Scoooooooooooooooooore!!!

Okay, so the US is out of the World Cup running but I still couldn't resist. I went to my LSS's garage sale this weekend. Kind of a spur of the moment, hemming & hawing, last minute decision but I'm soooooooooo glad I did.

I got some really good deals. About 10 sheets of October Afternoon paper for a buck, a shape cutter for a buck, a circle cutter that I'd been curious about for $5 and.........I got a Silhouette for $50!!!! Oh, my stinkin' heck!

I've been wanting one of these for so long. But, it was just too expensive (like $400 MSRP but you could get it for less), we didn't have the room and Andrew really didn't want any craft stuff set up near the computer and the Silhouette requires one. Well, now I have a craft room and I got my laptop fixed so I can use it in said craft room and....it was only $50!!!

I haven't set it up yet but I am jonesing to! I'm making myself wait until I get my DT stuff done and then, look out! I'll be hooking up cables, watching videos on YouTube and pestering my Silhouette owning friends for all kinds of advice {cough} Joscie {cough}. Then, I'll share all my goodies that I make with it, with you! :D

In the meantime, here are some cards I made with the second A Walk Down Memory Lane featured manufacturer for June, CC Designs. (Remember, 25% off for the rest of this month!)

I used the same stamp set for all four cards, Pumpkin Emma. I wanted to show how you can use a stamp that may seem very themey for other occasions. For instance, here's Miss Emma used as is. It's a very autumnal theme, isn't it? (I so love that pearl button on her shoe!)

Well, the easiest way to alter her is to just cover up that pumpkin!

Here she is with some lovely spring flowers....

and here she is with a scrumptious, summery strawberry!

Now I also did a card using a more involved technique.

I removed the entire wagon from the image! You can see the step by step for this here on the DT Blog. This is soooooo my new favorite card. I love the red and teal and aqua! I used my circle punches to create a little home for the sentiment and used the colors to mimic the circles on the patterned paper.

Thanks for stopping by! If you don't see me for a while it's because I've married my Silhouette and we're off on a craft honeymoon!

Erica

:D

Some Fun News! :D

So, yesterday was a pretty good day. The weather was nice, the kids had fun, I was productive and...I was a Guest Designer over on the Making Memories blog!!! Squeal! You can see my post here. That was so fun and seriously, like a dream! They e-mailed me on Facebook in May and, at first, I thought that maybe I'd won a contest or something. Nope, they wanted to send me goodies and have me design a layout for their blog. Whoo-hoo! So, here are the layouts I made. (They are two of the four I made in SunRiver, that I couldn't share yet.)
This layout is all about my Granny and how much I love her. She's awesome! :D

The second layout is about our search for our current home. It took a while but man, was it worth it!

Both layouts use their new Panorama line. I love the colors! The green, the teal, the kraft with the other pops of color are just awesome. I normally am not a huge fan of the foiled look but that aqua, teal and copper foiled paper on my Great Experience layout is sooooo my favorite! I'm also a huge fan of their new corregated alpha! Great size, great color! Oh, and it may be a travel themed line but, as you can see, you can use it for almost anything!

I also used my new favorite journaling pen on these. They are called Le Pen. Totally makes me think of Le Car, how 'bout you? Anyway, they have the perfect size nib, great colors to choose from and they are super inexpensive, like under $2.00! Fabulous!

Oh, and in other, non-scrappy news, Miss Thing has learned two new words, "poop" (gotta love that!) and "look". Heh! :D

Thanks for stopping by!

Erica

:D

Donald Daze

So, I finally did it. I got a booth at a local event called Donald Daze in Donald, Oregon. I've never actually done a craft fair before and when I saw their ad on Craig's List I thought, why not? It's a smaller event so there's no huge fee which means no huge pressure on me. And, when I contacted them, it turns out they'd seen my necklaces on Craig's List and were going to contact me to participate! It was a true Sally Field's moment! (You like me! You really like me!) LOL!

(Here's my little booth in all it's glory!)

