Happy Thanksgiving to all my crafty friends

                  Hi, I hope everyone is fine and enjoying the holiday season and being thankful for all the Lord has giving us. I had hopes for blogging a few weeks ago, but we all know things don't go as planned.
           One day I woke up in the middle of the night with pains all over my hip bones and legs and I could not shake them off, I would be okay during the day not totally pain free but enough that I could walk around and take my son to school and back home. But once I tried to sleep the pains came back and this went on for a week before I told my husband it's time to go to the emergency room. 
          Well at the hospital they asked the usual questions and hooked my special ID bracelets on and put me in there most comfortable stretcher together with like 30 other sick people. After a long while they took blood samples and sent me up for a scan. To make a long story short the Doctor found nothing wrong with me and sent me home with  pain killers for a week. I took them an about 2 weeks later I was able to sleep without any pain. Seems like I might have over worked my body and had muscle pain (never knew that type of pain before). This past week I have been with a bad cold, I'm slowly getting over it and feeling better. There's nothing better then knowing you are soon getting together with family, to lift your spirits up and forget your pain. I love the holidays!      
                    

     I also wanted to let you know of a wonderful Lady called Adriana Almanza, I call her my teacher extraordinaire because I have already learned so much from her. she has a lovely teaching blog and Ning site, and she draws and colors the most adorable dolls with huge eyes(many call it big eye art) and I just adore them. She makes journals and she can paint so beautiful, she uses so many different medias like prismas, copics, spectrum noir, acrylic, watercolor and ect. ect. and her work is just a joy to watch. I could go on and on but I will just give you her blog and let you decide for yourself, it is http://www.adrianaalmanza.blogspot.com/  I used to draw many years ago but gave up because I really wasn't that good. And one day I came across one of Ady's youtube videos and I fell in love with her type of art and ever since I have been practicing drawing faces  because she says you must practice practice practice, well you get the point. Here is a small sample of my drawings. It's okay to laugh (some of them are so comical)LOL, But I'm just a beginner and I'm still trying.

I try to do different types of faces and hair styles I also used whatever pen or pencil was available at the moment when I did these. because I practice on my spare time, I don't always have the special sketching pencils on me.  I might have to make a mini kit to carry with me. 

I have a lot of problems with facial features and placement especially the eyes (oh I hope I get better lol ).

      

I uploaded these on Dec. 6, 2012

These are my latest pencil drawings drawn on December 2012

This  pencil drawing is my best one yet, according to the family that is,  hmmm

This was the last recent one, I did not feel like drawing but I did one anyway.

Here are some I had done earlier and forgot to post.

   These were done on December 18,2012

                

Okay I wanted to also show you some bookmarks I did for my grandson's 4th birthday. my daughter set it up in Funtopia USA and she wanted the goodies to be Batman for the boys and Lalaloopsy for the girls. I made some batman and Lalaloopsy coloring books with free coloring pages I found online. The bookmarks I did with the free images I found online I colored them with Bic Markers and the skin tone I used copic markers. I cut them out and  pasted them to chipboard and put some cute pattern paper on the back, I ran into a little problem when I modpodged the bookmarks because they bubbled slightly but once dried they were okay. Here are the Pics below. 

Here are the coloring books I made for the kids. I forgot to take a pic of the final ones I did with the colored covers which I made from cardstock.

Here are the Pictures of the children enjoying themselves and of some of the other family members.

The cute birthday boy and the girl with pink bow in her shirt and the darling boy next to her are my Grandbabies and the tall girl is my niece and the boy with the grey striped shirt in front of her is my beautiful son and the handsome man holding the baby is my son in law.

My Beautiful daughter  and mother of my grandchildren is here, she  loves to host party's for children  and she also bakes the most delicious cakes. The whole family loves her red velvet cupcakes. She also works as an assistant teacher.

The birthday boy uncle and aunt.

Here we have the Birthday boy other wonderful Grandma and mother of the boy's Dad.

The Happy Birthday Boy. ( I love you Alex!)

When the pinata broke there was a mad dash on the floor for the candy.

Thanks to everyone that viewed this long post.
Lots of blessings and have a great Thanksgiving holiday. Hugs always's!

Friends and Family effected by Hurricane Sandy.

