Just because

Just because I said that I was going to clean my craft room doesn't mean that I actually did. I did have every intention of working on it. My plan is to (at least for the moment) focus more on creating with paper. That being said, I want to organize my craft room so that the things I use for that are more readily accessible and organized making the whole thing more efficient.

Yeah, go ahead and laugh but I really did think I could do it. That was until I had an idea. All it takes when cleaning the craft room is one spark, a glimpse of one thing, a passing thought and all efforts are lost.

Instead of a clean craft room I made another card.

No pictures of the craft room as it's still a giant mess. I finally put a new ink cartridge in my printer so I was able to try this out. The bird is a png file I had on my computer. I sent it to my cricut machine and through the cricut it sends it to my printer. My printer prints the bird with a black border around the paper. The printed paper gets attached to a cutting mat and inserted into the cricut which cuts out the picture. I could print the picture and try and cut it out myself but there is no way I could cut it as cleanly, neatly and as fast as the cricut machine does.  I love this machine

Putting it all together

I got all those pieces parts assembled into a card and here it is.

Not entirely happy with this one for two reasons. I didn't care for the way the basket looked. I used brown cardstock and it was too dark so I tried to lighten it up by smudging on white paint. The other reason is the word Spring. I highlighted it with a pink glitter pen and it made it too dark. It doesn't stand out enough on the brown basket.

The inspiration for this one came from one of my pinterest boards. I pinned this thinking it would make a cute cards. The actual item is a 2 sided wood sign from this Etsy store

After this card was put together I thought I would work on cleaning up my craft room. I'll show you the results of that tomorrow

Pieces parts

I started working on another card but didn't manage to finish it yet. Since I've got nothing else to show I'll give you the unassembled pieces.

Hardly worth mentioning

Saturday was not an exciting day. It was my day off and I enjoyed that but there's very little to tell about it.
I did laundry, I cleaned a little and I took lots of breaks to play on the computer, flip through channels and play the newest game I downloaded on my tablet.

This one is called June's Journey

It's one of those hidden picture games. It tells you what to look for and you find it hidden in the picture

It's ok, not necessarily my most favorite game ever but it did help me to waste a whole lot of time.

Thoughtful x 2

Yesterday at work a customer got my attention to tell me that she had spilled the container of soup she had just filled. I told her I would be right out to take care of it. The deli manager and I both went out to clean up the mess. It was all over her cart so I went up front to get her a clean cart while Kelly started cleaning up the mess. We got it all taken care of and the customer was on her way.

About a half hour later the same customer came back with two little gift bags. One for me and one for Kelly to thank us for taking care of the mess

Totally unnecessary but such a sweet gesture. It made my day

slump

Bear with me while I work through my current slump

so thoughtful

A couple weeks ago a regular customer asked me if I used handmade crocheted dish cloths. I said I had made them in the past. Then she said that she had been crocheting dish cloths to keep herself busy over the winter and wanted to know if I would use the  if she brought me some.
Tuesday she brought several in for me and the deli manager.

Tea Time

Like I said yesterday, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the teabag holder I  made so I worked up a new one. I used Cricut design space to make the front and back as well as some elements to decorate the front with. Then I saved it. While switching to something else I accidentally erased the whole thing that took me probably an hour to create. Back to the drawing board, I knew what I wanted this time so I redid it all and now have a saved file so that I can cut this one out with the machine any time I want.

 Here's the front

And a view of  the side. This will hold 4 or 5 tea bags. I suppose you might even be able to stuff a 6th one in there.

Cake and tea

I was up early as usual yesterday morning but not quite as early as I am when the alarm wakes me up. I grabbed some coffee and headed for the computer. First it was emails and blog reading. Second on the list was to finish the two projects for the birthday gift I needed to deliver.

First I made her a cake. Not your typical cake though. This one was made with paper and Hershey nuggets. Let me just say, cute idea but pain in the butt. I can't find the exact tutorial I used but THIS ONE is basically the same.

Dark and gloomy around here so the pictures aren't the best. The tutorial I followed had 3 Hershey nugget layers but after doing 2 I opted for my third layer to be a battery operated tealight candle.

My second gift was a teabag holder.  The tutorial I followed for this project is HERE. I filled it with 6 Earl Grey teabags since that is her favorite tea

I wasn't completely satisfied with the way the teabag holder came out so I spent the rest of the morning working on a new design and putting parts of it into Cricut design space so that I can cut them all out with my machine. Come back tomorrow to see that one.

