The truth is out, my child is a robot.

While Nate was napping on Sunday Wesley and I got a little creative.  I cut the diaper box into a robot costume for him to play with.  We covered it in some foil so he’d be all silver a shiny.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into.  When I asked him if he wanted to come with me to the craft store he said yes and asked to bring his ‘robot box’.

We picked up some decorations for the front (buttons and stickers) and back (stripes aka ribbon).  Then once Nate woke up we headed over to my Aunt’s house to visit with my cousin for a bit while she was in town. My Aunt’s dog was not impressed with the outfit.  Sorry it’s blurry, robots move fast!

Wesley asked for some cheese and crackers and then was presented with the problem of trying to eat them while being a robot!

Later I had to run out for some milk and other things and robot Wesley tagged along once again. *sigh*

Jazzing up boring white address labels.

I’ve been doing a lot of shipping lately with the sales in my shop and after a few handwritten return address labels I thought I’d get a bit inventive.  Plus it saves space on the package.  So I printed some return address labels on Avery label paper.  Then I gathered some other paper materials to stick them on to.  I started with an old atlas.

Then I grabbed some other things to reuse like Nate’s recent art work and some flyers from the newspaper.

It was super easy I just peeled off the sticky label and placed it on the backing paper so it would have a neat border.  Then I cut around it leaving a bit of the backing paper showing.  Other things I thought would make really neat backing papers are wallpaper scraps, paint chips and old stamps, sadly I didn’t have any of those lying around.

I used packing tape to just go over the whole label when adhering it to the packaging, I wanted to make sure they stayed on as some are going far, far away.  Glue, a tape runner or a Xyron would work too.

Tags: labels, mailing, reusing, vintage

Friday Find – JewelzyBug Designs GIVEAWAY!!

As if playing around on etsy isn’t dangerous enough already, the other day while poking around I clicked ‘shop local’ and stumbled onto some pretty neat stuff. My favourite was JewlezyBug so I’m sharing her first! Julie has created some really cute characters and uses some interesting materials. She paints on rocks to make neat pendants and uses pages from old books and phone books as the canvases for her whimsical paintings!

I sent her a message on etsy and she seems really fun and agreed to do a GIVEAWAY!!!!! Soooo free stuff to someone who’s in need of cuteness! Julie is willing to giveaway one of her prints, see them all here in her flickr pool, just leave a comment here telling us which one is your fav (they’re numbered 1-90). I like this little guy.

I asked her a little bit about herself and she sent this little blurb, thanks for sharing!

“I have always doodled and painted for as long as I can remember. I am drawn to bright colours and happy motifs that catch the eye and make you smile. I like my art to make you feel good and brighten your day. I use old books and phone books as my back drops because they visually stimulate the eye and provide texture to the art. I feel my art is a reflection of my inner child just wanting to play. I take inspiration from colour, from my day, nature, from the people in the my life and from my furbabies (4 cats and 1 dog: Jewels (hence the name!)”

She also has a blog where she shares her new creations, fun crafts and her cute animals. I love these ribbon curtains she made.

I’ll do some magical random winner picking Sunday night and announce Monday morning! Ohhh the suspense, I’d better set my iphone alarm . . .

Tags: art, Etsy, oshawa, papercrafts, pendant, recycling, repurposing

I’m not really this slow!

So while it seems I haven’t been very crafty lately I have been working on stuff, honest! The sad part is some of the projects are secret gifts so I can’t share my progress, which is icky. So I’ve been puttering on other little things as a break from the bigger crafts. I finally used my lovely bookplates and stuck them in my crafty/sewing books. Now that Handmade Beginnings has arrived I’ve only got 1 bookplate left! Time for another visit to Cabin and Cub.

I was almost afraid to actually stick them somewhere, they’re so lovely. Now that I’m a bit addicted to collecting fabric I’m noticing that sometimes I can’t bear to cut a piece! It’s so silly, why have it if you’re not going to use it?

Thanks to Ravelry I started a cute little apple cozy only to discover (after taking it apart 3 times) that I crochet really tightly and I’ll need to use a bigger hook so that it will actually fit an apple and not a plum!

So is it ‘cosie’ or cozie’ or ‘cosy’ or ‘cozy’? I think I use a different one every time.

Card swap package!!!

I’ve been so excited thinking about all the fun things I have coming in the mail it totally slipped my mind that my cards were coming too!  It’s funny they arrived today because just this morning I checked Missy’s site to see when she mailed them.   Not only were there 1o awesome new to me cards in the package but the package itself was sooo pretty!