             A big warm hug to all my scrappy friends. My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to all those in the North East and everywhere that have lost their homes and loved one's due to hurricane Sandy. I have been crafting but I don't want to post anything I have done. I just want to reflect upon and post about the last couple of days here, which I have spent mostly in my craftroom  cutting, painting, gluing, scrapping and doing anything that will keep me sane and focus and not tuned to the Television. The News has been on all day for the past three days and has not stopped giving me a play by play of all the loss and destruction left by Hurricane Sandy.
             I know in a natural disaster we don't get to choose who stays and who goes and we are no match for Mother Nature's fury when she is upset. It hurts to see so many innocent live's lost and many people without homes. Having lost everything they have ever worked for. It hurts to hear the horror of people being crushed by tree's and other's having lost everything down to their precious children's photographs.
             My husbands job has shut down because of loss of power, so he's out of a job  until further notice and my children have not returned to school because many of the school's have been turned into shelters for those in need. My oldest daughter and sons have also been out of work for loss of power The buses have limited service and the subways and trains have been shutdown until they can be fixed (water damage everywhere).
               I Live in the North East and I thank the Lord on bend knees's for having spared us, for we still have a roof above our heads and are still together. To all those that have not fared well my heart goes out to you, I will keep you in my prayers. Please keep the faith and be strong the lord will light the way. Hugs and much love to all! 

New tags,small tiles and a cubby update.

                        Hi Everyone, hope you are all doing great this time of year. Autumn is my favorite time of the year.The leaves have begun to fall and they are changing from there green color to the beautiful fall colors like orange, red, brown and yellow and some leaves have turn deep burgandy. I like that the weather is not to hot and it is not so cold. You really just need a light jacket and not heaps and layers of clothes like in winter.   Okay, enough weather talk, Sorry I was in my news reporting mode LOL.  Now lets get back to what this blog is about (Crafty Stuff) and some blogging.

                 Well, I have been gone for a while trying new stuff, like embossing and crackle paint and Mod Podge, sealers and lacquers and I'm trying to water color on canvas (but that will be on another post). Here are four tags I made using some of these mediums.

I changed the tag on the top right and you will see that on one of the pics below.

I distressed an arch shaped piece of card stock and added  flowers in  silver, peach and beige. 

                             .

The tag in the top left needed a lot of work because at the time I did not have Gesso to cover the  kraft like paper. I had to  color it with white acrylic paint in order to be able to use distress ink on it. I also did not want to mess up the embossing of the couple I had done. following are a few pics showing a little of the procedure I used.

Here I stamped an Anna Griffin  vine stamp all over the tag

Adding ribbon, decisions decisions  

I like the way the butterflies came out and I stamped some trees to the card . She looks like she's soaring above the trees.

Now, This idea I got from watching Jennys644 from Youtube. She has a website called Freestyle Crafts (It's awesome and has more then 2000 videos). Well, her name is Fiona  I saw her video on making tiny tiles by cutting up regular chipboard into small tile size chips and painting them white. You can use any type of stamps on them or you can cut small pics from your paper pads ( I used pics from the Graphic 45 paper pads). If you decide to stamp them you can use any type of distress colors on them. You then have to use a sealer ( I used glue and seal from ranger). after letting the tiles dry you can add a generous layer of glossy accents or 3d lacquer to get a glossy dome layer effect on them. let them dry overnight undisturbed and they turn out like old vintage tiny tiles. They turned out great!

They have the lacquer on and they have not dried to the clear  stage yet.

Here they have the glue and seal and  are waiting to dry

Here they have the final layer of lacquer and are almost dry and clear.


Up now I want to show you  another foam board cubby I made for my craft  table. I also took out the  last cubby holes from my older one and redid it with drawers at the bottom. This was not my idea, I want to give credit to Robin from RobinCreativeCottage. I was viewing the storage other crafters do on you tube and came accross her video of her storage with drawers and I decided to make  a new craft storage with drawers and I also updated my old storage  cubby with drawers on the bottom.I added paper from DCWV and gaint round brush silver brads as drawer knobs. I have been having my older one for a while now and it has held up just fine. Untill I find something suitable in wood, these will do just fine. They are easy,simple and inexpensive. If you need storage for light items and are on a budget try these. There are all over You tube and many crafters have done wonderful videos explaining the procedure that goes with creating one of these storage units. The units are simple, just be careful with the hot glue gun it gets hot and a little messy. besides that they are fun to create.Well here is the end of my post.  If you have made your way down this long post  I want to Thank you  so much for reading and viewing this post. Lots of hugs and as always may God bless you all!

Everything is withen reach and I like that.

My desk is much more organized now.

In these drawers I keep washi tape and glue sticks double daubers and clear mounts.

I keep small jars of flocking and perfect pearls, ink pots, embossing  powders and  perfect mediums  in these  drawers.     Thanks for taking the time to view my post.