Just didn't happen

After I got home from work yesterday we had visitors for a while and then it was dinner time. Then of course there was some lounging and blog reading and getting this post ready. Well needless to say it was too late to finish and have a picture ready of one of the things I made for the girl at work. You will get to see it tomorrow though.

Today you get a random picture from the archives. Since I'm craving color how about a collage of colorful flowers.

An agonizing undertaking

Agonizing may be a little over dramatic but I liked the sound of it. One of the girls at work is having a birthday on Monday so I wanted to make her a card.
Of course to do this I must make a mess of my desk

Maybe it was the cold or the lack of sunshine but I had the hardest time coming up with what to do for this card.

After several attempts and design changes I finally ended up with this.

After I cut out the cake and stand I dressed them up a bit. I used metallic pens on the stand, glitter pens on the candle flames and some extreme glitter paint on the cake and Happy Birthday. Also to make the happy birthday stand out a bit more I used a green pen to outline the letters. Then I cut a second one from craft foam and layered it underneath for a little added dimension.

There were a couple other things I wanted to make to go with the card but didn't get around to them last night. Maybe today when I come home from work.

It's enough

Wednesday when I left to go to work in the morning it was 7 degrees. It was 49 when I headed home at the end of the day.
Thursday morning 37 and when I went home it was 59. I couldn't believe it was that warm. Of course it was raining and rather dreary out but 59.

Friday it was back down to being just plain cold. They were calling for snow but thankfully we didn't get it.

Today, I don't really care what the weather does. It's my day off and that's all that matters to me.

The chocolate told me to

I had a few left over dove candies from the Valentines treatmobiles and I couldn't let them go to waste so I ate one. They have messages inside the foil wrapper.

Looks like I need to go shopping. I would hate to not do what the chocolate said.

copycat

I have a board on Pinterest labeled greeting card inspiration. Since I'm not good at coming up with my own designs, I go to the board and copy a card I pinned.

This time I did this one.

This one comes from a blog called Simple & Sincere. The last blog post there was in 2012.

I did it in two different color schemes. These are mine.

I realized after I did mine that I had the words placed lower which didn't leave room for the ribbon but I didn't have any ribbon anyway. I did have some jewels that I was going to put on them but couldn't decide where to place them. I may add them or I may leave them like this.

Happy Valentines Day

Wade and I don't really do anything special for Valentines day but I usually get him something little. I put this together for him this year.


I filled an empty peanut butter jar with miniatures of some of his favorite candy. Then I topped the jar with a dollar store stuffed animal and the chocolate covered cherries. I'm also going to stop and pick up some instant lottery tickets and tuck those in with the bear.

For all of you I made a Valentine card from the above picture.

Hope all of you have a great day.

One more time

I have one more post showing the treatmobiles and then I promise I won't show them again. I also promise that I reserve the right to change my mind just in case I forget the first promise and show them another time.

I'm all done and ready to take them to work now. Not everyone I work with will get one. I only made them for the people who work in my area. I also made one large one to fill with suckers for customers.

The small cars are two different colors I made 4 of each

And here are the small ones along with the big one filled with Valentine suckers

I found the bags for the small cars in the cake decorating section at walmart.  I cut off part of the bag since they were a little taller than I needed them to be. I was going to tie them with some red curling ribbon but didn't have any so they'll go like this.

This took me back to the past

The other day Sandra sent me a link to check out. It was Inspirograph. What a blast from the past. I remember spirograph from when I was a kid. I don't know if it was my brother's or mine or maybe we both had a set but I do remember making all kinds of designs with it.


This is the one I made on the website.

If you want to try it out for yourself just click the link above or HERE to go to the site

Just what would you call it?

Yesterday was about as exciting as the load of laundry I did. It was gray, it was dreary and it was rather boring. Then I realized I needed to come up with a post. Oh brother, I'm in trouble. Hmmm. I took a picture of my laundry that never got put away but that was pretty pathetic.

I took a picture out the bedroom window. You've probably seen this scene several times

So I thought maybe I'll edit it and see if I can take out the buildings and the dumpster. It wasn't working so well so I just kept using the spot healing brush tool over and over all over the whole image. Then I added a textured overlay and now I've got boredom art.

Or maybe it's something else. I don't know. What would you call it? A great big mess maybe?