Well, it was a huge learning experience. I learned a lot about what I needed to get to have a booth. Tables (already had), chairs (ditto), a tent (bought one on sale), pier blocks to hold up said tent (thank you Home Depot), sheets to cover the tables (thank you Walmart), business cards (made myself), order forms (ditto) and bags (I totally spaced this but fortunately, my mom, who was with me all day, brought some).

I did a dry run of my set up a few nights before and realized I needed the blocks and then did my final dry run the night before the event.


I thought I'd spend most of my time prior to Donald Daze creating stuff for my booth. Nope, I spent about half the time figuring out the set up and working on displays for the booth. LOL! I decided on an aqua and white color scheme. I know, huge surprise there, huh? ;)


I dug out my aqua spray paint and some old baskets and an old peg board of my grandfather's and got to work!

(A couple of containers snagged from my scrap room and the afore mentioned baskets.)

I did sell a few cards but not one of the Father's Day ones. Apparently, the folks in Donald have their acts together and buy cards before the last minute. LOL!

(Grandpa's pegboard in it's new aqua and white glory!)

This pegboard was my saving grace. I needed something to display the necklaces but it needed to keep them secure from sticky fingers. The chains were heavy enough that they held up the pendants and by closing them behind the board, no one could walk off with them. Next time, I'll make a little sign for the space on top that has the price and what they are on it.

(All the pretty necklaces!)

I mainly used scrapbook paper scraps, some royalty free vintage clip art and I also designed a class of 2010 necklace for my necklaces. I actually only sold one of these at the event itself. I wound up trading a little girl at the next booth for one, she chose one of the DeLovely ones(good taste!), I gave one to each of my nieces who watched my kids and then my sister-in-law and another of my nieces each bought a necklace after the event. Gotta love family! LOL!

(Channeling my inner Preschool teacher.)

For my custom options sign, I used my Slice! I love that thing!

I think I may offer these up on my Etsy shop. A lot of people do the Scrabble Tile necklaces and most of them offer photo ones but no one's doing kid's artwork yet so I think that's a good area for me. Little Man colored this picture, and as he's only 3 1/2, I can say with authority, that it's his best coloring job ever. LOL! I propped up the sign and the necklace display on a set of matching vintage suitcases. Worked like a charm!

(Hmmm, methinks I should iron the sheets next time. Heh!)

And finally, the other side of my booth, the name frames. I did these one year for Christmas and they were a huge hit! I also painted up these cute little vintage school chairs.

The weather was a lot nicer than what the weatherman had been saying but there still weren't a lot of people there. So, no one really had a great day sales wise. But, one gal who took my card on Saturday, called on Monday and ordered a photo necklace and when she picked it up asked if I wanted to start selling them at the salon she's going to open. Yay!!!

My mom did say that I should look at it more as an advertising event than anything else. Looks like mom really does know best! :D

Thanks for stopping by!

Erica

A Weekend in Sunriver and Some Fun With Tape!

Hey, all! I'm back! I know, you missed me terribly huh? ;)

I left Friday morning to have a three day scrapbooking weekend in Sunriver all by myself. I'd actually hoped some scrappy girlfriends could go with but with the short notice, it was me, myself and I. Fortunately, the three of us get along and as a SAHM of two little ones, I reveled in the me time.

Now, you may be thinking that with all that time, I got a ton done. You'd kinda be wrong. LOL! I am a slow scrapper even though I'm a simple one and I only got four layouts and four cards made. :)

The really funny thing is the amount of schtuff I brought with me to make those four layouts and four cards. Hee! Check it out!

(This is just the scrap stuff I brought. I had a whole 'nother bag for clothes/camera/DVD's/computer. Yeah, I'm an over-packer!)

I also brought a cooler along and stopped at the Winco in Salem to fill up that bad boy. When I came out, these two were chilling underneath my truck. Of course, I hadn't brought my camera into Winco so I had to scramble and dig it out of the truck and only got these two waddling away but, how cute are they?