A Peace Birthday Card

                 Hello to all you wonderful blogging buds.  The peace card is below, Just in case you want to by pass all this wonderful stuff I'm writing about which has nothing to do with the card. I just felt like doing a little blogging today. Well it was my children's first day back to school. I always get a little misty when they have to go back, after having them with me all summer long. I know school is good for them and I'm happy to have some more blogging and crafting time.

              I want to tell you about this store hubby took me  Over the weekend  called Amazing Savings. I had heard other scrappers talk about this store, but I didn't know if I had one nearby. Well, it so happens that my hubby was helping our son move into his new place and found one about a block away from him. I was overjoyed to go visit our son and take a look at this store. besides all the regular house wares and lots of Mikasa glass pieces and an abundance of kitchen gadgets and cutting boards and some furniture storage pieces. There is an area of school supplies and on the other side it's crafts and scrapbooking. they have lots of K and Company stickers as well as paper packs. lots of Making memories paper packs and pebble brads. lots of Page kits from colorbok, stamps from image tree and DCWV epoxy brads and they also carry stuff from Stickopotamus and many more embellishments. Needless to say, I left with a lot of stuff with out breaking the bank, because most things were a dollar and the paper packs about 3.00. I think they are over stocks but the prices sure are amazing. I would ask any one with a low budget to go check these stores out. I saved a lot for the same items I buy at my local craft store.they don't have everything but you usually will leave with a few good stuff.

                   Okay, sorry if the post was too long. But now for the Peace card, I went to my little niece's birthday party last week. She wanted a peace party, so beside's buying her some cute shirts with peace designs on them. I made her this simple peace card in her favorite colors lots of pinks and purples. I used one of my favorite embossed cards in white. I also  used Peace stamps  and peace ribbon a lot of Copics in pink and purple. I also use Martha Stewart glitter glues and spica glitter pens to dot the inside of the flowers, I used a giant circle punch and scallop decorative scissors to go around the circle.

Yay, here is the finished card fast and super simple and cute.

My first altered box creation

               Good morning  to all my bloggy friends. I have been so super busy this month, with all the getting back to school shopping and the countless birthdays and barbecues on the weekends, it's been very hectic around here. But I did take a few hours here and there to  do some crafting, and I'm finally posting it this morning.

                  I have been doing some cute pages shaped like a baby's bounty blanket and embellishing them, I will fill them up with baby tags and later put into a baby mini album.   I also made a very simple mini album out of  K and company paper and I am still in the process of filling it with tags and embellishments.

                                      I also have a lot of clip art and images that I print out or fussy cut from some of my older paper pack called Hot off the Press. I wanted to preserve them for when I need to use them. So, what I did was fussy cut a lot of the images and with removable adhesive I paste them down on two 8X10 paper and putting two sides together with images facing outward, I then pass them through the sticker machine with two sided lamination. When they come out you just cut around the paper very close to the edge and pull apart the two sides. After that just cut all the images and you will have them all laminated and protected from wet hands .

                             Okay, now for the box, I  had notice that my desk was slowly piling up with pop dots and other adhesives, but not wanting to get up and go to my nearest crafting store for yet another small plastic bin and not wanting to store the new pop dots I purchased into my adhesive drawer.  I decided to alter a small cardboard box I had and store my pop dots there at an arms reach. I am not going into a long detail explanation, I will let the pictures speak for them selves. What I did was cover the box in and out with some K and Company paper called Madeline, and I fussy cut some butterflies from the flora and fauna borders  and paste them on the box top. The man and woman silhouettes are from the Victorian Romance cricut cartridge, I also used some music paper from the colorbok paper pad and I cut the image on the fold down tab from Graphic45 Le Romantique paper and I put small round velcro as the closure underneath the fold down tab. I used stickles on the woman's headband and on her waist ribbon and bow and on the mans shirt. It was pretty easy and simple and I enjoyed myself. Now I have to run off and make some more Birthday cards and I will post them later in the week. Thank you so much for visiting my blog and reading this post, have a blessed Sunday!

This is the cardboard box I altered.

Here I am matting one of the pages from the simple mini.. Please click the Pics to enlarge.

Here is the simple mini album and the box covered in paper.

Here is another of the pages matted. They also have pockets to put tags inside.

Now that's what I call filled to the brim. They fit nice inside when the box is closed.

Here you can see the image on the fold down tab a little better. I did the star shaped crochet underneath the box about 15 years ago and it still looks good.    

You can see the top of the box much better here.

These are the baby blanket pages I  did that will go in a baby mini album.

The two papers with the pasted images go into the xyron .

The two papers are laminated cut and pulled apart.

now they are ready for fussy cutting.

I made a bunch of them at one time.

Here are a few of them all cut and laminated, waiting to be put into projects.