Sweet smile

I know in the past I may have made it sound like I work with a total bunch of idiots but the plain and simple fact is that they aren't all bad. Yesterday morning I got to work and found someone had left this sweet smile on my table for me.

Two little Debbie snacks for eyes and 6 hershey kisses for the smile

still

Winter has kept me in more this year than any other. In the past I didn't care if it was snowing. If I needed something or wanted to go somewhere I went. This year I see it's snowing and I say "forget about it". I've skipped more weekly shopping trips than I can count. Of course that's good for the bank account but I want to get out other than to go to work

That being said it was snowing again. Of course the neighbor across the street seems to be quite content. I'm guessing that maybe he spent his income tax return on a new snowmobile because he's been riding it through the empty lot over and over and over.
The other day I was coming up the street towards my driveway and as fast as he was headed towards the road I didn't think he was going to stop.

Oh and the sun, I didn't notice it shining at all but I took notice of it when it was saying goodnight.

A question for you

Spring

summer

winter

or fall

Which is your most favorite season of all?

More of the same

Several people have told me that we are supposed to get another 3-5 inches of snow today. I haven't checked a weather report myself but what difference would it make. If we're going to get it we're going to get it and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm craving sunshine and mother nature is sending snow.

I went to work dragging yesterday. I don't know if it's a cold or just sinuses that are really doing a number on me but all I want to do is lounge.

I'm digging in the archives to see if I can find some sunshine and flowers

Well here's some flowers

And this will do for the sunshine

And one more for a bunus

I'll just have another nap

Don't know what it is but I feel totally worn out. I slept till just after 6 yesterday morning. I never sleep that late. After I got up I sat in front of the computer for a while. Then I wandered down to the living room and turned on the tv.  I sat through Columbo and Matlock dozing here and there.

Next up was heading in to the craft room to work on making a fleet of treatmobiles.

I got as far as cutting out the pieces and then it was back to the couch for a nap. Before I knew it the day was over. Good thing I still have another week to get these things done before Valentines day

Nonsense

Sunday was an extra busy day.  Aside from the usual workload it was a little busier because people were stocking up on Superbowl food. If that wasn't enough there were call offs.
When I got home I turned on the tv and flopped on the couch. Sunday's aren't necessarily the best days for tv and I tend to watch the Hallmark movies and mysteries channel. They were playing Aurora Teagarden mysteries.

And that was the extent of my day. Boy, I sure live an exciting life

Treatmobile

My cricut machine and I did a little playing Saturday morning.  I downloaded a free file from Simply Crafty SVG's and decided to try it out.

This was their treatmobile. Perfect for giving a little Valentine treat.

The front has a little crease in it from when I was gluing it together. Kind of makes it look like it had a little accident. I added some little half pearl stickers for headlight. If I would have had red ones I would have added tail lights too. Maybe I can punch a couple of red hearts to add to it.

I love these sites that offer all kinds of free files. Makes me wonder why anyone would pay a membership fee for Cricut's design space. Yes it gives  you unlimited access to over 30,000 files but a monthly membership is $9.99 or you can get a years membership for $7.99 a month.  That is just a little too expensive for this cheap frugal girl.

Since I'm lacking any kind of enthusiasm for anything I'm just posting a random picture from the archives.

just cant

Comments off

Distraction

I can be so easily distracted sometimes. I always write my posts and schedule them to publish the following morning. On rare occasions, I might even schedule a few at a time
I was sitting on the couch thinking about what I might be able to post about and getting nowhere. I decided to check out a couple of websites.

I found one called cutting for business. It has all kinds of resources for people who use their cricut machines for crafting businesses. They have a huge list of sites that offer free commercial use cutting files. I got lost browsing through all the wonderful things I could download for free. I looked at the time and realized I still had no post.

Time to dig in the archives.

Old pictures of Gibbs to the rescue. 

In case you are wondering, I got to work yesterday and the temperature in the deli/bakery area was 52 degrees. I was so cold. Shortly after I started the semi retired owner came in and asked me if I was cold. I said yes, it's only 52 degrees in here. He reaches up and puts his hand in front of the heat duct and says there's warm air coming out of here. I started to show him the thermometer sitting on my table that said 52 degrees and he started laughing. He explained that on Monday he had been changing some filters and turned the heat off and forgot to turn it back on. The temperature was up to 70 in no time