There were 10 neat cards inside.  I was really fun to see what everyone made and some of the techniques they used.

Here’s a closer view of some of my favs.  Loving the little monsters from Cat, I have to find this stamp set!  The little girl one is just super cute  (pleeeeaaaaase tell me who made it someone!).  I love the idea of making a pinwheel out of double sided paper, simple and neat.  The flower card was made on fabric complete with beads and stitching.  The last one was just so nice and colourful, complete with sparkles, thanks Lorrain!

Thank you Cynthia, I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember which card your info fell out of!

I should have taken a photo of the ones I sent out.  I did get an email from Robin telling me she liked my card.

Happy Mother’s day to all the mothers!

Hope everyone is having a great Mother’s day. Just wanted to wish everyone well for today and share the cute little craft Wesley brought home from pre-school this week, tea for me!

The little poem says, “On Mother’s Day at 1/2 past three, make yourself a cup of tea.”

My hubby pointed out that the tea bag is actually glued into the little pocket, hehe oops. It’s still super cute.

Have a fantastic day ladies!

Back from the scrap!

Making a rap? Ok.  I’ll stop now.

I have returned from my weekend away!! It seems like it went by in a blink.  I arrived on Friday night, a tad late, at 7 and joined everyone for dinner and then off we went back to the huge room where all 11 of us were set up on our own huge table to work on our projects.  Somehow I’ve come home totally exhausted!  All I did was sat in a chair all weekend!  The first night I climbed into bed at 2am then got up at 9 and rushed to grab some breakfast, which was at 8:30.  Last night I went to bed at about 1:30 and woke up at 9.

I completed over 30 double page layouts, so over 60 12×12 pages! I finished a book of our Christmas trip. From start to finish I got it done, journaling and all!  This page with the kids at the playground is my favourite part of the book.  I love the photos and the lettering.  There were so many neat little gadgets, like the wonderful lovely Cricut which I need to have.

It was loads of fun. I’ve never been to something like this and it was great to have so much time to focus on layouts and have a big work area. It was also nice to have a break from being mommy. Big thanks to Kelly who set it all up.

OOoooohhh and the bestest part was that I had taken some of my taggie blankies to ask the crafty ladies present what they thought was a fair price, just to get an idea before my show.  The 3 ladies I showed them to each bought one!!  It was great.  Thanks ladies!

Style school binder fun.

While in England I picked up a decoratable binder for my Style Binder assignment for Style School. While watching part 1 and 2 of the BBC remake of Day of the Triffids I decided to work on the cover. Inspired by my location at the time I designed it using a London Underground theme.

There’s a bit of a shine to the binder so it was tricky to get a shot without a glare, but you get the idea. My only available tools were the Lightening McQueen coloured pencils my son had from Christmas. So all things considered, I think I did very well.

By the way, if you’ve never been to London and would like to scramble your brain for a few minutes take a look at the map for the underground. If you live in New York City, never mind the link, you have your own brain scrambler.

My shadow box with a story.

I’ve been trying to keep on track with Style School and keep up my current craft a day speed. So I made my own ‘shadow box with a story’.

The buttons are just fun and all about sewing, scrapbooking and cardmaking. The ’1 in a million’ is a heads up for my Dad, who was one in a million! I found some vintage looking fabric with little boys on it and cut and framed those little pieces, to represent Wesley and baby Nate. The alphabet blocks are for the boys’ names and Mom and Dad, that’s who I am right now so I used that and not T for Tara. I made a little SewTara banner, in honour of my new little addiction. The K is for our last name and I added the little globe for our travel fever.

It was loads of fun to make and surprisingly difficult to think about items to represent myself.

Merry Ho Ho.

I’m sending out 25 Christmas cards this year.  They’re all handmade by me!

Last year I sat down and made multiple copies of the same card and sent those out to everyone.  This year, with 2 little ones underfoot, I haven’t had time to be that creative so I resorted to digging through my stash of previously completed cards.  I did manage to sneak away to a card making workshop this year so I had 2o new ones to pick from.  These are some of my favourites.  I particularly like the little trend of choosing colours that aren’t traditionally associated with Christmas.  It’s a nice change from the usual red and green!

I don’t remember about each individual card but I know some of them are made with Stampin’Up supplies and some are make it Close to My Heart.