Scrap Journaling...

Hi Girls,

I've been busy playing in my craftroom again, this time starting a new art/scrap journal, trying to use up more of those leftover scraps from previous projects.

I've only finished the first two pages so far, so I have lots left to go. 

Here's a peak at the two pages I've completed so far (I hadn't finished modge podging down the last few pieces yet when I took the photos, but they are glued down now just as you see them in the photos).

 

 

I'm going to try and keep the color theme similar throughout the journal, using lots of pinks, pale greens, light blues and so forth to keep it on the light side.

 

So what do you think of it so far?



Oh My........

I guess I took a bit of a blog break didn't I?

Well, I'm sorry for being away for so long, but I just didn't feel like I had much worthwhile to share so I kept letting more and more time go by without updating my blog with a new post.   But I'll make up for it today as I have several different things to share today.

Haven't been doing anything too exciting.  Just playing in my craft room making all sorts of new things.  These are just a couple of my new creations.

A spring themed wall hanging..

 

And a pretty new altered spool.....

 

And then despite a major snow storm swirling through Minnesota mid-day on the first day of the event, I still managed to attend the much anticipated spring Junk Bonanza event that I had been looking forward to all winter.  I wasn't going to let the weather stop me.  It was definitely worth the white knuckle drive home through the rain, sleet and snow as I snagged myself some awesome new and vintage treasures.

My first copy of the Jeanne D' Arc Living magazine.  Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous magazine.  One that I think will become one of my favorites, right up there with Somerset Life.

A beautiful floral vintage vase (a steal at just $5.00)....

A bag of lavender with a few lace trimmed vintage clothespins tucked inside..

A vintage sewing drawer.

Two vintage spools wrapped with more vintage trims..

A few more small flashcards to use in my craft projects.

And a darling market bag made from a vintage tablecloth and lined in pink polka dot fabric..

Junk Bonanza is definitely an amazing event and I am so glad that I live close enough to attend this event.  I'm already looking forward to the next one in September.

Well, I know that's a lot for one day, but I hope it makes up for my lack of posts lately.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

See you again soon!!!!

P.S. Sorry for all the shadows in my pictures. I took these with my iPod when the lighting in the room wasn't the best.

Being Creative .......

Hi Girls,

I've been busy in the craft room creating quick and easy little pieces of art.

Nothing too time consuming or complicated.  I can usually finish one of these in about an hour from start to finish.

Just a bit of paper,  ModgePodge, craft glue and any embellishments of your choosing along with some shaped chipboard or wood pieces and you can end up with pretty things like these..

 

Keeping things simple like this takes the stress and anxiety out of crafting that some people may feel when they find themselves overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. 

 

Start small like I did and when you become more comfortable with what you are doing, you will find more courage to expand your ideas into other projects.

 

I have to say that for me personally, Pinterest and even YouTube have been a huge influence in my crafting as I have found so many ideas of new and different things that I want to try. 

 

Happy Crafting!!! 

Beautiful Etsy Finds.....

Hi Girls,

I recently did some Etsy shopping after browsing the Etsy shop of Gail from Little Beach Designs.  She has a wonderful shop filled with all kinds of vintage goodies.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to purchase the beautiful little wallpapered chest of drawers that you can see in my blog header and in my sidebar photos.

My latest purchase was a beautiful vintage cigar box that Gail had altered using vintage wallpaper and sheet music images.

It's even prettier in person that what the photos shows..

She even added some beautiful pink trim to the small spools she used as feet for the cigar box..

And how pretty is this sheet music image that she used to finish the inside?  The script os gorgeous.

I'm in love with this latest purchase of mine and I know that I will enjoy it for years to come.

Besides showing you my latest find, I just want to let you all know that I have made a slight change to my Blogger comments setting.  I've changed my comment setting so that it will require word verification for those of you choosing to leave a comment.  I know that its a bit of a hassle and I really hate to have to do it, but over the past few weeks, I have been getting tons of anonymous spam comments and I am hoping that this will eliminate the problem.  I hope you will still take the time to comment as I love hearing from all of you.