Once I finally got to Sunriver (it takes a while when you have to stop and shop every once in a while) I unloaded all that stuff and got set up in the living room.

And, here's my set up. I love to scrap on the floor, I know, I'm weird, so I dug out one of the folding tables and just laid it on the floor as my work surface. Then, I just had all my goodies within arm's reach. It worked out really well. :)

Now, I wasn't alone the whole time. Saturday, I had some visitors.

There were three of these guys and I was able to sneak out on the back deck and get some pictures of them.

Finally, here's one of the layouts I made. It's some pictures from Thanksgiving at our house and the domino game that inevitably occurs at any Hettwer family function.

(Patterned Paper-Pink Paislee, Chipboard Letters-Pink Paislee, Chipboard-Pink Paislee, Artisian Tape-Pink Paislee, Brads-Pink Paislee, Alpha Stickers-Pink Paislee, Punches-Marvy Uchida)

I have a bunch of those Pink Paislee Artisian tapes and while I adore them , I hadn't actually used them yet. Ooops! So, I made sure to bring, and use, them! I used the black and white polka dot tape because it was the most like dominos.

This first flower is made simply by layering strips of tape over cardstock and punching it out with a scallop punch. Then I layered a couple chipboard leaves under it and put a asterik from a glitter chipboard alpha set on top.

This is the same technique using a simple circle punch and poking a brad through it. I also grabbed a couple swirls from that same glitter, chipboard alpha.

For this flower, I cut three strips of 5" tape, looped them, stacked them, poked a hole in them and then popped a brad through the hole. I then adhered the whole shebang to the leaf stem.

I've got more goodies to share with you but it will have to wait a bit. I can't share two of the layouts or two of the cards just yet but I will as soon as I can.

Thanks for stopping by!

Erica

:D

More October Afternoon

First up, a couple of punny cards. I used a journaling card on each one of these and I just couldn't help myself. These little farm animals were just begging for it! :D


And, another one. :)

Finally, I used the rest of the cards up making this little mini book.

It's the highlights of how Andrew and I met,

fell in love,

and got married. (Please ignore the handwriting goof. On second thought, check it out, embrace it, it's okay, baby!)

See, you can make a mini with no photos. :D

Well, that's all the October Afternoon for now. Later this month we'll have our reveal for CC Designs Stamps. You can get both of them for 25% during the month of June at A Walk Down Memory Lane.

Thanks for stoppin' by! :D

Some October Afternoon Fun!

To say that I was looking forward to this month is an understatement. I adore October Afternoon and I'm thrilled to work with their product. :D

Here's a few layouts I made. Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for the Farm Fresh Journaling cards. I used one on every project I made, and I used up a whole sheet of them! Go, me! :D

First up, Farmer Boy. Little Man and my dad love working together in the garden and I love taking their pics. :) I dug out an older sheet of Christmas OA for the green polka dot. I also used three of the journaling cards on this. The back of one as a background for my embellishment, one for my journaling (shocker! LOL!) and one for my title.

I've been trying to add more layering, ala Christine's doily tutorials, but it's baby steps. LOL!Next up is Little Man. This is more of a personality page for Mickey. It's a little about him at 3 1/2 and a pretty darn good pic, if I do say so myself. LOL!

Here's the journaling card. I used the back of it as a main layer for my little embellishment cluster. And, lastly, Bookworms. This layout is the one I used for a sketch for our newsletter. You can sign up for it here. I used the journaling card to accent the photo as a partial photo mat.

These little button clusters are little bookworms and I used the postage stamp border punch to make it look like they chewed their way across the green patterned paper. :)

And, here's the sketch for this layout.
If you make something using this sketch, I'd love to see it! You can post it in our gallery or just leave a link to it here. :D

Oh, and in case you hadn't guessed...October Afternoon is one of the Featured Manufacturers at A Walk Down Memory Lane this month. For the month of June you can get all sorts of OA goodies for 25% off!

Thanks for stopping by! I've got a couple cards and a mini book coming up soon. :D