.50 a piece). 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Tomorrow I head to the doctors for my 20 week ultrasound. I am super excited about the possibility of finding out if we are having a girl or a boy (yes, I am one who cannot wait). It will be fun to start planning the baby's room and getting ready to meet our newest member of our family. I will be back on Thursday to let you know what it is... 

going on right now

• Reiley wanted to build a swing on our tree for quite a while. It is not a big tree- but it does not take much to make this girl happy. Justin finally caved in this weekend when she started asking for power tools to build it herself. 
• I have been working, designing, proofing, redesigning, proofing new items for the shop for a few months now (including lots of Christmas goodies!). I finally am seeing the results and am almost ready to get them loaded. ( I am shooting for next week)
• Very excited to take this class that I have been waiting for...I think it will be worth every penny
• Received a wonderful collection of photos on cd from my grandfather documenting our family history. I am so lucky to have someone in our family who is very active in finding and documenting this information...and is so happy to share it with everyone. I also received a dvd of my grandmother making Portuguese sweet bread (which is definitely a tradition for our family). 
• We have been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. Clean gutters, clean cars, clean house (and I mean really clean), clean oil (changing oil in cars), clean Reiley's room (which is quite an accomplishment these days), clean carpet...I know there is more and that was just this weekend. 
• Started a fun home decor project that I am hoping to share soon as I make more progress on it. 
• We are all so excited to find out if the new member of our family will be wearing pink or blue...which should be next week. These two have been battling out what they *hope* it to be...I remain neutral
• Thinking I probably need to break down and look for some maternity clothes now that the weather is cooling itself down and the elastic hair-ties are not holding up so much anymore... 
• Made two recent purchases (only because they were orange) for my kitchen. An orange grill pan at a very good price (thank you Rachael for loving orange too) and an orange coffee press (so I can brew up my own decaf separately for now...and maybe try it out on some tea too)
• Got a new Wii game- partly as a promise that Justin would give Reiley $20 bucks if she managed to save up to $200. She did- and he kept his promise and they decided to make it a little more and turn it into a Wii game. 

I am long overdue for a blog post and long overdue to start this project and long overdue to make something. This is a dual project.  I am essentially creating a project about creating a project (kill two birds with one stone type of deal). 

When I designed these journaling cards several months ago I wanted to use these as mini- assignments and do a mini-book to document each day. Although a nice thought...I just have not gotten around to it. So, I decided today that I would start- but with a different thought process to it all. What I had originally thought of using one card each day for 24 days- I am thinking not so much pressure now. Because, afterall- it is not only using the cards but documenting also. So, I am going to lighten up on my own assignment load and start creating slowly. Slowly means less pressure and more time to enjoy it all. 

Have a plan. 

Today I started with the "have a plan" card because it seemed like a good place to start. I had already designed my book a month or so ago and it had been sitting waiting for me. The book itself is made out of matting from a frame that I did not need. I cut that in half and bound it using kraft cardstock for the center. 

The papers are all Cosmo Cricket (early bird collection) and the butterfly traced and cut from this template. With my book all set to go I have one less thing I need to worry about each day. I am planning on doing more to the cover- but I want to wait until I decide on a name for the overall project. Sometimes the naming of a project comes last and in this case I think that might be true. Ignore that little spot of ink on the cover ;) (that is what happens when you have too much going on, on your work table. 

________________________________________________________________________________

Supplies: kraft cardstock, white paper, ormolu framed stickers, sewing machine, typewriter, letter stickers

________________________________________________________________________________

(some funky lighting in these next photos- that is what happens when I take photos downstairs) 

No serious planning for me today. I have several times came across the need for a notebook in the house. Of course being a hoarder of paper there is no need for this to happen. So, I decided to take action and create some mini sized notebooks to carry along or leave in various places. They are simple, easy, and with some planning anyone could whip a batch of these up for gifts. 

First, cut kraft cardstock into 5-1/2"x 8-1/2" pieces and white paper into about 5"x8" pieces (about 10 per book). Fold kraft cardstock in half and score. 

Now, line these all up so you leave a space around the edge of the white paper. 

Flip it over (keeping papers in place) and get ready to sew along the fold you made. If you are like me and do not have a workhorse of a sewing machine...you might want to say a little prayer before you begin. In this case I said three. 

You might want to take off your shoes if you have them on too. I cannot operate this pedal with shoes on :) 

So, you sewed down the spine... and now we are moving onto the front (because of lack of photos). For the front I used a framed sticker and decided to just sew right through it to add interest. Before you do this- check out what I did to the interior as an option. 

Here is what the cover looks like. 

Here is what the inside looks like. I decided to jazz it up a bit more and add a quote on the inside. So, I placed the sticker and quote where I wanted and eyed where to stitch (stitching from the interior side in view so I could stitch between lines of the quote). 

Here is another quote from the inside. It just adds to it. I like to keep things simple- but simple can have surprises. 

The letter stickers on the front I added taking a word from the quote inside. These would look super cute tied up together as a small gift for a friend. I think I am going to place them in a little basket on the counter with some pens. 

Here is my page I created (pg 1) for my assignment journal. Although- I have to come up with a better name than assignment journal...still brainstorming that so I can complete the cover.