Well that's all for now.  I hope you all have a wonderful and happy Easter with your family and loved ones.

Until next time...

Saturday Stuff...

 

Hi Girls...

 

Happy Saturday!!!   Hope you are enjoying your weekend so far.

 

I've just been putzing around in my craft room the past few days, playing with some of my new stamps and adding some finishing touches to the pages of my altered composition notebook.  If you missed the posts about my altered composition notebook, you can read more about it here and here...

 

 

I've slowly been adding bits and pieces to the different pages here and there at random times.  Still lots of unfinished pages, but here are a few of them that I have either completed or almost completed. 

 

 

 

 

Projects like this are nice as they can be worked on slowly over a period of time without there being a need to rush and complete it. 

 

Well, that's all for today..

 

See you again soon!!

Altered 99 Cent Goodwill Find....

Hi Girls,

I love finding creative uses for those inexpensive and sometimes odd thrift store finds.

A case in point being this odd looking wood piece that I recently found at the Goodwill store for just 99 cents. I'm not 100% certain as to what it is, but it looks like it may be a recipe card holder with grooves along the inside edges of the spools to hold the cards.  As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly how I would put it to use..

So after bringing it home and giving it a few coats of pale pink craft paint, I modgepodged on some torn up bits of some pretty new vintage looking scrapbook paper that I found recently...

And now I have another cute altered find to hold my growing collection of washi/craft tapes..

So like I've said before, don't forget to keep your eyes open at the thrift stores for those unusual items that you can alter to suit your style and find a functional use for.  You may just be surprised at what you find.

Crafting With Old Stuff And New Stuff....

Hi Girls,

If I haven't mentioned it before, I love creating things that have a "vintage" look to them.  An easy way to do that is to incorporate some real vintage items along with the new.

A perfect example of this is the altered canvas I made over the weekend.  I used both new and vintage items on this piece.

 

The "new" being the scrapbook papers, buttons and paper flowers....

And the "vintage" being the vintage photo and trims...

And or course, throwing the word "vintage" in helps just a bit too..

They all come together beautifully to create another piece that I will enjoy displaying in my craft room.

Happy crafting!!!

I Haven't Disappeared.....

Hi Girls,

Sorry I've been away for so long.  I admit, I've just been a bit lazy and haven't felt like blogging much. The late winter blues seem to do that to me every year.  I am so looking forward to Spring and to finally being able to say goodbye to the snow, cold and cloudy gloomy skies.

The skies are gloomy again today which makes it very difficult to take decent pictures, but I wanted to pop in real quick to show you my latest creation.

I made this yesterday using up more of my leftover paper scraps.

Nothing too fancy.  Just another simple wall hanging to add to my collection of too many.  Sorry for the not so good quality of the photo and for the shadows as like I said, its very cloudy here today and the lighting is horrible for taking pictures.  Plus, I took the picture using my iPod today as I didn't want to wait until I was able to recharge my camera batteries before taking the picture.

Well, that's all I have to share with you today.  Hope all is going well with you in your world.

Take care and I'll be back again soon.

Latest Crafty Project.......

Hi Girls..

I'm here today to share my lastest craft project with you.

I've been trying really, really hard to use up some of my leftover scraps of scrapbook paper before I cut into a new piece, so I did just that for this project. 

I dug into the drawer where I keep all of my larger scraps of paper to dig out some coordinating pieces that would give me the look I was hoping for.

And this is the end result....

 

It turned out quite nicely and keeps with my favorite vintage/shabby chic look that I love so much.

 

For this project, I used a thin 8 x 10 canvas board that I purchased at JoAnne's when they were on sale for 50% off last week (these boards came in a pack of 3) so this collage is larger than the one's I usually make. 

 

I sometimes have to laugh at myself when I think about how much scrapbook paper I buy when I don't even do any real scrapbooking with photos. I'm just addicted to pretty papers that I can use for making tags, mini-albums, journals and collages like these.  I even tried my hand at card making several years ago, but I never really found my niche with that.  I enjoy creating these collages so much more.

 

Well, that's all for today.  Enjoy what's left of your weekend.

 

See you again soon..